Class of 2020--the end of an era
If you can't crow about your kid, your YOUNG ADULT, when he graciously graduates from high school during a pandemic from the back of a Jeep in 94 degrees wearing Zoom attire (business on top, party down under), when can you?
I used to write regularly about Hayden, more when he was young, not so much now that he's older and his online presence and story belong more to him than me. But that doesn't negate my experience of walking the walk of being his mother, which has been one of the great joys (and sometimes heartbreaks) of my life.
Gah, I adore this kid. I think it is safe to say that most everyone who comes in contact with him falls in love with his gift of gab, his wealth of interests and his general optimism and zest for life. From the moment his eyes opened on this earth, people have been remarking to me that he has the air of someone who has been here before, an old soul. I challenge anyone who talks with him for five minutes to disagree.
Because of an extemely rare landing place on the roll of the genetic dice, I have watched helplessly as he endures so much. Medically speaking, his life has been full of obstacles--24 surgeries, sicknesses and literally hundreds of hospital visits. I have watched so many things be whittled away, things the rest of us take for granted, yet he takes these losses in stride. I have been stunned into silence when he has taken rare moments of bullying and turned them into points of compassion for the instigator. I have witnessed him being the one that stands up for others, rushing to sit with the girl nobody else would sit beside at lunch. I have bawled my eyes out watching his friends and siblings rally around him--quite simply, Hayden is loved.
Don't get me wrong--this kid is also a total punk. He regularly sneaks his clothes into my laundry bin so I will accidentally wash them, he's perfectly willing to drink the last of the milk and put the carton back empty, his room can be a disaster zone and he often forgets to tell me when he's coming home. His sushi bill is through the roof and he'll negotiate you out of your last nickel. Sometimes he makes choices where J and I turn to each other and say, "Can you believe he hopes to be able to sign prescription pads one day?"
But the bottom line is this: Hayden is a joy to be around. He's got a lot to say, and I like the way he thinks. As our nation reels not only from a pandemic but what we hope will be the final straw in a racist regime, I feel extremely fortunate to be parenting in a time when Hayden, his siblings, and their friends are allergic to intolerance and discrimination. Six months ago, in a prescient act for its unveiling this past weekend, his graduating class designed their banner, what they want to represent the class of 2020 on the walls of the school, for years to come:
I won't gush on about his attributes, his academic achievements, his rich singing voice, how instinctive and kind he is with animals, how freaking irreverently funny he is, or how much I enjoy watching him get passionate about something and whole-hog running with it. I will let his college application essay shine a light on who he is:
SMALL BUT MIGHTY
On the original September 11th, when planes crashed all around the East Coast, my parents say they barely noticed. I was one week old, fighting for my life in the NICU at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Born in the 1% for height, with a rare genetic condition and unable to feed or breathe without machines, my parents were told I might not make it to the end of the week. If I did, it would be “months in the hospital, years of surgeries and special therapies, never ever normal.”
When I was six years old, my feet dangled eighteen inches from the pedals of the piano while I played Pachelbel’s Canon for a crowd of 500 at a recital honoring my late grandmother. To this day, I continue to love music, and play piano, jazz guitar and sing in an a capella group.
When I was seven, I was the hockey goalie for Mites on Ice night at the Wachovia Center.
“Guys,” the Philadelphia Flyers announcer exclaimed when I made the shutout save, “I know we talk about goalies ‘filling the net’, but am I wrong, or does that little goaltender actually fit under the crossbar?” I continue to play varsity hockey, though now I do the scoring and leave my younger brother to tend the pipes.
When I was eight, a playground bully called me short. I thought it was sad he had to say rude things about other people to make himself feel better. Today, when I go out with my best friends, I look up and ask if they feel like they’re two dads taking their kid to the movies.
When I was ten, I got my SCUBA certification. With the permission of my doctor, we were taking a year abroad, living on an island off the coast of Honduras. While there, one of the dive shops set out to break the Guinness Book of World Records for most people in an underwater human pyramid. At four foot something, I was the natural choice for the pyramidion, kneeling on the shoulders of the two cute dive masters in bikinis.
When I was thirteen, I was cast as the Evil Queen’s minion spider in the school play. Opening night, I was waiting for surgery for a dislocated kneecap, another symptom of the syndrome I was born with. A spider in an all-black knee brace, I hunched and hobbled, bowing to the Queen’s laughs and the applause of the crowd. The queen and I became best friends because of our love of all things theater. We’ve co-starred in high school plays and musicals and take the train to New York to see shows together.
When I was sixteen, doctors acknowledged that the growth hormone injections I had been doing for years were not working. I had reached my adult size, somewhere between the first and the third percentile. Selected to give the oratorical speech for my class, I tilted the microphone down, and challenged the audience to make sure their life was anything but boring.
When I was seventeen, both my “little” brother and sister had passed me in height, and an exome sequence study at genetics suggested the answer to why I am small might lie in a microscopic change in the PGM1 gene. My fascination with the human body, those invisible-to-the-naked-eye differences which shaped me, which shaped my story, is still present. Today, I hope to continue this with a career in medicine.
On the eighteenth anniversary of September 11th, as I write this essay, I can say the doctors were right when they predicted my future: There have been months in the hospital. There were years of surgeries and therapy. My life has been anything but normal. For this, I am grateful.
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Hayden is high risk for COVID-19. Imagine pairing that anxiety from a parent perspective with a kid who lives for adventure and experience. Letting go as he travels in the wilderness, literally jumping off cliffs and sleeping under the stars...
Loosening the reins on this young adult as he intends to travel this summer to volunteer with rescue horses...
As he attends college close to home this fall and ultimately transfers to my Alma Mater to study medicine...
The day he graduated, there were lots of people mourning the loss of the traditional graduation and milestones. Our approximation was a car parade and a socially distant slideshow. Hayden shrugged, said, "It is what it is," and put on his bathing suit, jacket and tie. I had a migraine, couldn't see out of my left eye and the heat and exhaust and blinding sun were making it very hard to find anything that looked like appreciation in the moment. But I thought this as we inched through the parade: Bringing him into this world as a baby was painful, both in the moment and sometimes in the months (years) that followed. It is only appropriate that as he launches into adulthood, there will be some pangs, but I am trusting the process. I know without a doubt he and the class of 2020 will bring joy, change and meaning to our future.