But the band-aid is something I'll continue to save. Though momentarily forgotten, left behind when I stopped using that particular wallet, it's not something I'm willing to part with. Looking at that bandage, blue beneath the crumpled wrapper, brings to mind a simple kindness that I still hold close.
Five years ago, while visiting family in Colorado, my four-year-old son fell and cut his knee. He refused to be consoled until I could clean and bandage his cut, but we couldn't leave the park because I was the responsible adult for his cousins, who were in the middle of tennis lessons a few yards away. Next to the tennis courts was a rec. center, and the closest door led into the pool area. Surely a lifeguard or someone inside would have a first-aid kit, I thought, so we opened the door and paused just inside to look for help, my son still shaking and crying.
I tried to catch the eye of a lifeguard, but he clearly wasn't interested in finding out whether I needed something, glancing away before giving us a thought. I looked around the pool area, hoping to see an office or someone else I could approach to ask for a bandage, but nothing looked promising. Just then, I heard a voice from just inside the door. A young man, probably with Down syndrome, had noticed my son's distress and come up out of the hot tub to ask what was the matter.
I told him what had happened and that we were trying to find someone who might be able to help us. The man, whose name I didn't ask, told me he could find a band-aid for us and took off across the tile floor. We followed, grateful, thinking he was leading us to an office of some kind. I had to stop abruptly, though, when I realized he was headed into the men's locker room.
He returned in a minute, carrying two wrapped blue bandages, each the right size for a cut on the knee. He handed them to me, then bent down to tell my son that it was going to be OK. He watched while I bandaged the cut, and shook his head when I tried to return the unused bandage to him. "He might need that one sometime," he said, and then walked back to the hot tub while I called out my thanks. I thought about his parents, who had so obviously raised him well, and silently thanked them, too.
As parents, we all hope out children will grow up to be as kind as that young man was; we try to instill respect and empathy in our children. Sometimes we don't know how, but we try to be the best parents we can be. When I was pregnant with my son, I thought one aspect of good parenthood was to be prepared for anything my newborn baby might need. So I let my doctor talk me into genetic testing to screen for birth defects because, at age 36, I was of "advanced maternal age."
The test, an amniocentesis, is an invasive procedure (think long fat needle through mom's belly, through the uterine muscle and into the amniotic sac) that harvests amniotic fluid for DNA testing. Amniocentesis is potentially dangerous (it can cause miscarriage), horribly painful for mom (visualize that long fat needle) and, in my case, the worst decision I've made in the name of parenthood. The test results were great - no detectable birth defects - but I knew before the tests came back that I had been foolish in risking a miscarriage to find that out. I realized that I could have easily found the resources I needed if my son were born with Down syndrome or another genetic variation of "normal." Nothing shown on an amniocentesis report would have changed how much I loved him, before or after birth.
Unfortunately, amniocentesis is used by some parents to determine whether they want to terminate a pregnancy. Statistics show an estimated 80 percent of Down syndrome-affected fetuses are aborted because their parents don't want a baby who is less than perfect. Frank and Sue Buckley have written an excellent discussion of the testing/abortion issue that notes that the termination rate in Britain may be much higher.
I have no illusions that special needs children are easy to raise, but I do believe that being easy to parent doesn't make a child more lovable. Likewise, I know that some people handle challenges differently, and that it isn't right for me to foist my wholesale beliefs off on others. Still, it makes me very sad to think of the numbers of parents each year who give up on their babies before really even meeting them, solely because they're imperfect. I can't imagine sorting through unborn babies like I sorted through that wallet, looking for things worth keeping and tossing out the rest.
To a bystander's eye, the lifeguard in that pool five years ago looked perfect...healthy and competent and presumably intelligent...but he was too flawed to catch the eye of the harried mom and her crying four-year-old. How honored I am, then, to have been helped by the boy who was raised right - the one with compassion and kindness - the man with the blue band-aids.
