The triplets were nine months old when we started Occupational Therapy. Today, 20 years later, I remember every detail. The therapist introduced herself to me as Susan. She told me she had known of us since the day the triplets were born because she was down the hall in the hospital waiting on their birth to deliver her own firstborn son with our shared doctor.
I felt immediately drawn to her. And I could see her affection for my three from that very first minute. I assumed that day that it was the fact that her son shared their birthday. I know now she made every family feel that way.
Twenty years ago, I had no idea what therapy should look like. I had no idea what the goal might be. What the exercises were for. Or what I could hope to see during and after.
I had no idea.
I watched Susan for a couple of sessions. She kept holding beads above the boys' heads one at a time. I didn't understand. Beads? For my boys? They couldn't care less. (Claire on the other hand loved those beads. We would get home and find several chains of them hidden in her diaper -- every single week.)
During the third session I got my nerve up and asked why in the world she kept trying to get them to grab those necklaces?
She never stopped urging the boys to reach for them as she gently looked at me and explained, "We need them to reach across mid-line, Carol. They won't meet developmental milestones until they learn this skill."
Reach across mid-line? Is that something any other mother ever even realizes is a milestone? I had never heard it talked about and yet, here we were completely focused on it. I took a couple of deep breaths. I remember trying to find the words, trying to find the nerve to ask what I desperately needed to ask.
"But when will you work on big stuff? When will they learn to sit, to crawl, to pull up?" I stammered unable to control the tears coursing down my cheeks.
I will never forget Susan's response -- never. She never took her eyes from mine, she didn't try to hide the tears coursing down her own cheeks, as she gently explained that reaching across mid-line was imperative to the other milestones. She said the boys had to learn that first.
We both wiped our tears and looked at these two adorable boys with a new determination.
We never worked on those big things I was so desperate about in our first few sessions. We moved on to stacking blocks -- I'll never forget the way we celebrated when Mason stacked three together.
Susan worked with Benjamin and Mason weekly until we left Chicago for Wade to do his residency in Minnesota when the triplets were 26 months old.
Susan came to their 2nd birthday party. She came with a huge package decorated with a bow. A HUGE package.
The triplets had returned from a visit to Minnesota telling her all about the ball pit they played in. At almost-two, they very much equated the ball pit with Minnesota.
Susan's HUGE gift to my three -- a giant ball pit to be assembled as soon as we got to our new home.
"I couldn't bear the thought of them getting to Minnesota and not finding a ball pit!" she explained, as we hugged and thanked her over and over.
Seven years later, I called her when Cate reached across mid-line to grab a toy I was holding. "I didn't even have to work at it, Susan!"
We cried together.
And a few months later when that baby girl stacked five blocks into a tower. I called her again. I couldn't contain my delight.
She came to visit me not long after that. Benjamin and Mason's first OT, my dear dear friend, had cancer and her girlfriends brought her to the desert for a girls' getaway. I sat with her and just enjoyed being in her presence again. I whined about not losing the baby weight and she gently reprimanded me to remember that was not important.
We talked about her amazing boys -- she had a second son after we left Chicago. And all the things she hoped to do with them and for them in their lives.
She encouraged my children and at nine, the triplets felt the love they actually remembered from those therapy sessions as little bitties.
I have checked in with her through the years. Always delighted to get the Christmas card. I had assumed after all these years that we could say she beat the cancer. I was so glad.
But this weekend I learned my precious Susan earned her heavenly reward. She died in May this year and I had no idea.
Oh I am so sad. I have told people for years that without Susan walking me through those first two years I would not be the mother I am today. I would not have known how to meet the challenges head-on and urge my boys to work through and overcome. I would not have known.
Without her ability and willingness to cry with me, to love my children, and to hold me through those first two years, Wade and I would have felt all alone.
And without Susan, I might have missed the importance of play, of being children, of having the best ball pit in the whole state of Minnesota!
Oh my friend, I know heaven is a greater place with you there.
But I wanted you to be here when Benjamin graduates college -- turns out he can stack paragraph on top of paragraphs and make the most beautiful stories you can imagine!
Oh I wanted you to be here when Mason graduates college -- Susan, he can take the smallest shards of pottery and record knowledge of entire societies!
And most of all Susan I really wanted you to be here when Claire becomes an Occupational Therapist. She desperately wants to give the hope YOU gave to families. You are her inspiration.
Thank you Susan. Thank you. thank you for helping us all learn to navigate the world of Cerebral Palsy. And thank you for encouraging all three of those once-itty-bitty-babies to reach for dreams way bigger than those purple beads we used to work so hard to get them to grab!
Rest in peace, my dear dear friend. We will never cease thanking God for your life.
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