Shouldn't It Be Criminal?

I suppose it wouldn't do any good even if it was a crime.

We're just back from a skiing trip. The kids skied until they were ready to drop. It was close to a perfect time. I should feel rejuvenated, alive, thankful.

Instead I'm so overwhelmed with sadness that I'm almost immobilized. The youngest of our children has finely been assessed. A precious precious child. Full of life and smiles and insecurity and frustration. She knows something isn't right. She's not alone. Specifically, the last three of our seven kids have IQ's of 64, 73 and now this last one, 65.

We've been given a stack of papers about community living options: crafts and swimming and basketball and summer camps. So much information that my mind shuts down. I can't compute. It's all too much.

Acquired Brain Injury.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

Their mothers drank alcohol while pregnant.

Their mothers destroyed the future of their children.

Their mothers were also Fetal Alcohol brain damaged and so the cycle continues, with each brain damaged female producing several more of the same.

Sometimes life is a load too great. And yet all we're asked to do with these kids is love them. Just love them. Keep our minds from wandering too far into the future and just love them.

It still feels criminal; to know what you're mother did to you and then to inflict the very same damage onto your own children. Ah me, to watch that is pain.

Just love them.