A small win

I entered a national writing contest last fall.  It was with WOW! Women on Writing.  And I found out about ten minutes ago that I won Honorable Mention.  Very neat.

 Here is a revision of what I submitted:

Special Sucks

Jennifer Curran

February 2011

The mother leans forward, straining against her seatbelt to catch a glimpse of her little boy’s face.  Slow paced and rambling along, his school bus chugs along in front of her mud streaked and weary station wagon. With her Mother Vision, she can see through the rows of seats, through the backpacks and bodies of the bustling children that he is wearing a mask of uncertainty on his face. She can’t help but be scared for him.  She imagines herself sprinting heroically out of her car and slamming through the folding doors of the bus like a modern day Calamity Jane.  She can feel her aching arms reaching down to scoop him up and carry him home.  It’s a selfish dream.  Boys do not stay boys and the world is not built to shelter even the special ones.  She shakes off her protective instincts and saves them for future use.  Somewhere in the way back of her mind she wonders if he will ever be just a regular little boy whose toughest day includes homework left undone or choking back green beans to get to the pudding.  Too much pressure on special, she would be very happy with average.

The sounds she sees reverberating off the bus windows, the hollers and screeches of the other children, do not make her boy smile. He does not answer their incessant demands for attention.  Today, he doesn't want to be invited to play, to share, to jump and yell. Not today, maybe tomorrow, but maybe not. Maybe in a moment until the chance passes, but then again, maybe not. Her boy wants his space, his peace and his toys. He wants his red race car with the yellow flames down the side. It must have “Hotwheels” engraved in the silver bottom because “Matchbox” isn’t his favorite.   He can’t read those words, but he knows them by sight.  He wants to zoom his cars along the old gold shag carpet of their humble living room with his tinier than average fingers gently resting on their roofs; just him and his metal best friends in his raceway-world.

Her little boy sits far away from the bus aisle and a safe distance from the busting-at-the-seams boys, the girl that grabs everything that doesn’t belong to her and the drill-sergeant driver. She can picture his perfectly shaped nose pressing against the glass as he peers out at the farms rolling by. The mother wonders if he is looking for the magnificent white horses in the falling down brown barn they like to wave too. She thinks maybe he is listening for the dulcet sound of the hoof beats they each cherish. She wonders if he loves them because she loves them and if he feels defeated because their sounds will not penetrate the volume of the school bus riders.  Does he instead imagine the sound of their horsey neighs and whinnies?  Is he wondering what it would be like to sit on the back of the horse with the black spots and grey tail?  Does he wonder what it would be like to let one run as fast he pleases, to lean forward and into the wind and see the world framed by triangle ears?  She reminds herself to call the place, the organization, the non-profit, the one that has riding lessons for boys like him. Special boys special like him.

Special is over-rated. Special doesn't help when the mother is carrying her screaming five year old boy over her shoulder out the grocery store sliding doors. The abandoned shopping cart left nearly full with organic, food coloring free, all natural, gluten free, casein free food;  the foods that took her months to discover, whose labels have all been read and studied and remembered.  The food that will take forever to pass off as delicious are abandoned for the insulation of her beaten down car.

Special is hard. Special gets her scorns and head shakes, and the worst of them all, patronizing smiles from strangers who should know better.  Educated strangers who drop their loose change into the Awareness Canisters that are the quickest to judge and remind themselves that they would handle things differently, they could do it better.  The enlightened elitists carrying their reusable bags under their arms who are brought to tears when hearing about the epidemic on NPR but can’t be bothered to acknowledge its truth as it’s screaming down the aisles in Target. 

The mother wants to join him in his rage in those moments of raw and beautiful and honest emotion.  She imagines the release it would provide her and in a desperate plea with her nerves she sucks in her breath and blows it out.  Blindfolds in place, she n longer sees or hears the disapproval surrounding her.  She crouches down in front of her special boy and focuses her attention on the miniscule chance that he will be able to settle and transition to the suddenness of this change in routine.  Her boy shields his eyes from the fluorescent glare bouncing back at him from the hard tile of the floor and the sheen of plastic wrappings. He focuses on nothing, his eyes wander the store aisles filled with toys he cannot have and all the things she wishes he would know how to play with.

Special means appointments, prescriptions, wait lists and therapists.  It means special diets that cost more than rent, it means charts, scale ratings, questionnaires and graphs and educational plans.  It means late nights scouring the internet for answers and weighing the risks and challenging the chances.  Sometimes she puts it all aside, puts it all down and ignores it completely.  Sometimes special boys just need to be boys.  One day she piled up all the mail and the program brochures and filled her recycling bin.  It sat on the curb for two days before they were taken away.  She sometimes wished she had used them for a bonfire instead.

The bus makes a right turn to her station wagon's left; they halve their tiny caravan and take the roads often travelled. The mother catches up to a crispy clean Volvo.  It is wearing the small puzzle piece sticker on its sunlit bumper. She stares at the purple parasite latched onto the spotless car and wonders if the driver has a special boy too. She wonders if perhaps the driver snatched it up from a convenience store counter because it was free, because it makes her look erudite without any actual effort or learning required.   

At the stop sign the two cars approach, the mother closes her eyes for a moment and breathes through the urge to slam down onto the gas pedal and smash into the iconic logo. She wants to make sure the driver knows her boy is more than a logo, more than a fad or a cause.  He is more than a bumper sticker emotion. As the mother makes her solo right turn toward her waiting desk and tiny office, she peers into the rearview mirror and secretly hates the Volvo and its driver.  The immature emotion offers her aimless anger a temporary target.  She pushes away her politically incorrect, completely un-heroic and unwanted honest belief: Special sucks.