Not Bartimus

I was recently asked a provocative question:  “What obstacles do you face as the mother of a blind child?”

Huh.

Sadly, this question was posed during an interview for a local television program about living with disabilities and is the exact point that I started to come off looking a little…slow.  I sat there completely slack-jawed for a moment because I couldn’t think of anything to say.  I’m a little worried about it actually, speechlessness doesn’t look good on me. 

Cross my heart, I could not think of one single obstacle that I face as Little Dude’s mother other than the fact that he’s recently decided to boycott all vegetables except tomatoes* and I harbor a secret fear that one day he’ll swell up into a giant tomato Wonka-style and I’ll have to scramble to find a juicing room before he blows.

I blew some sunshine around, about anything becoming an obstacle if you let it, because that’s exactly my approach and I don’t let myself think in terms of obstacles.  They are challenges that we accept until we triumph.  Tricky things turned into tiny victories.  Rah-rah-rah.

It wasn’t until I was home later that night that I had a very deep and profound thought.  I do have an obstacle to face, but this particular road block is mine and mine alone.  

It has nothing to do with being Little Dude’s Mom and everything to do with my Irish Catholic upbringing.  I have lost a lot of my religion since the birth of my son.  Not my faith, mind you.  Just my religion.

There is no simple reason for this and perhaps it’s been long in coming, but there is one main reason that I am not teaching my child the same things I learned in childhood.  That reason is a man.  A man called Bartimaeus, the blind beggar that Jesus healed on the road to Jericho. 


Ok, ok, ok….settle down.


Don’t worry. I am not about to turn this fluffy, little blog post into a whole big thing.  I’m not going to debate the merits of organized religion, nor disparage it.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.  Just bear with me for a moment.


As an adult, I understand the concept of a parable.  As a writer, I’ve used them to illustrate a point.  As a child, I believed that Bible story with all of my heart.   Hook, line and sinker I bought the whole enchilada.  By the time I was Gabriel’s age I’d heard that story so many time I could see it in my head like a movie.  It went like this:


The Road to Jericho, 5 BC


A benevolent, be-sandled Jesus spots Bartimus - arms open wide in supplication begging for alms, under a blazing Middle Eastern Sun.  Jesus passes his miracle bestowing hands over the milky, useless eyes of poor, wreched Bartimus and the white dissipates.  Bartimus gasps with delight and gazes with wonderstruck, tear-glistened eyes that slowly come into focus.  He openly weeps and praises the man, the Father and the miracle as he drinks in the sight of ancient wonders in a world he’d been denied since birth.  


I loved that story.  It helped me believe in miracles, and magic, and hope.


And now.....it's completely different.


I used to shudder when I thought of my Son hearing that story.  I dreaded him hearing of that miracle and wondering:  'Hey! What about me?'   If you did not not recognize that tale as a metaphor; and happen to be blind, it would only be natural to feel some resentment for the luck of Bartimus.


I feared that story had the potential to be a pivotal moment for him, like it was for me…but with the opposite lesson learned.  He could lose faith in the whole concept of miracles, lose belief in a higher power or even worse keep the belief but feel that somehow he deserved punishment before he’d even had a chance to have a coherent thought.  


Yikes!  Yeah, I over thought it.  Bigtime.  But I realized a lot of things while I was obsessing about the fate of one blind beggar from Milena ago, the most significant being:  I can't protect him from that story, but I can teach him that it is just a story.  A fairy tale.  Like Cinderella.


One day he will hear that story.  He’ll hear other stories of miraculous healing. He’ll hear about documented cases of people with different eye problems who had experienced a miracle of medical technological advances: successful sight restoring surgeries.  He’ll hear about the micro-eye that could have given him a completely different life if it had only been invented a few years earlier. He might feel bad - like he was unworthy of a miracle.


Maybe…if his Mother wasn’t prepared for that eventuality and a confidently, crazed optimist who believes that individual perception is everything in life.


I believe in so many things; God, and dinosaurs and physics and true love and Angels and the NY Yankees (though that’s getting increasingly difficult).  I believe that things happen for reasons we don’t need to understand. I believe that my Mother watches over my son’s tiny footsteps because I believe that the soul never dies.  I believe that sometimes, as painful as it is, the answer to some prayers is no.  I firmly believe that it all boils down to love and putting more good into this world than bad.  I believe that this life is but one step on a journey that is far beyond the ability of our mortal minds to comprehend, and these mortal minds have struggled to make sense of the fantastic since the dust from the Big Bang settled.


I’ve reached a place where Faith in something greater than this moment and a lifelong love of Science have given birth to a belief system that really works for me. It  comforts me, gives me the strength to carry on.  It grants me the ability to see the world the way I do - to view the obstacles anything more than another bump in the road.


These are the things I teach my son and one day he will be able to rationalize his own system of beliefs to keep him strong in his darkest hours.


I believe that I can give him a strong enough foundation of faith to face the question, “Why did this have to happen to me?” And answer it with, “This is the way it’s supposed to be.” because he believes in things much bigger than himself.  


Just not Bartimus.  


* Knowledge is knowing that a Tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it on a fruit salad.  I learn the most wonderful things from Someecards.