Prologue to “Sweet Sixteen”

Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I would one day have a baby and name her Leta.  Lovely Leta, Leta Frances, Baby Leta, Leta my love….I dreamed about her my entire life.  The father of Leta was inconsequential.  In my sureness of how the world works, Leta would someday be born and would look like Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet or Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s ….She would be sporty and smart and whimsical….we would go to Paris when she was 16, and I would teach her to drive a Citroen through the Loire Valley.   Most girls spend their time fantasizing about their princess wedding, but I skipped that  part and dreamed about my beautiful baby girl.

If there is a God and if he “works in mysterious ways” to teach us lessons,  I was setting myself up for the ultimate curve ball.  God was gearing up to teach me my first lesson in humility.   And so when Leta Frances Moseley was born, in 1997 at St Vincent’s Hospital in Indianapolis,  she was born with major medical and cognitive disabilities.   People tried to tell me that I would not be going to Paris or Italy or Holland with her …. Instead, I would be spending the  next 20 years in and out of CHOP hospital in Philadelphia and surrounding East coast medical centers.   In retrospect, I look back at my  roller coaster ride with Leta  and can confidently state that … life is what happens when you make other plans.

Happy Sweet Sixteen, my lovely Leta.  You are perfect… just the way you are.