How do you say I love you?
There was a time I prayed for Ashlynn to tell me she loved me.
Having apraxia and a language disorder made that tough. Even when she could repeat “I love you” when given a model, that didn’t mean she could volitionally pull it out and say it spontaneously. That took more years and work in therapy.
Ashlynn, even before the birth of her brother, has always been attached to my hip. An apraxia mom friend of mine lovingly calls them barnacle babies. I knew Ashlynn loved me before she could ever say it. Her actions have always spoken louder than her words.
Ashlynn is now nine. She has been able to say ‘I love you” without any prompts and on her own accord for at least 5-6 years now. We had two back to back snow days in Denver thanks to a “bomb cyclone” blizzard that left Denver experiencing the lowest barometric pressure ever in its history. That’s pretty incredible, but through it all, Ashlynn was attached to my side. We don’t get a lot of down time. We are always on the go from school to therapies to tutoring and then carving out family time, 1:1 time sitting at home and relaxing seems like an anomaly in our lives. It seems like it, because it is.
Wednesdays she usually goes to school. Then I pick her up and we meet her dad at a place to drop off Jace and then I take her to PT and then swallowing therapy. We get home around 6:30 where we gulp down dinner and then have to do her school homework and possibly the other hw from all of her therapies.
Being a kid and relaxing doesn’t happen on this day.
Thursdays she of course goes to school. I’m working so her dad picks her up, lets her see her grandparents for an hour who live by school and then she comes to speech therapy at my office where my colleague/mentor treats her. Afterward, we stop and get her a super nutritious meal from McDonald’s that she eats in the car before going to Girl Scouts, which has been nothing short of amazing for integrating her with her neurotypical peers and providing a “normal kid” activity among all of her therapies. We then get home 10 minutes before 8 where we scramble to get her school homework done and I feel guilty for not getting to her OT, PT, and swallowing hw as she gets ready for bed.
Not this week though.
ALL of that was cancelled thanks to the two consecutive snow days. We actually just hung out. She sat by my hip and we talked, played with the dogs, watched the news that droned on about the blizzard and took silly selfies on my phone. It was amazing. Was this what life was like for “normal” people? Are there any normal people? What IS life like for kids who don’t have a therapy every day after school? I’d ask my son, but he’s always caught in the cross hairs and even though he doesn’t personally have therapy, he has spent more than his fair share in waiting rooms.
She must have told me “I love you” at least a dozen times or more. I wasn’t doing anything special. I was just here..and she was here…and we all were here snowed in. I have to admit I didn’t even think about the days when I longed to hear “I love you” without having to prompt her. I can’t believe that those three words started to lose their luster.
Tonight was Thursday night. In what was supposed to be a packed night of Jace’s Cub Scout Pack meeting and Ashlynn’s routine girl scout meeting, I also had an SLP meeting where I met with other area SLP’s. My husband was to take the kids to both scout meetings that were now cancelled due to the weather.
As I left, Ashlynn said goodbye as though nothing was wrong and then immediately her face fell and she started crying.
“Ashlynn! What’s wrong? I’ll be back okay?”
Ashlynn fought back tears and said she would miss me.
“I’ll miss you too but I promise I will be back ok?” I said as my heart was breaking. She frequently gets like this when I leave. I thought about the day and how she had told me she loved me at least a dozen times. When you tell someone you love them that much it starts to lose its effect. I think I (shamefully) started to take it for granted. I gave her my work cell phone as a compromise.
“If you miss me, text me and me only ok?”
Her tears turned to a smile and she squeaked out an “ok.”
“Do NOT text anyone else from this phone. I will be busy but I promise I will text you back.”
As I pulled out of the driveway I saw her face in the window. She waved vigorously and then frantically blew me kisses. I blew them back. I wasn’t even off our street when she texted me her signature, “Ashlynn.”
I usually make her text her name first because she uses my phone to text a small but approved list of family members who need to know it is her texting them. I stopped at a stoplight and told her I would text her when I got to my meeting.
In those two hours she texted me that she loved me three times.
I wouldn’t think anything of it, except she frequently texts five other family members and though I know she loves them, that is not something she says to them. She likes to send emojis, ask them what they are doing, or tell them about her day. Due to her severe language disorder, I have many times talked about how Ashlynn talks in scripts.
This “I love you” script though. This particular “text” script was saved just for me.
I almost cried reading it tonight at my meeting in between her emojis, selfie pics, and other comments. I was sure this “script” was purposeful and meant just for me. After one when I wrote back “I love you Ashlynn” I received an immediate response that said “I love you mom so much.”
Ashlynn is nine. NINE. Half her child life with me is gone. My God. Where did it go? I still remember everything vividly. Ashlynn was 2 years and 11 months when she was diagnosed and life took an accelerated pace after that. We have been on the hamster wheel for six years now. I can still look at the little table where I poured out those foam stickers while nursing my son and she said her first spontaneous “I love you.” I can close my eyes and remember like it was just yesterday. I remember dancing in our living room to “Call me Maybe” and her laughing and throwing her head back like I was the most hilarious person on the planet. And I remember wishing, hoping, and praying before I knew she had global motor planning problems that she would just try and imitate my dance moves much less my voice.
As I sit here with tears in my eyes, I recognize Ashlynn was and always has been so limited in what she could tell me.
However I do believe now it was ALL going in. I’ve always felt like my greatest job and purpose in life was to not only raise her and Jace, but to make them feel like the most incredible humans that they are. With Jace it’s easier. He talks to me. I can get him to tell me his feelings. That has never been the case with Ashlynn. She struggles to express her basic thoughts much less complex feelings. However, she has always found profound ways to express them with her limited language such as tonight when I was the recipient of multiple “I love you” texts.
During the snow day we took selfies and she frowned at the pictures where I’m smiling but you can’t see my teeth. “Why are you smiling like that? she demanded. I thought to myself I liked how less of my wrinkles showed but instead just said, “I don’t know.’ She frowned disapprovingly.
“Don’t smile like that, ” she said.
I asked her why. I wanted to know what was wrong with that smile.
“It’s not YOUR smile mommy. Smile real ok?”
