Moving to the Middle

Starting to Come Through

Kendra and my first time meeting.

Before she turned two years old, the Babies Can’t Wait Program (BCW) found Kendra eligible for early intervention services. She was so young and still in the early stages of learning and development. At that time, I was clueless as to what she would be like as she grew older or what she needed. She was approved for speech, occupational, and physical therapies and it was recommended that she receive her services in an early childhood center.

Prior to her being born, I worked for several years with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in Chamblee, Georgia. Though I’m still not fond of completing our personal taxes, I loved my line of work. I worked in several different positions, including data entry, tax examiner of individual and business returns, tax adjuster, responsible for issuing bills or refunds, and customer services representative, responding to individuals who were either irate or fretting about owing the IRS. Those are the calls I enjoyed the most, as it was my opportunity to make the agency more humane and not just a place that sent out threatening letters. Of course, I was written up more than once for having too much empathy for those who owed and worried that someone would come after them. I understood what it was like to be underwater with bills and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them that no matter what, they needed to pay up. For several years, I trained newly hired tax examiners and discovered a love for engaging with others and witnessing their accomplishments.

One of my fondest memories was being chosen to visit our office in Salt Lake City, Utah, to find out about their new letter-writing system. Their office was so much smaller that the Chamblee office that the system proved too costly for us to adapt but the trip was worth it. Nearing Salt Lake City, we flew over the Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere. It contains so much salt that people tend to float, rather than swim in it. As we were landing in Salt Lake City, I gazed at the majestic Wasatch Mountain that could be seen out of the windows of the airport. The snow-capped mountain reached up to the heavens, gigantic and hauntingly beautiful. It was the largest mountain I’d ever laid eyes on, stretching more than 250 miles. Wherever we were in Salt Lake City, the mountain seemed to follow us. We arrived in early December and signs of Christmas were all over the town, sparkling lights, music, decorations of red and green.

One of my coworkers who accompanied me on the trip was married to a man who grew up in Salt Lake City. He came along with us and drove us around town in our spare time. I shall never forget our visit to the Salt Lake Tabernacle and listening to Christmas carols being played on the massive pipe organ. The tabernacle is a history and architectural lesson in itself. As that wasn’t enough, we rode up the Wasatch Mountain, as high as the trail would take us, until it was completely covered in deep snow. At that altitude, the landscape was occupied by yaks, large and covered in shaggy, wooly brown fur. I was a little relieved when we started descending the mountain, circling around and around to the valley. When we reached the valley, it was about 7pm and darkness was setting in. School buses were still transporting children who called the mountain home.

As if there was not enough snow already, a snowstorm was forecast on the day we were to return to Atlanta. A coworker and I boarded our flight early in the morning before the snowfall began. The other colleague and her husband decided to stay a week longer, so he could go skiing and teach her how to do it. Born and bred in Georgia, she was not too thrilled about it. She did go on the slopes but decided that it wasn’t something she wanted to do again.

During my second pregnancy, my colleagues were excited and supportive. They gave us a lovely baby shower with many baby gifts, just as they did when I was expecting Lance. There were lots of oohs and aahs, as we opened gifts before the large crowd that gathered to celebrate with us. I worked until about three weeks before my expectant date. For the second time, my doctor decided on a caesarean birth, due to the baby’s size on the many sonograms I took and my narrow birth canal. We requested that the sex of the baby not be revealed but when everyone kept commenting on how much hair the baby had, I expected it to be a girl. Emory and I headed to Northside Hospital in Atlanta, leaving Lance with one of my sisters and her children.

After the epidural, I was numb from the waist down but remained alert and heard all of the comments and guesses about the baby’s weight. The doctors were all guessing it to be ten, twelve, even fifteen pounds. Kendra weighed in one ounce short of ten pounds. Though I heard her cry for a moment, she was much quieter than Lance, who came out yelling to the top of his lungs. Before she was taken from the delivery room, a nurse held her up against my face and I kissed her, instantly smitten.

A stroll around the park with Dad.

“So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.” Excerpt from Welcome to Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley

How could I know that within less than two years, my life, professional goals, dreams, and actions would change? Once I heard doctors say that Kendra had autism and was intellectually delayed, I spent weeks alone crying and moaning lost hopes and dreams. Lance was his happy little self, singing and continuing to play with his little sister, as if nothing had changed. He would ask, “Mama, why won’t Kendra talk to me anymore?” I couldn’t allow him to see my sadness and don’t remember how I answered him. Puzzled by her new diagnoses, I too, had many questions.

Aware that mere tears weren’t enough to change the situation, the seeker in me decided to get up and do what I could. While friends and family members were going about their normal lives, my family’s new normal was just getting started. There’s a saying that’s taken from Romans 8:28, “If God brings you to it, he will bring you through it.”

There were many unexpected steps in the process of coming through.