Unexpected revelations

Hannah has become a real social butterfly while at rehab.  It's a trip to see her hanging out with her wheelchair posse, laughing and waving at everyone and telling me to "go over there, Mommy, so I can be with my friends." When Isabelle comes to visit, it's interesting to see how they interact and that Isabelle is the odd man out.  In fact, pretty much anyone who is not in a wheelchair or stander, with a trach or a g-tube, prosthetic limbs or braces is an outsider.  This is the land of misfits, and there is power in numbers.  I don't mean to say that Hannah, or any other of the amazing kids here are less than anyone else by calling them "misfits."  But for Hannah at least, it's clear that while she is a well-adjusted and happy kid outside of the hospital, she has also thrived socially by having the opportunity to hang with other kids like her, who have struggles fitting into the able-bodied world we live in. 

This is a revelation for me because I'm a firm believer in inclusion, in finding ways to adapt our community so that Hannah can participate along with her peers.  I don't want her to always be hanging out in "disability world."  But yet, she fits in here in a way that she doesn't at home.  When we have play dates at home, she often hangs out with me and the other mom while Isabelle and friend are racing around the yard, because she can't keep up.  If the activity is more sedentary she's part of the action, but otherwise she is a bystander or will chose to do her own thing.  Here, she can wheel herself around like the best of them, and no one is going anywhere too fast.  She can keep up, she is doing big things, and she can relate to these kids on a level that is beyond her experience with the other kids she knows at home.

I hope that once we get home and she's trying to get around like the other kids again, she is not too frustrated.  It will also be interesting to see how her relationship with Isabelle evolves after this separation.  While they've been apart and Isabelle has been at Grammie and Papa's, she has been growing and changing as well. I think it will take time for all of us to figure out our groove when we get home, all of us different people from the ones that left Vermont a month ago.