Madison

Today I’m going to see a little five year old girl named Madison. I picture a little girl with blond curls and wide blue eyes, wearing a yellow sundress tied in bows on her delicate shoulders. I can see her licking a lollipop and already she has that haughty look in her eye that says one day she will totter around in high heels at fourteen in too tight jeans wearing someone’s promise ring to class surrounded by friends who laugh at the girls named Molly or Dawn.
I brush my hair and reapply lipstick and it hits me as it always does with these never ending names, lists of names like Edward James Jr. or Charity or Tara and on and on that I will never meet a girl like Madison. My Madison of today promises to be beautiful in her own way I’m sure but she will not be a girl that will grow up to dominate the world. She will be in a wheelchair, she will need help to eat, her father will carry her into the shower and will cradle her head as the water rushes over them both and he hurries to soap her long flaxen hair before she starts screaming. She will say a few words and she will smile and laugh and she will be oblivious of my presence as I sit with her parents talking about her “needs” and as we wonder, our heads together if she can recognize the pictures for her favorite foods.
Does her screaming and her crying mean she’s just a little girl or is it more?
Only time will tell.
Madison screams happily as she watches her cartoon and I remember the little boy named James who crawled all over while I talked to his mom about diapers.
The little girl named Tanisha who couldn’t move at all but stared up at me with huge dark eyes as drool puddled on her shoulder. Her mother smiling as she recounted how much her daughter loved her teacher.
I see Austin, the mute autistic teenager calmly chewing on his arm as he arranges his stuffed animals in perfect rows all assembled to watch him.
He will not look at me.
His father laughed describing plunging the toilet weekly and his tone left no room for pity.
These names haunt me with their hopefulness-Katherine, Jamal, Patricia, Evan, Ethan, Tyler, Jordan, they contain the whole tale within their syllables.
A happy moment of new life.
A name given.
Full of meaning, significance and history landing heavily onto a soul who will never carry it to fruition.
As I am leaving I say- “Madison is a pretty name how did you choose that one?” They look up at me and say together “well it was the only girl name we both liked and we had just started looking at names, we thought we had so much more time.”