{"id":337,"date":"2008-12-01T15:38:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-01T15:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2008\/12\/born-to-no\/"},"modified":"2008-12-01T15:38:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-01T15:38:00","slug":"born-to-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/born-to-no\/","title":{"rendered":"Born to No"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a poem sent by a friend of mine<\/a>, which he wrote during a long flight somewhere. Tim does not have a special needs kid of his own but you could say that he actually has millions of them. I’m publishing it here, with his permission, because I think he really gets it.<\/p>\n

Born to No<\/p>\n

Mystery rush in
I want to catch some
As I sit in the bleacher near a rough sod track
And the lanes
Divide the field into narrow lines telling each runner, “Stay in.”<\/p>\n

I sit
Not alone but not a part of the mothers and fathers and
Bored brothers<\/p>\n

and sisters waiting for their turn To cheer sister special<\/p>\n

There she is now,
Making her way to the starting line
12 years old and not made for glory
Born into tears
“No Ma’am. The Baby is not all right.”<\/p>\n

Born into struggle
No walking at 1
No talking at 2
No playdate at 3
No school at 4<\/p>\n

“No Ma’am. Not here”
Born to no.<\/p>\n

And when she runs, she runs fast and away<\/p>\n

So now her race; her lines ahead, her place to fit in
Between 100
meters of start and finish
In her moment to run.<\/p>\n

The gun fires and she runs
Sister, daughter, child of mystery, running, head high, eyes wide,
arms swinging, wild.
“Run sister. O Good Lord. O Good Lord.
My child, my precious child of my body. Run baby run.”<\/p>\n

And finish-I know not how or what number-she did
And she raised her
arms, her limbs like crooked trees arching toward their sun
Spreadingtriumph with every sweatdrop<\/p>\n

She’s looking at me. Smiling.
And I am surrounded by her posse of yes.<\/p>\n

She is our mystery of yes.
Nothing less.<\/p>\n

And there is nothing more.<\/p>\n

–Tim Shriver<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a poem sent by a friend of mine, which he wrote during a long flight somewhere. Tim does not have a special needs kid of his own but you could say that he actually has millions of them. I’m publishing it here, with his permission, because I think he really gets it. Born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-5r","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}