Ella's Courage

Everett and Elijah have been swimming for several summers.  They detest jumping into a cold pool at 6:30 every morning, but the friendships far outweigh their early mornings.  The meets are long, but fun.  After several sweaty years of watching from the stands, Ella and Sally begged to join the team this summer.

Though the team takes even the youngest swimmers, beginning at five years old, they must be able to swim two strokes.  Sally has only recently been able to swim a front crawl successfully.  Her backstroke brings even the most lackadaisical lifeguard to his feet in worry over her drowning.  She flops this way and that, all of her appendages moving independently of each other.  I fear for her life.  Nevertheless, we thought the coaches might be able to work with her.

Ella is a different story.  She is incredibly athletic.  Lacking a foot and hand hasn't slowed her down.  Nothing is impossible for her, swimming included.  I emailed the coach before the season began expressing some of my worries.  Ella is still wearing a size 8 bathing suit.  Some of the 12 year olds on the team that she swims with are my size!  I knew she would be creamed based on size alone, so I wanted to protect her.  Add to the issue of her size the fact that she's missing body parts...it could easily become a summer of disappointments.

Everyone wanted to swim in the first meet and every meet following.  Sally griped because she always came in fifth.  Ella popped out of the pool ecstatic because she always felt like she won.  She was always very, very far behind the other swimmers.  Maybe she thought she finished so far ahead that everyone else was still swimming.  Either way, she loved the summer swim team.

The meets were a challenge for me.  Ella's mental abilities didn't allow her the acuity necessary to know when to go to the pool deck.  If, by chance, she showed up for her event, she most often stood at an arbitrary lane.  I watched like a hawk as her events drew near.  Racing from the stands, many evenings I grabbed her from her perch on the low benches behind the blocks only seconds before the event began.  Without her prosthetic, she crawled onto the block and kneeled, poised for the beep.  Instead of diving, she would plummet into the water, only slowing her start as the tall, limber swimmers dove into the water.  The race was on.  Ella, being 12, is forced to swim 50 yards.  She was strong during her first 25, but began to slow as she approached the far end of the pool.  I could always make out the voices of her coaches cheering from the sides.  Usually, a cluster of pre-teen girls would stand at the far end of her lane waving their arms and cheering.  By the time she began her flip-turn, the other five swimmers would be hitting the finish, panting.  Their swims completed, the event over, sans one lonely swimmer in lane 6.

Ella is rather proud of her flip-turn.  Finally, she learned how to do it, and never hesitates to show it off.  It's sweet, but cumbersome and slow.  Her energy wanes as she pushes off the wall with her good foot.  By now, all eyes are on lane 6.  The parents watching their daughters have turned their attention to the small girl struggling to finish her event.  They probably noticed her at the start, she was the only one kneeling on the blocks, but their attention would have been focused solely on their athlete.  Until now.  All eyes are on Ella.

I can't hear Ella's coaches any longer, my own voice drowns them out.  Then I realize, it's not only me.  People are on their feet, cheering for Ella.

Elijah always says he can't hear anyone while he swims.  I yell relentlessly because I am that wild, encouraging mom.  I believe they can hear my voice.  As I watch Ella finish the last 10 yards of her event, I can see by her face that she hears.  She is smiling.  A big, toothy, wide smile pops up every other stroke.  I silently chant, "Just breathe, don't smile!"

She finally tags the wall and the pool erupts.  My arms are covered in chills and my eyes filled with tears.

As summer passed, relatives in town visiting always took the opportunity to come for a swim meet.  At the summer finals, my in laws crowded next to me as we watched Ella finish her event.  The crowd screaming, my mother-in-law looked at me in tears and said, "Does this always happen?"

Yes, yes it does.

Ella taught me something this summer, it's far more important to give her an opportunity than to protect her.  What she may lack in physical strength, she makes up for in sheer will and determination. The courage of that humble little girl is awe inspiring. 

