The T Zone

Published: May 7, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

This Saturday, Taylor will run in her second 5K when she joins her Girls on the Run teammates at Charlotte’s Latta Park for the culmination of their spring program.

The expression on T’s face as she crossed the finish line of the Jingle Jog 5K this past December with her running buddy, Mary-Kate, is still fresh in my memory. The bungee cord that connected them was T’s lifeline that day. For me, it symbolized hope: proof that nothing – even a disability like T’s – is cause enough for giving up on a dream.

T has a lot of fans, and while I know you’ll all be there in spirit on Saturday, she needs some of you there in person. The Packers have the Cheeseheads. Duke has the Cameron Crazies. Michigan State has the Izzone. If you’re in Charlotte this weekend, please consider coming out to Latta Park and forming a cheering section for T – call it the T-Zone. Then, watch her finish the race. When she crosses that line, you’ll understand the magic that is her story. And it’s not just her story, not really. Rather, it’s the story of any girl who’s ever overcome an obstacle, discovered her own gifts and embraced them.

The race starts at 9 a.m. on Saturday at Latta Park in the Dilworth neighborhood. Click here for details.

Go, T, go!

The In Crowd

Published: April 30, 2009 ~ 1

By Laura Edwards

We spent an awesome couple of days this past weekend at the new Great Wolf Lodge in Concord, just north of Charlotte. Thank you to the angels who made it possible for Taylor to make happy memories with her family at the resort.

The weekend marked the Great Wolf Lodge’s official grand opening celebration, complete with a Radio Disney banquet and intimate concert with Disney star Mitchel Musso of Hannah Montana fame in the lobby on Friday night. When the music started, most everyone else got up on their feet, but T remained seated on the floor. Every time I squatted down to talk to her during the show, she was lost – no – found – in her own private, happy little world of music. She chanted when the crowd chanted and clapped when they clapped and cheered when they cheered, but she experienced that hour in her own special way.

One of the songs Musso and his band performed was called “The In Crowd.” As the lyrics blared from the speakers stacked not more than two feet from where we stood and I took in the gobs of preteens and tweens and teens oogling the band members, I thought about how hard it must be for a girl T’s age to endure everything she has endured, from getting a rotten diagnosis to taking yucky meds to struggling with some subjects in school to going blind to traveling thousands of miles to have major (and experimental) brain surgery, losing her beautiful head of long blonde hair in the process. I think back to when I was in the fifth grade, like T, and remember how it was the year when it seemed as though an invisible switch was flipped, and the girls started puberty, had their first real crushes on boys and suddenly cared deeply about not so much what clothes they wore to school, but rather what others thought of them, and how all of those physical and social and emotional changes triggered what I call the ‘mean girls’ syndrome. I think, in one single moment, how compassionate people are and how cruel they can act. And then, I remember how T has faced each day – every wound, every setback, every laugh and every moment of great hope – with more grace and courage than I could ever dream of finding within myself. We have created such a complex system for how people are judged socially, and for what? We spend so much time examining other people for their faults that we often look right past their gifts.

The song served as a stark reminder of one of the many kinds of pain T has felt in her short life, but it was also a reminder of what makes her so special. Yes, she has Batten disease – but she’s also a 10-year-old girl who makes a note of Disney movie and CD release dates and who didn’t want to wash her hand after Mitchel Musso held it when it was her turn at the autograph session. She’s a girl who wants so badly just to be normal but who also isn’t afraid to walk – or dance – to her own beat. And the moments we shared at the lodge – whether during the concert or on the slides at the indoor water park or on the mini golf course or in the arcade during our heated games of Skeeball and basketball and air hockey, were filled with her laughs and her smiles – and that, to me, is the grandest gift of all.

Light Years and Stars in the Sky

Published: April 22, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

I just came across a headline on the Web announcing that scientists have discovered a “nearly Earth-sized planet” some 20 light years away, dubbed Gliese 581 e. Though it was immediately discounted as a habitable world due to its proximity to the nearest star, Gliese 581 e gave scientists who study the universe renewed confidence in the idea that we really might not be all alone, after all.

Reading the article made me remember a night I shared with my dad when I was around 9 years old – younger than Taylor is today.

