Who Imagined this Future?

Imagining the Future

As a child, when I imagined my future, it looked different with each day of the week. Sometimes I drew large dreamhouses with many children, six or seven, to be sure. Sometimes, when I looked at the individual dinners in the frozen food aisle, I imagined a future in a metropolitan condo with busy work, and fancy tiny dinners. You know, the kind grown-ups ate. Sometimes I created books of poetry on a typewriter, other times I sat at my grandmother’s desk and imagined working alongside my brother and cousins and…

When your child is born with a diagnosis, a bright future may be hard to imagine.

When Marcus was born the reference books at hand, even some of his family, used terms now considered archaic but were then common enough when referring to people with Down syndrome. The future became a long tunnel, too misty and unknown to even imagine…

But, we had Chris Burke and “Life Goes On” playing in my mind, and Marcus already showed a personality of stubborn ambition. Plus, indulge me a moment with the Momma cliché, he was the most beautiful, perfect, little man ever born. For certain.

In so many ways, Marcus and I have grown up together. Both of us still working to become who we will be. (Of course, Marcus gave the best answer to that, and I am still striving.)

Dear Momma’s and Poppa’s and Professionals and Families,

maybe you’re new to the diagnosis, maybe you’re still trying to picture a future…

In our community, we know, the future is promised to no one. Many of us have seen our children teeter on the edge of unbearable. Many of us break and build again.

We dig in our heels. We are fighters. We challenge the lines drawn around us.

We learn to listen in so many new ways. We adventure. We laugh. We climb over barriers and create new worlds.

This week, my friends at FTSF are sharing a list of pics from our phones.  My phone does this cool video thing where it randomly picks photos and makes a video, so here’s one minute of Marcus and our photo listicle:

My phone documents these ten facts: 1) We really like bars. 2) We create books. 3) We see shows. 4) We travel. 5) We have so many friends. 6) We celebrate! 7) We Play. 8) We meet cool people. 9) We try new things. 10) We are blessed.

This is one future. Our #Truth. My phone has proven this life is well beyond the imagination of some folks we knew or met early on in our journey. We left those closed minds along the way.