More than Adrift

We walk into a crowded room, Kait’s still too small arm wrapped around Josh. She’s waited for weeks for the Badger Ball; an annual formal event that the Wisconsin Badger Athletics department hosts for Special Olympic athletes in Wisconsin. There is loud music, unabashed dancing, sugary food and real friends, all that Kait could ask for.                 Every year, I reflect on the changes in my life, in her life especially…. My first born, the child who came and made me a mama before I was ready, who knit Reid and I together as a family. It wasn’t even two hours after she was born, my brain and body still slow from the medicine and the labor, that I first heard Down syndrome, that the words mental retardation were used, the first time I saw the doctor look at me with pity, for her, for us. Within twenty four hours, before I knew how to nurse a child, I had books in my hand about raising a child with Down syndrome, a poem entitled “Welcome to Holland” and a folder with a s