For about five years, we were Snowflake and Running Wolf, part of the Miwok tribe in the YMCA’s Indian Guides program. My favorite memories are of the weekends we spent at Camp Thunderbird, just over the state line in South Carolina, and Camp Cheerio, nestled in the rolling mountains of western North Carolina. This particular moment took place one crisp fall evening at Camp Cheerio, in a field just beyond the rec hall where all of the other girls and their dads were watching an animated movie on a big projector screen.

That fall, I was the oldest girl in my tribe and on the verge of aging out of the program, and I stuck my head into the rec hall just long enough to determine that the movie selection for the night was too childish for me. That was just fine by Dad, and he suggested we go out to the field and count stars instead. For the first time in the 17-plus years since that night, I can feel the soil and the grass under my back and the light breeze that danced across our faces and the brim of the too-large baseball cap that held my long hair back out of my eyes. I can see the peppering of solitary stars and the Milky Way spray-painted across the black night sky.

Just as anyone who’s ever gazed up at the stars and let their imagination run free, Dad and I talked about the remote worlds suspended above us and the possibility of life – intelligent beings, even – populating them. And though we had no telescope large enough to gaze upon their oceans and mountains and civilizations – and though we had no camera advanced enough to even capture the magic of the stars as they appeared over the camp that night – we had no reason not to believe that those worlds could exist. And so, though my back remained snugly against the earth for the hour or so that we spent in the field, my memory of the moment was preserved all these years not by the smell of the slightly damp grass or the slight chill in the air or the faint voices drifting from the rec hall into the still evening beyond, but by the worlds to which we traveled in our minds and the excitement we felt in our hearts when we arrived there.

Nearly 18 years later, we are still searching for extraterrestrial life, though the telescopes are much larger and the cameras much more advanced than those that represented the very best in 1991. And all these years later, we are still searching for a cure to the disease that was first observed in four child siblings in a small mining community in Norway in 1826. But like the progress being made by scientists with NASA and other research teams, such as the Geneva University (Switzerland) group that discovered Gliese 581 e, amazing advancements are being made right now in the study of all of the various disorders that make up neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis. As part of a family that has been deeply affected by Batten disease, I am always searching for answers. And whether they are to be found by the medical community’s equivalent of a super telescope or in the most unexpected way – perhaps by a chance sighting of a comet as it streaks across the sky – they WILL be found, and in the thirty-three months that I’ve been in THIS field, this field of Batten disease, I’ve seen more stars than I could have ever imagined in the earliest days of our knowledge of Taylor’s plight. And if we could come to be more familiar with those stars, as I believe we are so close to doing, then – and only then – would I realize my greatest dream of all – one not of life like ours on other worlds, but of a life for children like Taylor in THIS world.

A Jibbit Never Forgets

Published: April 13, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

John and I are in the midst of a construction project at home and have spent the past couple of nights working with a movie on in the background. Last night, we watched Rain Man, the 1988 movie in which Dustin Hoffman plays a savant. Afterward, we had a lengthy discussion about autism and the mechanics of the human brain, albeit at 2 a.m. Then, strangely, when we turned on the TV to begin working again tonight, we immediately came across a show on the Science Channel titled “Brain Man” that focused on Daniel, a savant in his twenties who sees numbers as distinct figures and shapes in his mind and who, unlike Hoffman’s character in the movie, can communicate freely about his unique way of thinking and processing information. During the program, Daniel met the real Rain Man – the man who originally inspired the story.

The show closed with a rhetorical question about the true nature of intelligence – a question I’ve considered before. I continued to think about it after the broadcast had switched to a program about body clocks (that one’s still on in the background as I write this – and even as I ponder the nature of the human brain, I wonder what it is about my body clock that leads me to get into deep discussions at 2 a.m. but hit the snooze button twenty-seven times every weekday morning).

The reason it’s a rhetorical question is because there isn’t one singular, bulletproof definition of human intelligence. Academic success is probably the trait most often equated with intelligence, because it is achieved in a controlled setting and with the benefit of comparisons between students. But even “academic success” has to be qualified further. Can academic success be rigidly defined by 4.0 GPAs and high SAT scores?

