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Poetry

Why he is not my little boy

March 9th, 2021 | by Wandajune Bishop-Towle

Too tall.  Born too late, too old. His eyes—lakes of day not brown like mine. He sings too high too loud in a



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  • “A disabled person’s body-mind in public makes other people uncomfortable, because they’re reminded that disability is part of the human experience. It’s not that my kid is so distracting! It’s about ableism. It’s not our family’s or our kids’ job to absorb that.” “I don’t know exactly where this conviction that I would “smash” motherhood came from, but when I was pregnant, I held firmly to the belief that life with a baby would be my old life without a baby + baby. A simple equation that would equal all the thrills and edges of my old life, with the added joy of sunlit mornings in bed with my husband and a cute, cooing baby between us.” “It does not escape me that critiques about expectant Black women like me are also rooted in misogynoir.” “You’ve already told me that story,” he said. Switching gears, he asked, “Why isn’t my father around?” #breastfeeding #parenting #fuckit #protest #teenagers #sexualviolence “Over time, Anabelle learned to talk about her feelings. She said saw her birthmother in the sky. She drew a picture of grief moving through her body like water. When she had more language, she began to talk about her losses.” “I’m not sure why I read that poster and thought that it applied to other mothers, other people’s children. But it probably has something to do with the shock I felt two years later when a neurologist confidently diagnosed “Autism Spectrum Disorder” and I responded with at least twenty “What about…” type questions. I had described my dynamic, interesting, loving toddler to this doctor, and her response sounded dire and clinical. That poster was the same. All of it seemed so unfortunate.” “Someone hit the call button. No one came. Someone rushed to the nurses’ station; still no one came. The contractions, a creature, twisted my uterus, lancing its nails. I tried to breathe through them, but there was no space, no time.”

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