Nine years ago today, they placed her in my arms, and I said, “She’s beautiful.”  She was.  She is.  Gorgeous.  Absolutely stunning.

 

 

4.26.00...all 5lbs 10oz of her

 

 

Right from the beginning, Riley had (as her Oma always said) perfect little “rose bud” lips and the most gorgeous skin I’ve ever seen.  She was almost completely bald except for a soft layer of peachy-blonde fuzz all over the top of her head.  We weren’t quite ready for Riley—certainly not for her immediate arrival (she was born at 38 weeks, and determined not to be an “over anxious first-time mom, I had not even packed my bag for the hospital) and definitely not for the “grand adventure” she would begin in our lives.

 

Notice the size comparison between Riley and Kevin's hand...

 

 

I don’t really think any of us are really ever “ready” for kids though.  How could you be?  In our early days with babies, Kevin said more than once (always wearing a smile) that he thought those who were already parents (and certainly the grandparents-to-be) had deliberately zipped their lips and failed to tell us things like, “Spit up will soon be your new signature fragrance,” and “Potty training will be one of the grossest experiences of your life,” and “Say goodbye to spontaneity,” and “Remember all that stuff you used to say your child would never do or you’d never do as a parent?  Yep.  You’re getting ready to see and do all of it.”  Having crossed over to the “other side” nine years ago, we now know that Kevin was right.  The truth is, we all sickly want to stand around sharing amused glances as the next generation figures out that the streets on this educational program are made of hard concrete instead of astroturf, and that being here feels more like jumping into basic training on the Biggest Loser—you sweat, cry, scream, say “I can’t do this,” fall into an exhausted heap, and then discover that it’s the best thing you’ve ever done, it’s the brightest most amazing adventure of your life, the adrenaline is addictive, and you’re a much better version of you than you’d ever have been otherwise.  

I’ll never forget that first day with Riley.  Kevin stood holding her, looking out the giant window in our hospital room, tears rolling down his cheeks and making his shoulders shake.  A nurse came in the room as I was watching them together and leaned toward me.  ”Are those happy tears or sad tears?”

“Happy tears.  Definitely happy tears.”

That first night, when our newborn baby girl cried and cried in her plastic hospital bassinet, Kevin picked her up, swaddled her tight and tucked her into the crook of his arm.  They slept together on the uncomfortable cot next to my bed, peaceful and quiet for the rest of the night.  Riley has been “Daddy’s girl” ever since.

By the time Riley was two, she had a head full of tight blonde curls, a beautiful smile, lots of frustration, and very little speech.  Twelve months earlier, she’d repeated every word we spoke to her.  I even tried long, strange words like platypus, and they rolled off her fat tongue like silk.  At fifteen months, all the repeating ceased, and Riley’s frustration mounted.  Our friends knew she was autistic before we did, or at least, before we could face that truth.  Afraid to tell me what she was thinking, one friend passed an article about autism to another and asked her if it sounded like my daughter.  I started visiting book stores, looking for answers.  When I stood in front of shelves of parenting books, the word “autism” seemed to glow nastily at me from all the spines in front of me that bore it.  Deep down I knew, but I didn’t want to know.  At that point, the sum total of my knowledge of autism came from what I’d seen on the movie Rain Man.  Somehow I couldn’t make the connection between my daughter and Dustin Hoffman’s character in that film.  Meanwhile at home, Riley lined all of her toys up in rows and seemed unable to play with them.  She wandered preschool and Bible school classrooms and seemed not to understand and unable to make natural connections with other children.  She woke up at 3 am almost every night, flapped her hands when she was excited, walked on her tip toes, and screamed, holding her hands tightly against her ears when we took her into the auditorium at church and everyone started singing.  One day, in the midst of filling out papers and getting wait-listed to take Riley for an evaluation at the child development center, one of Riley’s Sunday school teachers called me and said, “We don’t know what to do with Riley.  Something’s not right.  Do you know what’s going on with her?  We’re concerned, and we don’t know what to do with Riley.  Can you write down some guidelines for handling her?”