Taylor learned to read when she was three. I won’t ever forget the day she read a book to me in the time that it took my dad to run into Papa John’s and pick up a pizza while we waited in the car. Her preschool teachers tried to teach T and her classmates to read by putting all of their names up on the wall. They had to try a different tactic after they realized T could read all of the names, and did – aloud. At that early age, she also excelled at recognizing figures and shapes. My first car was a Honda Accord. One day, as we drove by a Honda dealership, my toddler sister pointed out the window at the dealership sign and said, “Rar Rar’s car!”

But it wasn’t long after we discovered T’s potential that we also uncovered her struggles. Math was so frustrating for her that even my mom, who pushed me to excel beginning as early as I can remember, was at a loss. I remember the day we sat in Starbucks and tried to tackle T’s math homework. She was in the first grade, and her class was learning about money. Using the cutout shapes from her math workbook, we desperately tried to explain why two dimes and a nickel equal a quarter and five pennies equal a nickel. When we finally noticed the tears in her eyes, we stopped. To this day, my sister struggles with simple math.

While T will likely never be an engineer or an accountant, she is supremely gifted. She has learned the Braille alphabet in less time than it takes many children to learn the conventional alphabet for the sighted. She uses an advanced form of sensory perception to survive without the gift of vision in our visual world, and she retains an incredible amount of information from movies, books and conversations.

My mom recently told me a story that only illustrated what I already knew about my sister’s memory. Mom got the Easter decorations and T’s Easter basket out of the attic a few weeks ago. After the two of them decorated the Easter tree, they decided to put some fake grass around the base of the tree. Mom went to take some grass from T’s Easter basket and found a dinosaur Jibbit (shoe charm) hiding in the grass from last Easter. Mom handed the dinosaur Jibbit to T, and she felt it for a minute. Then, she said, “But Mom, where is the ladybug?” Perplexed, Mom searched through the grass and, sure enough, found the ladybug Jibbit that, like the dinosaur, had spent the past year as a stowaway in the attic.

T has a neurodegenerative disease, and since her diagnosis, I have learned far more about the human brain than I ever cared to know. If I had one wish, I would eradicate Batten disease from the face of the earth so that no child has to suffer in the ways that T has, ever again. But even as I have despaired over her fate and wrung my hands and watched painful moments such as the one T endured in that Starbucks years ago, I have been so moved by her gifts, her intelligence and, above all, her determination and her ability to adapt in the face of unspeakable adversity, that I believe now, more than ever, that the world would experience a tremendous loss if we lost T.

The Road that Leads Us There

Published: April 8, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

Last night, UNC won the national title with what was, for me, the sweetest victory I’ve ever experienced as a sports fan. Now, if you happen to be a Michigan State fan, or if you’re just not particularly fond of my alma mater (it’s okay), I hope you’ll continue reading. This post is not about college basketball. Not really.

Last October, the Tar Heels celebrated the return of its six leading scorers, including the reigning national player of the year, from the ’07-’08 Final Four team. The squad was anointed as one of the best ever before its first practice. There was talk of an undefeated season and an easy run to the title.Then, amazingly, the invincible team from Chapel Hill slipped up. Tyler Hansbrough was diagnosed with a stress reaction in his shin and sat out a couple of games. Marcus Ginyard had foot surgery, tried coming back unsuccessfully and took a redshirt. Tyler Zeller broke his wrist. There was the 0-2 start in conference play. A mere two hours into the ACC season, at home against Boston College, the dream of an undefeated season vanished. And the Heels, by all appearances at least, were on their heels. Panic ensued in the hearts of Carolina fans everywhere.

Bit by bit, though, the team pulled it together. There was the detour late in the season at Maryland and the near-loss at Florida State (sans the late-game heroics of Ty Lawson, Florida State would have won) and the loss in the ACC tournament, albeit without the services of Lawson. But there was the sweep of arch rival Duke and the emergence of Wayne Ellington and the hustle of Bobby Frasor and the usual Everyman performance of Danny Green and the inside presence of Ed Davis and Deon Thompson and the workmanlike grit of Hansbrough. After that loss in the conference tournament, the Heels still earned a number one seed in the NCAAs, but most experts predicted that the champion would come out of the powerful Big East.

