Woman’s Determination Enables the Disabled
It was days before Christmas and Lisa Cantrell was too busy just then to read 9-year-old Emily’s letter to Santa.
“I asked you for that weeks ago!” she snapped. “Santa has already done his shopping; I’m sorry if you don’t get all that you asked for!”
Her daughter slumped, and Lisa immediately felt the deep, aching regret of parents who have just blown it.
At that moment, she didn’t remind herself that few mothers have the patience she displays the rest of the time. She didn’t ease her guilt by thinking of the extraordinary demands her family places on her, the pressures she faces that most other parents do not.
In their Oxnard home, she is raising twins--Emily and Evan--and 13-year-old Nicole.
Mentally retarded, Nicole can’t read or do math. She just learned to tie her shoes. Chances are slim she’ll ever live on her own.
From the time Nicole was a baby, Lisa and her husband, Marc, have faced exhausting challenges.
When Nicole was supposed to be a toddler, she didn’t yet crawl. Her parents withdrew her from day care when they learned Nicole had been placed in a corner and left alone for hours.
Over the years Cantrell has been extra vigilant about her daughter’s education, conferring with specialists, organizing parents, demanding more from school boards.
“We fought and fought,” she said. “We don’t want our kids cleaning benches and stocking soda machines at the school. How about some academics? How about some actual learning?”
Her daughter sometimes talks to herself. When she’s excited, she tends to clench her fists near her mouth. Such kids tend to look different, and many people would prefer they be hidden.
One night at a restaurant, a group of boys walked by their table.
“Hey, there’s that weird girl from school!” one of them shouted, pointing at Nicole.
Nicole didn’t react. But her kid sister, Emily, burst into tears.
As Nicole has blossomed into adolescence, the resources available to her have grown more scant.
“Regular day care won’t touch these kids,” Lisa Cantrell said. “They’re too old--they’re not supposed to need day care anymore.”
But they do. So, after school for the past year, Cantrell has hosted six or eight kids with disabilities--a boy prone to seizures, another with Down syndrome, a teenager so profoundly retarded she still wears diapers.
They have a great time in her house. They lay gobs of gooey icing on the cupcakes Cantrell bakes for them. A boy walks in silently, his head down, and gives a big hug to everyone in the room before heading for the videos. Nicole and her best friend, Melissa, practice for the cheerleading squad at school and collapse in giggles: “Rootie tootie, tutti frutti, down on the floor and hit your booty!”
Emily and Evan and a couple of their pals from school help Cantrell, but the kids help each other too. Melissa taught Nicole to tie her shoes. Nicole taught Melissa to dance. Last year, a girl who can’t speak would only sit; now, she gets up and boogies to Britney Spears along with everyone else.
But the world outside is not so welcoming. On field trips to the fair, the mall, Hurricane Harbor, the group draws strange, less-than-pleased looks.
“We went to see Santa, and people just stared,” Cantrell said. “All the kids wanted to do was sit on Santa’s lap, but people were looking at me, thinking, ‘What is that lady--crazy?’
“Even the parent of a special-needs child asked me, ‘Why do you do this?’ ” she said. “I asked: ‘Why wouldn’t you do it? These kids need it.’ ”
But none of this struck Cantrell as an excuse for lashing out at Emily over the late letter to Santa.
“Honey, let me see it,” she said.
The note, written in a child’s most careful hand, turned out to be a Christmas gift in itself, a present that causes Cantrell to glow even after New Year’s.
“To Santa,” it said. “All I want for Christmas is for my sister to be happy and I want nobody to laugh at her or be mean or hurt her. And I love her. Love, Emily.”
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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.
