Some stories are meant to be told. You may not know how important they are until the stars align in such a way that leave a constellation in the sky. The more stars that join the constellation, the further it stretches across the celestial sphere, incapable of being ignored from those who look up.
A few stars aligned for this story. There are more to come…
*******
Of the many e-mails and messages I’ve received over the past four years, there are a handful I’ve saved in a special folder–stories I need to be reminded of; words and images that challenge me to stretch further; little things that I, for some reason, felt were extra important to hang on to.
A month before Bloom was published, I received an e-mail from a reader–a young mom who included a photo of herself holding a baby girl on her hip. It was short and right to the point.
I stumbled across your blog a little over two years ago–and it changed my life.
In the 5th grade, I sat next to a sweet girl with the same genetic makeup as your Nella.
I didn’t expect the sentence that followed, and when I read it, my stomach flipped.
And I was mean to her.
Before I read any further, I looked at the attached picture again to connect the woman who wrote this–the one who was mean to a girl with Down syndrome in 5th grade–to who she had become. She was pretty and looked so kind and nurturing, her baby propped on her hip, her head tilted in toward her, subconsciously protecting her. She looked like she could easily be my friend.
I read on:
To this day, I am disgusted with my behavior. Yes, I was young. Yes, I didn’t understand. But I am still ashamed.
I think about that sweet girl a lot. I wonder what she’s doing with her life, who is loving her, and if she’s persevering in a world that likes to exclude and discriminate. I wonder who is advocating for her…
There’s a tidal wave of change coming–acceptance, advocacy, and empathy. Something that was absent when I was in the 5th grade.
I’m hopeful and inspired.
I pray everyday that there are less people like my 5th grade self and more people like you.
With the deepest gratitude…
I wrote the woman back, tears streaming as I typed, telling her how much her e-mail meant to me. I thanked her for being brave and honest and told her the most beautiful stories are ones where people change. I was changing too, so I knew. Later, I read the e-mail to Brett and over the phone to my mom and dad and sister and finally tucked it away in the special folder, not to return to it again but to mark its impact on me. I don’t know why it stood out so much, but I haven’t forgotten that story.
Fast forward.
A year ago, I began following a woman on Instagram through mutual connections. Her posts were funny and insightful, and I connected with the way she interacted with her children and loved her family. She contributed to a writing collaboration with me and some other friends earlier this year, and I finally had the chance to meet her two weeks ago when she traveled with her three children–one just two months old–to Orcas Island to spend the first day with us. I held her baby on the ferry, learned more about her life and enjoyed watching her lovingly guide her son, who was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, through his sugar checks and carb counting. Maggie was a joy, but I knew that before I even met her.
Once home, I invited her to submit a quote to a motherhood piece I was putting together. A few days after she sent it, I went back into my e-mail to find it, typing her name–Maggie Jones–in the search bar.
I found her quote.
And underneath that e-mail, I found another e-mail she had apparently sent me two years ago. It was titled “With Gratitude.” I clicked on it.
I stumbled across your blog a little over two years ago–and it changed my life.
In the 5th grade, I sat next to a sweet girl with the same genetic makeup as your Nella.
And I was mean to her.
It was Maggie.
I hugged her, cooed at her new baby and applauded her son as he proudly pricked his finger in front of me two weeks earlier and never realized it was the same Maggie who was mean to the girl with Down syndrome in 5th grade. Scrolling down, I found the picture again, this time familiar with that strawberry blond hair, those freckled cheeks and her warm smile. The baby on her hip was the toddler who, weeks earlier, had run around the back of the ferry and attempted to climb the railing to look for whales.
Late that night, I e-mailed her, “It Was You” in the subject line.
We’ve since talked a lot about why kids are mean to other kids with disabilities. We say things like “Mean kids must have mean parents,” but that’s not always true. It wasn’t true in Maggie’s case.
I wanted to know more about Maggie’s experience, so I asked her to write about it.
******
Kristin
by Maggie Jones
It was the first day of 6th grade. I walked into the classroom, nervously hugging friends and scanning the room for my desk assignment. Three desks to a group; organized clusters throughout the room. Margaret was printed in perfect form in a group near the back of the classroom, next to the teacher’s desk. I took my seat and arched my neck to see who was next to me. Shaina to my left and…
…I had instant anxiety. Kristin to my right.
Kristin and I had been in the same class since 3rd grade. She had bright blonde hair that was bobbed at her chin. She wore sweaters that were unraveled at the cuffs and shoes that were worn at the toe. She was kind and quiet. She kept to herself.
I was mean to her.
Kristin had Down syndrome.
I heard giggles across the room that were directed towards me. I couldn’t sit here; I needed to move.
I asked my teacher, Can I please move desks? I really like the front of the room.