If you’re not a Carolina fan, and I haven’t lost you yet, I feel pretty good about keeping you till the end. And I still say this post isn’t about basketball. The point is, the team didn’t panic. They played for each other, they learned to play better defense, they ran a balanced attack, and they listened to their coach. They played for the seniors at their last dance and the underclassmen who came back for one more song. And though they didn’t take the most direct route, and though they encountered some twists and turns in the road along the way, in the end, they were still national champs.

Sports aren’t everything – not even close. But they’re a pretty good analogy for life more often than not, and the best part is, they occur in a strangely beautiful alternate world where hard fouls hurt and losses hurt even more, but none of it really matters in the end, relatively speaking anyway. I can’t ever walk away from the painful truth that my sister has a devastating illness – one that has permeated her life and mine and those of everyone who loves her and even some who don’t know her well enough to love her but have seen the fight in her. I’m not living my life the way I once imagined because of my twists and turns in the road. And in many respects, that’s okay. How often does life turn out just the way we imagined? And do we really want it that way, even if it was possible?

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow or the next day or the next. I don’t know when the cure for Batten disease will be discovered or if it will happen in time for my sister. I wish I could quit taking detours, but I can’t. This disease hasn’t done much good for me or anyone compared to the way it’s robbed her, and I’d like to think God has an easier way of teaching us lessons and will decide to go soft on me one of these days. But until He starts to show signs of letting up, I might as well listen up.

Those twists and turns in the road on the way to your destination are what make you who you are. How you live them – how you face them – is sometimes your best shot at reaching your desired destination, whether that’s a spot on the podium during One Shining Moment or a spot next to your little sister on her wedding day. No one ever told me this was going to be easy. But there’s one thing I know for sure, all on my own – and this only works for as long as I believe: once I get there, it’ll be that much sweeter for the pain I had to endure along the way.

The End of the Rain

Published: March 28, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

Tonight, John left the house to pick up takeout for dinner only to call moments later to tell me I should go downstairs and look out the window. Three days of rain had just ended with a break in the clouds and the blue-orange glow of an after-rain sunset. And across the street, rising up out of the houses and trees to reach for the heavens, was a rainbow. I stood just inside the open front door and gazed at it for a long while until Daisy appeared, darted through my legs and made a mad dash for the girls who were puddle-jumping in the cul-de-sac, breaking the serenity of the moment.

I’ll only pick up a penny if it’s heads up, and I make a wish every time birthday cake candles are lit – even when they’re not for me. I’ve worn the same t-shirt for each of the Tar Heels’ games in this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament and have it in the wash right now for their Elite Eight game tomorrow afternoon. I make fun of horoscopes but still read mine – and none of the others – in magazines. Nearly three years ago, as I packed for the North Carolina mountains, I included items chosen with care – one old, one new, one borrowed, one blue – for my wedding day. I make wishes on stars and rainbows.

This morning, I got a wild hair and cleaned our home office. And the guest room closet. And our closet. And then, as I sat Indian-style in the floor of our closet sorting through a mountain of clothes destined for the out-of-season plastic bin or Goodwill, I came across the white Bobcats t-shirt John got when we went to the first game in the new arena uptown. Just below the right shoulder is a tiny smear of black – the permanent stain from the mascara I wore the day Taylor was diagnosed with Batten disease. I remember, as if it was just yesterday, how I cried as John held me. We were both squeezed onto one of the dining room chairs, surrounded by boxes bearing the wedding gifts for which we had yet to write thank-yous, and the meager dinner we’d cooked sat uneaten on the borrowed glass table. Daisy watched us silently from across the room, her bright eyes searching mine. John’s parents had heard the news and were on their way over to cry with us.

Without a moment’s hesitation, I chucked the Bobcats shirt into the Goodwill pile, face-down to hide the stain. The feeling of empowerment I got from that small act, though, was short-lived. When, just minutes later, I carted an out-of-season-but-worth-keeping pile up to the guest room for storage, my eyes fell upon the teddy bear T and I built together at the Build-A-Bear Workshop just hours after the diagnosis, the bear whose twin watches over my sister from its perch in her bedroom as she dances and sings and spends time with her American Girl dolls. And as I stood there alone in the middle of my guest room and listened to the fat drops of spring rain pelt against the window, I cried all over again.

