A Disability Blog Carnvial post submitted by Howard Renensland, CEO & Founder, [with]tv
Richard Saphir, MD is the pediatrician for both my daughters. Victoria was first born, now 24 and a young woman with disabilities. Olivia, or Baby “O” as we call her in the Nuclear family was next, is now 19 and studying The Classics and French at The University of Chicago. Needless to say my wife and I always did and do lean on this man heavily. He is the second coming to us, at least medically, and to this day we run all important health related issues for the girls through him.
He always got and still gets upset with my wife Kathy and I for “never celebrating”. He is really sadly right on the money. Perhaps many families are like us. What Dick means is that with all the multitude large and small milestones and successes that we have experienced, especially in the life of Victoria, we do not “stop, take a breath, smile and smell the roses.”
We either just turn around to eye the next gauntlet we must run or simply decompress mentally and physically. Now do not think we are walking Zombies with plastered looks of despair on our faces. We aren’t and we are thrilled and in love with both of our children.
I think what this concept of “not celebrating” really hits home about is that you simply cannot celebrate too much. It never is enough and never seems like enough. No matter what we do, time marches on and it’s passing remains incomprehensible to the human mind.
I remember going to parties, graduations, awards dinners, athletic events, etc. for both young ladies on numerous occasions. The problem is that I have no concept or understanding of what happened to “all that damn time”. It really does seem like only yesterday when they were little balls of giggling fat that I used to prod and poke and nibble on. (Not any more as that would be totally unwanted affection and attention.)
So celebrate with each moment of each day of each existence is my answer. Perhaps we can achieve a state of perpetual giddiness and never awaken to the harsh reality that time marches on and stay locked in a life that Thornton Wilder called, “Just too wonderful to be realized.”
I think to do this we must simply live our lives, which is what we do. Like last night celebrating Olivia’s return from college, we just went out to a movie in a thunderstorm on a Monday night. Victoria is terrified of thunder and large cinemas offer respite and on a Monday night of a movie that has been out for a week, in this case Kung Fu Panda, offers a remarkably empty theatre.
Reflection seems to be a natural and integral part of the aging process I am finding. Perhaps when one is younger it is just too hard to stop “doing” and spend more time in self-congratulation. I do celebrate more now than I did 20 years ago. Perhaps this is so because 20 years brings so much more to celebrate.
