To watch us dance is to hear our heart speak ~ Hopi Tribal Saying
My daughter Sydney is turning 13. Thirteen. As in teen-ager. When she was born with Down syndrome, we couldn’t have known that watching this beautiful creature grow from infancy to adolescence would be astonishing, but considering that ten years ago we nearly lost her to pneumonia, it becomes positively miraculous. She would have remained forever a cherubic 2½ year old, arrested in toddlerhood, innocent and unchanged. It causes my chest to constrict painfully when I remember the weeks she spent in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, when I realize how close she came to dying. But, to our great relief, she didn’t. She stayed with us. And she’s no longer a baby. Through preschool and potty-training, through primary school and pre-pubescence, my long-legged, lanky daughter, emerged, poised on the cusp of puberty. Ready or not, world, here she comes.