And yet, hours later, there was the rainbow, hung by divine hands up there in the sky like a guardian angel. Below it, the grass was green and lush and full of life, and the trees, peppered with green buds and cottony white and pink spring lace, expanded their lungs and inhaled the fresh, clean air. I closed my eyes and made my wish. And then, as the sunlight dissipated and evening blanketed the quiet street, I turned on my heel and closed the door behind me, walking right past the stack earmarked for Goodwill without even a fleeting moment’s thought for the tear-stained shirt.

The Little Things

Published: March 20, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

Taylor, Mom and I are on the South Carolina coast enjoying a few days’ respite.

I used to wonder if there were more Bargain Beachwears and cheesy Putt-Putts than grains of sand at this oceanic collection of high-rise condos and tourist traps. My grandfather loved this place because he was a golfer, and the Grand Strand is a golfer’s paradise. In a single day, you can play nine holes, eat lunch and dessert at Greg Norman’s restaurant, play the back nine and eat overpriced seafood at a different restaurant for dinner, no problem. My grandfather passed away one chilly weekend in early December when I was fifteen and playing in a soccer tournament in Athens, Georgia, but we still come down here. If we come by way of SC 9 (I call it “Back Road 9,” and not affectionately, either), we pass by Tony’s Restaurant, which serves great Italian fare and is not a chain like its neighbor, Carrabba’s. Granddaddy hated the smell of marinara sauce and wouldn’t have pizza or pasta in his house, even when my dad and his brothers and sister were growing up. But I love Italian, so every summer when we came down, Granddaddy would make a reservation for dinner at Tony’s one night. It was a little thing, but it made me feel special nonetheless.

We’ve been here almost 24 hours now, and the worries we left behind in Charlotte already feel a world away. We made it out to the beach late-morning and just sat watching the ocean with our toes in the cool sand for awhile. Then, we played catch until T announced that she was ready for lunch. She’s pretty good at catch – you just have to give her a heads up before you throw the ball and talk to her before she throws it back so she can locate you. When the girls went upstairs, I went for a run on my own. The people are more scattered this time of year, so the beach doesn’t resemble a mosh pit. I was able to find a good lane right above the water line, where the sand’s only slightly wet and not too soft, and after a few minutes, I turned off my iPod so I could listen to the waves and the occasional seagull. It was the most therapeutic run I’ve had in weeks.

Though I packed enough clothes to stay two weeks without ever doing a load of laundry, I forgot some key items – I always do – so after watching my Heels get a decisive win in the first round of the NCAA tournament sans ACC POY Ty Lawson (my mom, who doesn’t follow sports at all, now calls him “The Toe”), I decided to walk up to the CVS on the main road. Mom wanted to get a walk in, so we convinced T to tag along by promising that she could pick something out once we got there. We walked three abreast to the drugstore and perused the aisles, discussing the merits of Maybelline vs. L’Oreal mascara and ways to get my feet sandal-ready (soccer and running take a toll on my feet, which aren’t pretty to begin with). Meanwhile, T decided she needed a mirror for her purse and lip gloss. On the way home, we didn’t make it one block before T decided she just couldn’t wait to apply her new lip gloss, to which I pointed out to Mom that it was a good thing at least one of her girls turned out girly! The only thing I applied to my lips at age ten was Chapstick.

So here we are now, enjoying an excitement-free night in the condo. T’s retreated to her room to watch a DVD, Mom’s prepping for T’s upcoming school presentation on Helen Keller, and I’m glued to the TV for the night games (currently, I’m watching Clemson lose to Michigan). I realized a long time ago that I don’t need the kind of manufactured fun found in excess at North Myrtle Beach to, well, have fun. The last couple of years of our lives have only reinforced that.

