Nothing lasts. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.
All my twins wanted for their ninth birthday was a party at the skate center. They begged me. They bribed me (with gummy worms I purchased for them at Walgreens). They promised to clean their room forever.
I grew up having parties at the very same skate center. I remember eating limp pizza and spending all the tickets I earned on games to buy Nerd ropes that grew sticky in my hands and skating ever so slowly while the rest of the world zoomed by. I held on to the edge and wobbled when someone got close, but I still had fun and I wanted them to have that fun too. Of course I said yes.
But my heart winced for Charlie, my sweet oldest boy who is in a wheelchair and sensitive to noise. I knew he wanted to celebrate them, but I also knew he might very well have a total meltdown on the edge of the rink. I packed Goldfish and graham crackers and an iPad and noise-canceling headphones. I made my husband drive separately, in case we needed to emergency bail.
The twins were up before the sun on the day of the party and so was Charlie because they were banging around upstairs in their skates like gremlins. When we pulled into to the skate center parking lot, the line was already out the door and Charlie, not known for his patience (he gets that from me), pointed toward the car, ready to exit before we entered. We got through, checked into the party room, strapped the twins into their skates, and set them free. Then it was just Charlie and me on the sidelines.
I was poised, headphones almost over his ears, when he started bobbing his head to the music—yacht rock at its finest. He pointed to the rink and then his chair. Turns out he did want to “come sail away.” I thought for sure they’d never let him. They wouldn’t even let you bring in outside skates, much less an outside wheelchair. But they did. So my husband took Charlie out and then skated like the club hockey player he is (too fast and too old for this business).
Charlie waved to me at every lap. I clapped. I took pictures. I high-fived him each time he passed. It was epic…until it wasn’t. They stopped the music to play a game. A kid by the Whack-a-Mole hit his finger with the mallet and started screaming. Charlie burst into tears. It was a disintegration of the moment that could not be mended. I took him home as soon as we sang happy birthday while the twins ate cold-ish pizza.
People often say, “it was good while it lasted” with a shrug and a sigh. But over the course of Charlie’s eleven years, I have learned to say it with an exclamation point. Huzzah! It was good while it lasted! Nothing lasts. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Try the roller rink. Try the ice skating rink. Try the water park. Just try. Charlie’s moment of bliss on this day lasted two minutes, but that’s two minutes he never would have had if we hadn’t given it a shot. Things end badly. Things end great. Things end. As a parent of a child with different needs, I never know how it will go, but I do know that I want to give him these chances because he deserves to cruise to yacht rock and gnaw on a Nerd rope as much as the rest of us.
Jamie Sumner is a special needs mom and author.
Jamie-Sumner.com
Author of the middle-grade novels:
