Yesterday at the bookstore, a couple came in with a child of a different race than them, so I assume (maybe wrongly) that he was adopted, and I think the child had cerebral palsy. His arms and legs, so thin it was painful to look at them, were twisted in a spastic manner, his knees bent inward and his gait halting yet bouncing at the same time. His mother held him by the hand, gently pulling him along, and he was working hard to keep up with her pace. The degrees to which his legs were twisted seems almost impossible and inhuman, and yet he found a way to walk. He greeted everyone with a garbled "Hi, how are you doing today?", and I could hear him laughing with his parents in the children's room.
And yet. And yet....I could not help but think to myself as he walked by me, there but for the grace of G-d go I. We forget that not everyone can do something as simple as walk "normally." It is easy to forget, even for a graduate of a maternal-child health MPH program, that not every pregnancy is healthy, that even when all the tests show normal results, something could still be awry. I hesitate to use the word "wrong", because I think if it were my child, I would never call anything "wrong" about him or her. But it is so easy not to think about things like this. We take for granted having a healthy child. When my nephew was born, I was so grateful that he was healthy, and I am forever thankful. And yesterday, after seeing this child, I could not help but thank G-d for my nephew's health.
We forget how miraculous, how wondrous, a healthy pregnancy and child are. We forget to be thankful for the littlest things.
There but for the grace of G-d go I.
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