I’ll always try to be honest here – so I’ll say that I live in constant fear of what tomorrow may bring (or rather, what Batten disease may bring tomorrow). So, just as countless others who, like me, dearly love someone who is facing a life-threatening disease, I have many things that I want to do with my sister, and I always feel as though I can’t do them quickly enough. My sister once said she wanted to go to Hawaii; I want to take her to Hawaii. She is a Disney fanatic; we took her to Disney World before she was diagnosed with Batten disease, when we still believed she was only losing her vision; she wants to see the Jonas Brothers on their world tour; I am disappointed that they are not coming to Charlotte. But what I have to remember – what all of us have to remember – is the joy we can extract from the simplest of activities, like our impromptu game of catch on the beach or our girls’ night at CVS. As much as I want T to have happy memories, I’m not convinced that we have to have countless so-called exciting adventures for that to be possible. I want her to remember the fun time we all shared at Disney World, but I also want her to remember – and I want to remember as well – the times we’ve spent snuggling on the couch or sharing an $11 cheese pizza, drinking Diet Cokes through straws and talking about boys and clothes, as we did when I took her on a “date” one night week before last. Even if we could afford all of the adventures, sometimes I just want to enjoy my sister’s presence without it being overshadowed by the experience or the landscape around us. My grandparents took me on an amazing trip to New York City when I was eight years old; we stayed in the Hilton, rode in a stretch limo all over Manhattan, went to fancy restaurants and museums and the World Trade Center and FAO Schwartz, but that trip is not what I remember most about my relationship with my Granddaddy Parks. No, what I remember the most is watching Winnie-the-Pooh together in the TV room just down the hall from where I sit now – and those dinners at Tony’s.

Two Choices

Published: March 15, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

John and I went bowling with Taylor and my parents tonight. T is the undisputed Wii bowling champion around here, but I’d never seen her hold a six-pound ball and roll it at real-life pins. I’m not too shy to say here that she tied me tonight, fair and square. I led her for most of the night, but she drew even with a strike – a strike! in the 10th frame. Between turns, she chattered about two different excursions to the mall last night and today on a quest for a pink skirt at Justice. At one point, she described how a woman at the mall stumbled and fell, at which another shopper burst out laughing. On the side, my mom explained that the woman who fell was handicapped, and that though T had no way of knowing that, my mom had looked on incredulously at the woman who laughed at her. Compassion, it seems, is not a universal trait.

It does exist, however. My mom sent the story below, entitled “Two Choices,” to me recently; a good friend shared it with her. It is a story that would have been moving on its own but was even more touching for me because there have been many similar instances on Taylor’s behalf. Just as I’ll never forget those who have supported Taylor’s Tale, I’ll never forget those who put my little sister’s happiness first. My sister may have physical handicaps as a result of her disease, but her spirit is anything but weak. All those who have brought a smile to her face hold a place in my heart forever.

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves children with learning disabilities, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: “When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does, is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?” The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued, “I believe that when a child like Shay, who was mentally and physically disabled comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.” Then, he told the following story:

Shay and I had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ I knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but as a father I also understood that if my son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps. I approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team, and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’

Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. I watched with a small tear in my eye and warmth in my heart. The boys saw my joy at my son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as I waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base, and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat. At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible, because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact.

The first pitch came, and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher. The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out, and that would have been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach for all of his teammates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’ Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled. Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’ Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball; the smallest guy on their team now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions, so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases towards home. All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the way Shay!’ Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base and shouted, ‘Run to third! Shay, run to third!’ As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams and the spectators were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.

“That day,” said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, “the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world. Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making me so happy, and coming home and seeing his mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!”

We all can make a difference.

I am inspired by the acts of kindness – all great – that have been bestowed upon my little sister by her close friends and by perfect strangers. I have watched her friends – and children her age are often preoccupied with their own acceptance by their peers – go out of their way to make sure that Taylor feels included. I have seen a high school student devote hours of her own free time to ensure that T is able to be a part of Girls on the Run like her friends by staying after school to hold one end of a rope while T runs laps around the track. I have tried to count, over the last few years, the special packages that have arrived in the mail addressed to T, the sender identified simply as ‘Taylor’s Secret Fan Club.’ I have seen the time and love T’s vision teacher and her husband have put into creating games with special modifications so that my sister doesn’t have to feel lost just because she can’t identify the colors on a Twister mat or see the targets on a conventional corn hole game. I have seen people who are meeting T for the first time recognize that she is blind and immediately begin to communicate in such a way that she can grasp what they are saying without the aid of visual cues.

