Living with Cerebral Palsy 🍋🍋

Friday 1 July 2011

Ouch!

Wow I had never realised until this week how easy it is to bury some feelings that hurt. I have previously blogged about how pleased I am with Elin's school, it's a wonderful place. So pleased that I never considered the alternative. Not the alternative to Elin as she is, because the school where she is is simply perfect. I mean the alternative for the girl she should have been. I recently discovered two friends' children had their 'open morning' for Nursery at the local school. This is when children go for a 'taster' session so that when they go to Nursery in September it isn't so scary. The three of us were pregnant at the same time and of course this is the school which ordinarily Elin should have been attending. It's a short walk from our house. It's the school my sister and I went to when we were growing up. Worse still it's the school where my Mum works (and has always worked since we were toddlers). I always just assumed my kids would go there. What could be more perfect? Elin should have been there with my friends little ones. She should have been starting in September, in the uniform I wore as a kid. She should have been in my Mum's class, finding it funny that Nanny is in her school, being taught by teachers that taught me, saying funny things that are re-told to me at home time. The familiarity and sense of history not to mention the convenience was something I was really looking forward to when I was pregnant. Of course I try incredibly hard not to get caught up on the 'should have's' of our situation but the fact that she should have been starting in September is too poignant for words. Ironically of course I am a Nursery-age teacher myself, which makes everything harder. I somehow found it easier when she was younger than the kids in my class, as if that explained the huge chasm is their differing abilities. But she's not younger anymore, as of September she is the same age. As I teach and chat and play and joke and sing and dance with the children in my class, it will be hard not to draw comparisons with all the things I so desperately want to do with Elin and the things she should have been doing with her own teachers and friends in her own school. When I think about this I will simply have to remember that she knows nothing of this parallel life and school to her is where she goes now and is happy and safe and loved and part of an amazingly special community. Elin will never know anything of the life she might have led had things not gone so catastrophically wrong on the day of her birth three years ago and as each day goes by as she gets older, I strive to forget it too, because to remember simply hurts too much.
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