I sighed.  The teacher’s well-meant questions settled on my shoulders like a firm weight.  At a moment when I felt completely confused about my daughter and what I should do to help her, her Sunday school teacher was asking me to write an instruction manual.  I didn’t know what we were going to do, what was “wrong” with Riley, or what even the next day would hold for us, but even then, I knew the answer to her question.

“Just love her,” I said.  ”That’s all you have to do with Riley.  Just love her.”

When Riley’s evaluators finally spoke the word “autism” across the table where Kevin and I sat with our hands folded, I had one immediate question.  ”What will this mean for her life?  Will she ever be able to function on her own or will she always need to live with us?”  It was the short summarized sound of all of my dreams for my baby girl crumbling and landing in pieces in my lap, right there next to my heart, which had also shattered.

“That is entirely up to her,” one of the evaluators said with a generous, sympathetic smile as she nodded in Riley’s direction.  Then, she did the most wonderful thing anyone could’ve done for us in that moment.  She bequeathed a bit of hope.  She told us about Temple Grandin.  She told us about autistic adults with extraordinary lives, and then she admitted that some autistic individuals do need life long support.  I remember thinking, Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Not yet knowing a thing about Temple Grandin, I pointed at her name where I’d jotted it on a piece of paper in front of me.  ”If she can do it, my daughter can do it.”

And so it began, and what a phenomenal nine years it has been!  You had to know the beginning to fully appreciate the Riley we know now.  At nine, our girl is a study in extremes.  In her unguarded moments, she wears a seriously sophisticated expression.  I can’t tell you how many photographs we have in which Riley looks like she’s posing in a fashion magazine.  The funny thing is that this happens only when she has no idea that we are watching her, let alone taking her picture.  Riley’s social-self (and oh how social she is these days!) is silly and off-beat.  Even when we’re exhausted, she makes us laugh by saying her prayers in code.  ”Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for chair and table.  Keep cotton ball and tooth pick safe.”  When it comes to worship, this child who used to scream through the congregational singing now sings along in loud, confident voice.

For almost a year now, Riley’s been planning her birthday weekend.  A few years ago, Mom and Dad started giving her a shopping spree as a birthday gift.  Riley never forgets what they purchase on this shopping spree.  For the next year, every time she wears one of these outfits, she’ll say, “Grandma and Papa got me this on my shopping spree.  Mom, will Grandma and Papa take me on a shopping spree on my next birthday?”  She knows they will.  She just loves to hear me say “yes.”  So on Friday night, Riley and I stood in the dressing room at Children’s Place and then again at Justice for Girls (Riley’s personal request this year).  I watched her turn around in front of the mirror and then grin and giggle and hide her smile with her hand as she walked out to show her dad and her Papa what she was wearing.  

For at least six months, every single Saturday that Kevin has gone to the men’s breakfast at the church building, Riley has told me, “I want to go on a daughter’s breakfast for my birthday.”  So, yesterday morning, Riley, Mom, Zoe and I left early to get our hair cut and then have a girls’ brunch at the Olde English Tea Room.  I looked across the table and found my baby girl, who once got lost in lining up all of her toys, selecting Sweet Mint tea (and learning how to pour it elegantly all by herself) and Western Quiche, tossing back her golden bob with a giggle.

Saturday afternoon, Riley had us all out at Coldstone Creamery getting ice cream.  When we got home and Kevin asked her to step out in the back yard for a portrait session with Grandma, she muttered to Mom, “Getting my picture taken is NOT my favorite thing to do.”  I remember days when she didn’t have a single word with which to express herself!

On Saturday night, after Riley went to bed (When I kissed her goodnight, she said, “Mom, tomorrow I’m turning nine.”) I filled balloons with helium (to be snuck into her bedroom after she is buckled in the van to go to church).  Mom and I twisted streamers together and hung them from the lights and the curtain rods all over the living room and dining room.  We hung the glittery Happy Birthday signs in anticipation of her big day, the finale to a whole weekend of celebrating her (and oh the things we have to celebrate!).  