I have also observed people watching my little sister with disdain as she fumbles through an unfamiliar obstacle course of a room or if she has trouble articulating her words. Those people may believe that because Taylor is blind, she is also oblivious to these acts of ‘unkindness…’ or perhaps they do not think this way at all and instead just do not have any regard for her feelings.

The email that included the story above ended with this: So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people, such as the one Taylor encountered at the mall today, present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity, or do we ignore those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?

A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats its least fortunate.

Wishing on Pennies

Published: March 8, 2009 ~ 0

By Laura Edwards

Everywhere, there are reminders of the passage of time: the sight of the setting sun at the end of a mild day on which the spring buds stretched their arms and reached for the sky, just six days after our area saw heavy snowfall; the excitement with which my little brother spoke of the major concentration he’s just chosen on the eve of his senior year in college, though I am still often shocked to stand beside him and realize once again that he has grown taller than I; the high school classmate who walked past me at SouthPark Mall tonight – with several children in tow; Taylor’s hair – which, as it grows, marks the time since it was shaved in an operating room far away from home, in the Pacific Northwest.

I had a few minutes alone while I waited for John in the mall earlier this evening, so I set my bags down and found a spot on the side of the fountain, pulling my knees up under my chin to watch the water rise and fall. The moment immediately brought back memories of a tradition long ago, one I shared with my dad when I was still an only child. Mom frequently had volunteer meetings on weeknights, so after eating grilled cheese sandwiches or Burger King for dinner, Dad and I would head to the Baskin Robbins in SouthPark to get ice cream cones (mint chocolate chip in a sugar cone for me) and throw pennies into the fountain until Dad’s pockets were empty. This tradition has stuck with me long past the extinction of that particular Baskin Robbins; in fact, the on-again, off-again novel I started writing in college has a whole scene – a whole chapter, really – in which the book’s main character and her mother, who has late-stage brain cancer, share a picnic by a similar fountain in a mall in Vermont.

Tonight, watching the fountain seemed to make time stand still. But when I lifted my eyes and invited the rest of my surroundings back into my consciousness, I was reminded of how much the mall of my childhood has changed. Gone are Sears and Hecht’s and the old movie theater, supplanted by Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus and Tiffany & Co. Once the place where I could take my high school soccer teammates out for Sbarro’s pizza after practice – and still in our shin guards – it now touts itself as “the Carolinas’ premier shopping destination,” and I suspect that our grass and sweat-stained shin guards would get dirty looks.

While SouthPark’s been busy remaking itself, my little sister, who was born during the days of those beloved after-practice pizza outings, is growing up. Once happy with Gymboree, then The Children’s Place, she now prefers to get her clothes from Justice and, during a short phase that seems to have ended, Abercrombie. My mom recently told me a story of how she had T and her girlfriends in the car one afternoon and offered to put on Radio Disney, only to get cries of protest and requests to play Kiss 95.1 (a decidedly more “grown-up” selection, though according to the station’s website, Disney creation Taylor Swift did make the High 5 today). And though she simply giggles and grins, then turns her head when you ask for details, it seems that T and her friends have officially discovered boys this year. One night recently while Dad was out of town, John and I took Mom and T out to dinner at McAlister’s. About halfway through the meal, T started talking about one of the boys in her class. Mom told her to show us what she’d been carrying around in her pocket, to which T responded by producing a carefully folded scrap of paper with a phone number and the words “Scott’s Home Phone.” She’d carried it around faithfully all day. That was almost a month ago, and in the time since, rarely have I seen her more animated than she was right then.

Though the changes in T have made for many happy memories like that night at McAlister’s, they, too, signal the passage of time – a scary prospect for a family like ours. I would do anything to be able to press ‘pause’ and take the gift of additional time to ensure that T won’t ever really have to stop growing up. But I can’t do that. The sun has already set on this day. Tomorrow is another day and another opportunity to not only press ‘pause’ – which could only be a temporary solution after all – but to rewrite the entire script. I will be at MexiCafé tomorrow afternoon for Tip-off for Taylor as part of the latest attempt to do just that. And tomorrow evening, after everyone has gone home, one team has lost and the other has won, I will no doubt once again find myself willing a blank screen to be filled with words that give meaning – and belief – to our journey. And just for good measure, you’d better believe I tossed a penny into that fountain.