As an administrator of the FamiliesforHoPE.org website, I’ve been spending time making updates to the site in preparation for a new look to be unveiled later this month during Holoprosencephaly Awareness Week. As a result, I came across this post I had written in 2010, and thought I’d share it here since I referenced Sammy.
Some Kid
Throughout my journey in the HPE world, I have had the privilege to personally meet many individuals with HPE. So often, I find that I don’t even have the words to adequately describe the encounter because I’m so humbled by the experience. I can recite the definition of holoprosencephaly forward and backward in my sleep; I can quote statistics off the tip of my tongue; and, I can explain the symptoms and secondary conditions that are common with the diagnosis without missing a beat. Like many of you, I feel as if I may have earned a Ph.D. in HPE, if there were such a thing.
I can tell you all about what our children have, but when it comes to describing who our children are, I do not have concise words to adequately describe them all–I could talk for days on end about all of our amazing kids with HPE. With my own son, Sammy, there are moments when I catch myself saying, “He was some kid.” Not “some kid” as in a random, nameless person; but “some kid” in that he was spectacular, similar to the phrase, “Wow, that was some game we watched last night.”
“Some kid” makes me think of Charlotte’s Web, the classic children’s novel by E.B. White. From the very first line, we learn that the life of Wilbur is threatened. Wilbur, a newly-born piglet, is described as “very small and weak, and it will never amount to anything.” A barn spider named Charlotte is determined to save Wilbur, so she spins a web in the barn that reads “Some Pig” in an attempt to convince the farmer and the surrounding community that Wilbur is special and should be saved.
As parents of children with HPE, we know our children are something very special, but too often, we see the looks and hear the whispers of others in our communities (and sadly, even members of our own families at times) who view our kids like little Wilbur. In her attempt to save Wilbur, Charlotte also created other webs describing Wilbur as, “terrific“, “radiant“, and “humble“.
If you were to weave a web over your child to describe him/her in 1-2 words, what would your web say?
Sammy Yammy and HoPE 