She saw right through to the root of my request. I sat you next to Kristin because you are compassionate. I knew you’d be kind.
Guilt struck my heart directly, with great force. She didn’t know me at all. She didn’t know that the previous school year I threw this girl’s jacket across the room and yelled, “Blackout!”, a cruel game that tormented other kids by insinuating they had cooties. She didn’t know that I cringed and pretended to puke to my friends as she tested her blood sugar at her desk. Kristin was also a type 1 diabetic. No, she didn’t know me.
I sat down at my desk, wondering what type of social suicide this seating assignment would mean for me.
The rest of the school year, Kristin would leave class often with a teacher’s aide. By the end of the year a good portion of her time spent at school wasn’t in the classroom with us.
No one talked about Down syndrome.
No one talked about diabetes.
No one talked about Kristin.
As we grew up, the less I saw of Kristin, the more I thought about her. She was moved from public school into a specialized program for students with special needs. I replayed the moments of meanness, wondering if I cut her deep.
Did she know? Did I damage her in some way?
Just as our limbs stretch and grow; so do our hearts. Mine did so in high school. I could feel the chains of acceptance and popularity grip tightly around my wrists, but I was able to break loose. It’s in those moments of adolescence when you truly transform from scared child to compassionate human being. It’s with that compassion, my conscious bloomed.
I am now a mother of three beautiful kids, one of whom is a type 1 diabetic. At four years old, he proudly tests his blood sugar and gives himself insulin. He is the bravest boy I know. As he waits for the glucose meter to display a number, he quickly licks the bead of blood off his finger. I’m instantly taken back to 6th grade—back to Kristin.
I feel overwhelmed with shame.
This primal force inside me screams for advocacy. Curiosity quickly turns to cruelty if children do not have advocates—leaving ignorance to swallow up the best parts of us. This is not the life I want for my children. This is not the life I want for sweet Nella.
And this certainly wasn’t the life Kristin deserved.
*****
While we try not to, I think every parent of a child with special needs (and any child, for that matter) has at least imagined, if not experienced, a moment where their child was made fun of or left out for being different. It’s hard to think about any of my kids connected to games like “Blackout” or seating partners to a girl who’d roll her eyes and ask to be switched. But, you know what? We’ve all been mean before or said something that wasn’t very nice, and just as those things don’t necessarily define us for life as being a “mean girl,” neither does fifth grade ignorance. In fact, Maggie’s teacher told her she specifically picked her because she was compassionate and knew she’d be kind. Ironically, in her own need to feel accepted and popular, she made someone else feel unaccepted and unpopular. There’s some truth there. I think a lot of kids have been there.
It’s easy to pass off discrimination and ridicule as coming from mean kids with mean parents who will always be mean, but there’s a lot more we need to understand to make it stop. No one talked about Down syndrome at Maggie’s school. No one took away the fear, the questions; no one stripped the stigma from the students; no one asked the kids what they wanted to know and erased the lines that were needlessly drawn to distinguish differences. Gradually, Kristin faded into a world where kids with special needs stayed with other kids with special needs, and no one stood up to challenge that fact because they had no information to even promote thought about what ever happened to Kristin.
Maggie knows where she is now. After recently finding her home, she knows that Kristin is well today. I’m so thankful that Kristin made an impact on Maggie, not only making her more aware in her efforts to teach kindness and acceptance to her children, but allowing her to share her experience with me…with us.
Many of today’s kids will, like Maggie, grow up and feel differently, be ashamed of how they treated someone, have their own children someday and truly understand what selfless love and compassion feels like. How do we catch them earlier though? Before they play Blackout or mumble a quiet joke under their breath.
We talk about everything, that’s how–and we do it early. We talk about, we live it, we celebrate the truth in these topics–differences, acceptance, popularity, compassion, the way the world’s cogs all click together and work most smoothly when everyone looks out for everyone. And if we’re doing a good job teaching that in elementary school, then we need to do an even better job enforcing it and showing it in middle school and high school. Because those are the years when children are teetering between childhood and adulthood. Those are the years when they are needing to feel most accepted, and “accepted” is sometimes misconstrued as “popular.” The thirst for acceptance can dangerously shift into the thirst for popularity, and the cost of that can often mean someone else’s acceptance. That’s never okay.
Maggie’s story is just another little star in the great big constellation we’re creating. We need more stars, more stretch, more glow from the black sky that spans above every one of us.
Thank you so much, Maggie, for making us better advocates, for helping us twinkle brighter, for calling more stars.
“Curiosity quickly turns to cruelty if children do not have advocates—leaving ignorance to swallow up the best parts of us. This is not the life I want for my children.”
You can follow more of Maggie and her family at her blog, The Rural Roost.