Rudolph Made Ella Cry

Yesterday I gave the kids a ‘day off’ from school. I pushed them a little bit harder earlier in the week with plans for a “party” on Friday. Though we started off as a normal day, I surprised them with a stack of crafts and coloring pages. One of the crafts was this cute little guy:

Some of you may not know (so I’ll tell you), Ella has complex syndactylism in her left hand. In normal speak that means that her fingers were fused together. In some cases, syndactyly is only webbing between the fingers, in Ella’s case she had no defined digits. When we brought her home she had a series of surgeries to “give” her fingers. Her bone structure is so poorly formed that the hand surgeon, as good as he was, couldn’t give her five digits. So, she has a thumb and two fingers. Her hand rarely is an issue, I honestly forget about it most of the time. She has never exhibited any feelings—good or bad—regarding her ‘little hand.’ When we are presented with projects that require hand tracing, I’m an equal opportunity hand tracer. I don’t shrink away from crafts requiring hand prints because I don’t want Ella to grow up feeling weird or funny because she has a ‘little hand’. That has ALWAYS been fine. And that has ALWAYS been my policy. My policy changed yesterday.

Each of the kiddos traced their foot on brown paper; then traced their hands on black paper. Ella balked when I started to trace her little hand. She looked at Everett’s nearly completed reindeer and said, “But my hand is different.”

In a moment of poor mommying I said, “Yes, your hand is different, but it’s still going to look nice as an antler on your reindeer.” Looking back I should have taken more time, maybe looked closer at her face to see how upset she was, but I didn’t.

She seemed unconvinced by my statements, but let me trace both hands. Then she started getting frustrated with her cutting skills, and I had the idea that for the first time she may actually CARE about how this craft turns out. For the most part she has generally done crafty things to appease me, and keep up with her brothers. Unconcerned with the finished product, or whether she finishes them, sometimes she even goes so far as to destroy the project as she creates it. So, we press on, gluing the antlers onto the footprint, then sticking a fuzzy glitter nose on. The kids were giggling at how their reindeer turned out, laughing that Eli drew a big smiley face and Ella drew eyebrows. I was surprised that Ella went beyond my expectations by drawing a face on her reindeer. We hung the little guys up and moved onto the next “phase” of our partying. Carmel corn and Disney’s “A Christmas Carol” followed by gifts (play dough and paint by numbers).

All was well, until Seth came home. Excited to share what we did today, the kids ran around showing him the pages they created, the paintings they did and then ran to the window to show him their reindeer. This is when our day took a turn. The boys were jumping around, general mayhem and excitement, “Look at my guy, he’s so cute!”
“I made a smile, look at my Rudolph!”
“Mine is weird. I no like him.” This came from Ella. And it hurt my heart. Then she looked up at Seth and collapsed in tears.

Several thoughts raced through my mind as I tried to figure out how to react. I was (as horrid as this sounds) happy because her feelings were complex, and she hasn’t before shown this sort of emotion. Every reaction she has is based on the concrete—she falls, she cries; she breaks a toy, she cries. She doesn’t deal in the abstract. For her to see her reindeer and realize that it looks different, then see that the difference is because she has a hand with three fingers, then be upset about that—well, that is momentous to me.

So I was excited for a millisecond. Then I saw her sobbing in Seth’s arms and the reality of what was happening set in. This was the official first time for my daughter to cry because of her differences. And I was faced with the stark reality that neither Seth nor I knew how to handle her sobs. He caught my eye and I just stood there, paralyzed. My eyes were welling up with tears and I didn’t want her to see me crying. Seth was whispering in low tones trying to console her. Neither of us had anything spectacular to say. We said what we’ve always said, “God gave you to have a special hand for a reason. We love your little hand.” The boys had gone into compassion mode and were raving about her hand, her reindeer…making fun of themselves; trying anything to cheer her up. As I spoke I felt very scared about what we will face as she gets older. I realize that “God made you with a purpose” probably won’t help a pre-teen stop crying. I know she’s going to ask “Why?” and I won’t have an answer.