{"id":2102,"date":"2007-12-13T10:08:50","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T15:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=2102"},"modified":"2007-12-13T10:16:21","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T15:16:21","slug":"a-personal-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/?p=2102","title":{"rendered":"A Personal Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

As my dear friend struggles to come to grips with her daughter’s special needs, I try to inform her of an outsider’s view. She says a friend sends a photograph of her child a few weeks older than her own and she sees her laughing in the tub, trying to stand up and realizes her own daughter’s retardation. I say I see photographs of my friends’ children particularly at this time of year and want to throw myself down on the floor and cry my ever loving heart out for every child that I couldn’t have.\u00a0

The perfect life is way overrated.\u00a0

She says to me that “I feel the loss of the path that I thought we were on” and I say this is the path you are on and that it’s not perfect is what informs it. I send her footnotes on Kenzaburo Oe’s A Personal Matter<\/a> – his son Hikari born with a brain defect and Oe’s rebelliousness over accepting this as his fate – Hikari’s later musical accomplishment – who can know what awaits us – perfection is not what it you think it is, it is what you don’t expect that gives you so much pleasure your heart bursts with joy.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As my dear friend struggles to come to grips with her daughter’s special needs, I try to inform her of an outsider’s view. She says a friend sends a photograph of her child a few weeks older than her own and she sees her laughing in the tub, trying to stand up and realizes her own daughter’s retardation. I say I see photographs of my friends’ children particularly at this time of year and want… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_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":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1kHSD-xU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangermond.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}