When the going gets tough the tough get going

In the reading from Dickie Motherwell she told me;  “Caprice is the teacher and you are the student.”   She was right.  From the day she was born she has been a tower of strength and I have to wonder, who is the one who is disabled, her or me?   Not once did she question why she was different than all her friends and her brothers and sister.  Not once did I ever hear her complain.  It was I who questioned why she had to live with this disease.  Why did this happen to her and not to anyone else in the family?  What did she know that I did not?  Visibly she was different, but she saw herself the same as everyone else.  What a smart little girl!  She already knew what it has taken me all these years to learn. 

I remember a day when she was about three years old.  She came running across the carpeted living room floor and hit the linoleum in the kitchen and down she went like a stone.  I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes and when I heard her crash I instantly reached for a towel to run and help her get up as this happened often.  Something stopped me in midair and the thought crossed my mind, ‘One day I might not be around when this happens and she must learn to get up by herself.’ It was hard for me to not run over and help her get up, but instead I just turned my head and asked her if she was okay.  Yes! And up she got by herself and went on her way.  I learned something that day.  Never doubt how capable she is and do not take away her right to be normal just like everybody else – and I use the term ‘normal’ loosely.

It is no wonder that by the time of her surgery at the age of thirteen I had a different idea of what is important and what is not.  All those years she was teaching me the meaning of life even if I didn’t know she was paving the way for my soul to get a word in.  Between my mother instinct and my Virgo personality and her pain, I was caught between a rock and a hard place.  But, you know what they say; “when the going gets tough the tough get going.”