The Forgotten Character

In the story of a special needs family, the forgotten character is always the sibling. It’s not fair, but their lives contain less drama, and they normally get less attention. The healthy brother or sister ends up like that member of a popular band that nobody can name. One of my biggest fears is that Ella ends up feeling like the second member of Wham! or The Righteous Brothers whose name nobody can remember (Andrew Ridgely and Bobby Hatfield, in case you were curious). The path of least resistance is to let the story play out that way. I spend so much time worrying about Audrey that it’s easy for me to think that nothing bad or noteworthy will happen to Ella.

Last week, we got a call from Ella’s school. The teacher told us that Ella was running on the playground and fell. I didn’t think much of it when they called, partly because kids fall all the time, but also because Ella is my easy kid. Compared to Audrey, nothing bad happens to Ella. That changed when they called back a few hours later and told us to come get her. My heart broke when I picked her up and saw her tears as she walked down the hallway to greet me. Her face was swollen and bruised and there was dried blood all over her teeth. She tried to say something, but all she could do was mumble between the tears because her mouth was so swollen. Two days later, she still had trouble talking, and didn’t start eating solid food until six days after her accident.

The injury was so bad, we kept her out of school the rest of the week. She cried when I told her she had to go back to school yesterday. “I don’t want to go back, daddy” was was the refrain echoing through our house all morning. And I understood. It was probably a combination of having to go back to the place she got hurt and the embarrassment she felt by getting hurt in front of her friends. My immediate desire was to scoop her up, put her in my lap, and sit on the couch and watch Frozen seven times in a row with her. But as much as I wanted to spend the day with her, I knew that wasn’t the best thing for her. Just like Maverick in Top Gun, I have to keep sending her up.

The positive takeaway as a father is that Ella must be really fast. The only way to do that much damage is to hit something really hard at Olympic sprinter speed. Now we just need to focus on not hitting things with our face. It’s time for Daddy to teach the lessons I learned during the legendary dodgeball games in Coach Alvey’s gym class in junior high. (All my friends who went to Bowie Junior High will attest – Coach Alvey played for keeps. And he frequently aimed a couple of feet lower than your head).

Every night when I’m putting Ella to bed, after I read her a book, she says, “Daddy, can I tell you something?” Then, she usually tells me a story about something that happened to her that day. Two nights after her accident she mumbled through her still-swollen lips, “Daddy, can I tell you something? It still really hurts.” At that point, I’m not sure which hurt more, her face or my daddy heart. Ella reminded me of a lesson I learned while staying the hospital with Audrey – there is nothing worse than seeing your child in pain and knowing that there is nothing you can do about it.

So I asked God to let me trade places with her just like I did every day in the hospital with Audrey. So far, God hasn’t taken me up on my offer, but I’m not going to stop asking anytime my girls are in pain.

I’m still new to this parenting thing, so I’m still learning how to make sure nobody ever feels left out. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated. If nothing else, I’m going to keep writing about Ella to make sure that everybody remembers her name. She and Audrey will be like Paul and John. It’s impossible to forget that either one was in the Beatles. I’m okay being Ringo in this band.