After church, we were supposed to go eat lunch at Andy’s, which is exactly where Riley’s been telling us for the last month that she wanted to go for her actual birthday lunch.  I keep thinking about how amazing it is that this child, who once seemed so closed up and frustrated is now such a girlie, glimmering, let’s-go-out-and-have-some-fun kind of girl.  The thing is, Andy’s isn’t a favorite for any of the rest of us, so while we were ultimately willing to concede and go anyway for her sake, we all tried to persuade her to consider other options.  Mom mentioned Italian at Ragazzi’s, but Riley said, “No, I really want to go to Andy’s.”

This morning, Kevin tried.  ”You know, Riley, we had cheeseburgers off the grill for supper last night.  Maybe you might like to eat something a little different for lunch today.”

Riley thought about this.  ”Yea…” Kevin thought he might have done the impossible.  ”I think I would like to have something different today.  I’ll have grilled cheese and fries at Andy’s.”

After church, on the way to the restaurant, I tried one last time.  ”Riley, remember how Ragazzi’s has those really great cheesesticks?”

“Yea…but I really just want to eat at Andy’s.”

Happily, we all conceded.  It is her weekend, after all.  When we pulled into the parking lot at Andy’s, we discovered that our old haunt had closed its doors.  I don’t know if the location has closed permanently or simply moved to a new spot, but the place was definitely empty and locked up.  ”I’m sorry, Riley.  It looks like Andy’s is closed,” Kevin said.

“How about Ragazzi’s?” Riley said, as if it was a brand new idea.  ”I’ll have some cheesesticks.”

This afternoon, it was our pleasure to finish the day with a game of kickball in the backyard.  The only two gifts Riley actually requested this year were a perfect meld of her personality—”dangly” earrings and a soccer ball.  It has been such a beautiful day that it seemed fitting to get out there and teach the kids the game we all played for hours growing up.  We used large yogurt containers filled with dirt as our bases.  Kickball with the Three Ring Circus is a whole new brand of fun.  We laughed till our sides hurt.  Every time someone hit a base with their foot and knocked it over or just nudged it askew, Riley stopped whereever she was (even if she was running for home) and went back to fix it.  After she finally understood that she was supposed to stay on the base she landed on until someone else kicked the ball, the crooked bases drove her insane.  ”Daadddyyyy,” she called once from first base, “that base is knocked over!!”  Kevin naturally relented and let her get off of her base to fix the other one.  Another time, Kevin was running for the kicked ball and had to jump over Riley because he realized too late that she had been so busy straightening her base that she’d not noticed the successful kick.  Meanwhile, Adam played happily with an inflatable toy that Mom and Dad gave him last year, something that resembles a cross between a pool float and a giant hamster wheel.   The idea is that you are supposed to get inside and walk around in it, but mostly, Adam rolls it where he wants it, folds it into a giant inflated mat, and bounces on top of it.  Every so often, he’d roll his toy into the middle of our kickball game, and Kevin would yell, “7th inning stretch!”  I couldn’t have dreamed up a more fitting ending to our weekend-long celebration of Riley than a game of kickball, Mr. Monk style, of course.

When I think about how far Riley has come in nine years, I always end up wiping tears away from my cheeks.  Mom and I love to talk about all the ways we’ve seen God’s glory at work in Riley’s life, and we both get all choked up in the process.  I already see glimpses of a pre-teen emerging in her.  She’ll draw one leg up into her chair, wrap her arms around that leg, and chatter endlessly about a million things, beginning every sentence with “And I was like…”  She loves to make us laugh, loves to hug us, loves to “glam up,” be a girl, and have fun.  Riley’s our sunshine, our rain clouds (like I said…extremes:)), our schedule-Nazi, our party-girl, our reminder that the music is often too loud and bees are scary.  Riley’s our joy.

Happy Birthday, baby girl.  You’re beautiful.