Politically Correct

Elsie seems to be doing really well at preschool.  Her teachers are so nice and the kids are cute.  Today the teachers came for a home visit, part of their ease-in philosophy of starting school.  Elsie had a ball.  She loved having both their undivided attention. 

At Elsie's preschool, the top priority is diversity.  They teach something called anti bias curriculum.  While I am psyched that my daughter is going to be in this incredibly rich, diverse, and nurturing environment, I'm a little bit terrified that the other parents are going to hate me if I say something wrong. 

It reminds me of this time we tried to explain to my grandmother why she should use the adjective Asian, or Asian-American instead of Oriental unless she's talking about rugs.  And another conversation about the term Colored, and how nowadays it's off-limits, but Black is okay.  Grandmama had no intention of hurt or hate when she used those terms, but she couldn't understand why the most respectful terms she grew up with were no longer okay.  She had already made a set of these transitions a long time ago, and was genuinely perplexed that  terms had gone right on changing.  Only she's 95, and I'm 30, and I don't have any excuses.

It also reminds me of how, when I went to New Zealand, it was really bad form to use the term Handicap when referring to a parking spot.  Even when my boyfriend was quadriplegic (true story), it still made me seem like a real hater of the differently-abled -- which is a real term that I have heard, but sounds so damn condescending to me that I won't ever use it seriously.

On the other hand, my Kiwi friends shocked me to the core when they threw the "N" word around to refer to their brown friends (Indians, Srilankans, Maori, Samoans, etc.)  I about had a heart attack.  Turns out, sensitivity regarding the devastating history of  human trafficking, enslavement, and perpetual racially-based population suppression that have formed my American culture has not been exported to New Zealand, but rap music has. 

Currently, I am trying to thoroughly adopt the school's term of special rights to describe what I formerly referred to as special needs or sometimes developmentally delayed and before that was disabled or handicap, and before that was, at least for some, retarded.  The change is carefully considered and presented "Because these children are not needy."  Which is empowering and dignified, in sentiment.

But it doesn't make me feel good.  I am still very raw, you see.  I am three months out from my loss, and I still wonder about what life might have been like for Laurel.  I wonder it a lot.  In What Life Might Have Been With Laurel -- the reality-based fictional production that I play on a near constant loop in my brain during any moment that isn't sufficiently distracting from this torture, Laurel lived, and we were that family.  my daughter was that kid.  The baby I love and the baby who is gone -- she would have been needy.  So needy that she probably never would have made it to any school at all.  So needy that I probably wouldn't have had enough to give her in the way of energy and love and attention and support.  So needy that she probably would have needed (or had a right to?) a special home with special care.

So I don't know how I feel about these special rights.  I feel like my kid still would have had special needs.

This thought is still incredibly hard for me.  Despite the fact that Laurel did not make it, I still mourn losing the perfect healthy baby when the OB walked into that ultrasound room and laid down the news.  I can't attend the fun "friends and families of special rights kids" meetings that everyone goes on about.  Turns out I can see my friends with healthy babies. I can hold them for a time.  I can bounce them.  I can wrap a little baby hand around my fingers. I can resist my tears then, but show me the kid with special needs or special rights, and I lose it.

So I'll be that parent who doesn't come.  That mom who can't look the little special rights boy in the eye.  The one everyone assumes isn't sensitive or loving enough.  I'm sure I'll come off as an insensitive jerk.  But the hard, private truth is, I'm just way too sensitive right now.