Father’s Day Afterglow

ABOUT 12 HOURS AFTER Ray’s birth on a frigid December day, my husband David bent over the clear, plastic bassinet that cradled our sleeping baby boy and wept.

On a warm Father’s day last weekend, I returned to that moment between the three of us more than once as I watched this Daddy in action with Ray, now 18 months old, and our other two sons — Andy, 3, and Carl, 5.

Stressed out as he has been at work, David  sprinkled the garden with little helpers known for yanking up tomato plants.

He hiked around Mud Lake near the mountain town of Nederland and let them get good and muddy there, even though both of us gritted our teeth toward the end of the mud fest and accepted that their duds might never come clean in the wash.

And David obliged to set up and tear down the tent in our backyard so the two older kids could camp out on Saturday night when my last-minute internet search of area federal and state campgrounds turned up no tent pad vacancies.

But I digress.

After Ray’s birthday in 2009, David and I understood that our boy would face a degree of intellectual disability and some health problems related to his Down syndrome diagnosis.

Our pediatrician, Dr. Grace Fan at the Longmont Clinic, passed along that basic information immediately — and lived up to her first name so beautifully in those early conversations — that I knew we would stay in her good hands come what may.

But an hour-long echocardiogram confirmed Ray’s sound heart — the most serious immediate concern for roughly half of all kids born with an extra chromosome on chromosome 21.

So, why was David’s heart breaking?

“Why are you so sad? Why do you keep crying?” I said between nurse visits to our tiny private room in the neonatal intensive care unit at Longmont United Hospital.

I expected him to tell me in his own way how Ray was not the third son he expected, although now I wonder why I ever presumed that response from David.

This grief in him came from an altogether different place.

David began by sort of apologizing for his tears. He told me how tired he was from being up all night through the labor and delivery, as if I wouldn’t know.

Then, he shared that God had already — yes, already — begun to humble him through Ray’s life.

When he considered that a son of his would be intellectually disabled to some degree, he took quick stock of his own intellectual achievements and how much he had allowed them to reinforce his sense of self worth and self respect.

Suddenly, those gold cords looped around his neck when he graduated at the top of his college survey engineering class; those teaching and research assistantships at Purdue University in graduate school; that plum, high-paying job just out of school and a long list of other honors and privileges all fell into focus for what they are.

They are the extras in life — the times when the collision of ability and hard work spark in ways that catch the attention and respect of others.

But those accomplishments in the grand scheme of things cannot touch the essential worth that we believe God stamps on each person, sort of like a king’s ring seal on hot wax– a sign that one is approved as is and allowed to go forward in this life be it with a little help or a lot.

To think that his youngest son might not shine in those ways, and that he and the rest of the world might overlook Ray on those grounds, pressed David into a different person that very day.

Of course, he still spots as Ray climbs the steps during physical therapy.

David also uses a zebra puppet to encourage pretend play with Ray, who soon relished feeding the zebra graham crackers and sharing a cup of pretend milk.

David cheers on our youngest son in these ways and more.

But celebrating accomplishments is so different from living by them or trying to predict their likelihood.

C.H. Spurgeon, a 19th century British pastor, put it well.

“There is no telling how much power God can put into a man,” he said.

That goes for women and children, too!