“‘No, you’re not,’ I said. There was a fight, moaning, excuses… the usual. He looked at me with flat eyes, his hood up, shoulders slumped, and said, ‘Why do we have to do this?’ The next day, my wife sent me this picture.”
‘I’m busy right now,’ he said. I describe my 11-year-old as a slug of a boy. He was playing on the laptop, wearing sweatpants, on the sofa, feet on the coffee table.’: Father realizes he’s never been ‘prouder’ of his son
‘I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve him. Anyone could do this better. I harbored fantasies about escape, vanishing, and death.’
“The light switch on how to be a mom would never flip. I felt like a fraud. Someone should do this instead of me. There IS NO light switch.”
‘My husband looked at me with tears in his eyes. ‘You have no idea what it’s like watching you slowly die and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ To the outside world, no one knew what was happening to us.’
“After all the years he fought for our country and for his wife, he deserved more than being stuck with a sick wife in a drug coma stuck on the couch. Never in a million years would I have anticipated what would come next.”
‘I see a news report about a child who was abandoned in a parking lot after a woman fled on foot. I immediately recognized the photo of ‘Baby Jenkins.’ It was Tyler.’
“My cousin had actually given Tyler away to this other woman, because she could not handle taking care of a newborn. I was shocked and obviously did not understand the gravity of the situation. I called 911.”
‘There’s a picture of you with a shawl around your head. Why are you wearing that?’ I was scared to tell her.’: Daughter converts to Islam, keeps decision from her mom because she ‘didn’t want to hurt her feelings’
“I had sent in my application and a few weeks later, my mom called me to tell me there was an envelope in the mail for me. Not knowing what it was, I told her to go ahead and open it. I was no longer living a secret life. I could be free with my mom now, or so I thought… When others started learning about my conversion, they’d put bad thoughts into my mom’s head.”
‘While waiting to board our plane, my daughter was being her inquisitive self, meeting and saying ‘Hi’ to everyone she could, until she walked up on this man.’
“This wasn’t a short, little exchange.”
‘He went pale, stuttered and said, ‘Ma’am, one of your baby’s is in your birth canal, feet first.’ People started flying in. I begged him to give them more time.’: Mom’s son diagnosed with cerebral palsy is her ‘fighter’
“By the time the helicopter arrived, conditions were too dangerous. I assumed we would be rushed, lights blazing and sirens blasting to the next hospital. I kept asking when a doctor would get around to me. A resident finally came in. His face immediately gave him away.”
‘My OB guilt tripped me into getting the genetic tests done. I was 19. I developed a strange feeling.’: Woman predicts daughter’s Down syndrome diagnosis
“They plopped her on my tummy, facing her daddy. I cried the happiest tears. But, my husband looked at me with the most concerned look on his face. He knew.”
‘He’s really smart.’ I nodded in my awkward parent small talk sort of way. ‘No, I mean REALLY smart,’ she insisted, staring at me with urgency, or something I couldn’t identify.’: Dad recounts son’s autism diagnosis
“Something about his behavior didn’t feel right, but it was hard to explain. Soon, every time we received a well-intended compliment about his intelligence, it felt like a knife was being twisted further into my stomach.”
‘I was frozen in a restaurant with rain dripping off me, staring at my dead mom. ‘It’s okay,’ I told them, but was it?’
“What do I do, I wondered? I inhaled deeply, trying to see if she still smelled of flowers and herbs de Provence and soap like I remembered. I was contemplating reaching out to touch the back of her down coat, when she suddenly turned around and we were face to face.”