This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

My Son's Doppelganger

Jack finds a friend just like him.

When I first heard there was another child in my son’s school who wore the same ankle-foot brace as he does, I was excited. 'Yippee,' I thought. He won’t feel so singled-out now, and all I have to do is get them to be friends.

An even sweeter fact is that they are in the same grade, just different classes. Soon enough I found out they have the exact same diagnosis, hemiparesis, but on opposite sides of their bodies. Jack wears his brace on his left leg and his classmate wears hers on her right. They are mirror images of each other. Poetry in motion, perhaps? I sure think so.

This all took place during the last month of kindergarten last school year. A mutual friend introduced me to the girl’s mother in an E-mail and we met for coffee in late June. We both felt like we’d found a long-lost friend. Indeed, our connection was strong, visceral almost, and even a bit sisterly.

Find out what's happening in Park Slopewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

There was no awkwardness during our coffee connection, we got to know one another quickly. We almost felt like we had already met. We each wanted to know exactly how the our children were diagnosed: all the specific details of who, what, when and why.

Our parallel lives for the past six years enabled us to finish each other’s sentences. We were both high on the coincidence, the camaraderie and the newfound confidante we’d found in one another. 

Find out what's happening in Park Slopewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Now that we’d met, it was time to get the kids together. The summer was hit or miss, but we finally managed to bring them together on the last day of summer vacation—the day before the first day of first grade.

It was a dreary day outside, but she trekked over from Carroll Gardens to our house in Park Slope with her daughter and toddler son in tow. After a few lethargic bouts of playing with Jack’s train set, we all plopped onto the couch together. The mother and I bookended the three kids, who were eating goldfish crackers, raisins and alphabet cookies, while the rain beat down outside on the sidewalks.

We turned on old Looney Tunes and finally got the “alone time" we wanted. Over their three bobbing heads and the familiar bicker of Daffy and Bugs, we caught up on each other’s summer activities, our upcoming doctor visits, next steps in treatment, and life in general as mothers of special-needs children. I felt like I finally had a place to hang my special-needs parenting hat. And it felt great.

The next day I read a particularly timely post by Ellen Seidman, who writes the “To the Max” blog on Parents.com. She shared an anecdote about a recent family vacation at a beach resort where she walked up to a mom who was playing cards with her teenage son who was in a wheelchair.

“Hi, I’m Ellen,” she said. “My son, Max, who’s splashing in the pool over there, has cerebral palsy.”

She explained how they continued to chat for the next 10 minutes as if they’d know each other for years. Seidman referred to her opener as a pick-up line she uses with other parents of children with special needs, adding that she’d never use that icebreaker with parents of typical children.

With another parent of a special-needs kid, there’s a shorthand you can use and not worry the other person will get confused. There’s also the feeling of the other person “getting” you and not pitying you. And you don’t feel the need to spare the other person the details because as any parent of a special-needs child knows, the devil– and the best stuff– is in the details.

Who else but another parent of similar means to share the highs and lows that would sooner bore your friends and family to tears if not a catatonic state. 

That’s when I realized Jack wasn’t the only one to find his doppelganger right in his own backyard. I did too, in a way. And I liked what I saw when I looked in the mirror. A kind, loving, generous woman who, like me, is navigating her way through the lifelong maze of being a mother to a child with hemiparesis.

 

 

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?