Don't mean to get all sappy on you today. Or, maybe I do. Because there's something magical about Micah. Two-year-old Micah Diffee, whose yarn I spin in this week's paper version of Unfair Park, will make you feel simultaneously inspired and lethargic. You complain about having to drive around 10 minutes looking for a primo parking spot to go Christmas shopping at the mall; Micah puts flip-flops on his hands, pads on his knees and merrily crawls along with legs dragging and face smiling. He doesn't seem fazed that he was born with deformed legs and clubbed feet. Neither do his parents.
I need some help from Bible Girl on this one, because Micah's mom claims the whole experience is being orchestrated by, you guessed it, God.
"I have strong faith and I should've seen it coming," says Micah's mom, Michelle. "He had been showing me signs for a long time."
While pregnant with Micah, Michelle would take her able-bodied son, Tanner, to Grandma's or day care or the doctor's office and come across, almost daily, entirely eerily, a non-stop stream of parents dealing with handicapped children. "I'd see them pushing their daughter in a wheelchair and I'd think, 'Oh, I'm so thankful. That would be too difficult.'" Michelle says. "But, looking back, I was just being prepared for my challenge."
One day at a hospital Michelle got in an elevator and punched the seventh floor, only to have the car stop at four, the wing for children with special needs. Despite pushing the "7" button repeatedly, and the "doors close" button, they remained open.
"Nobody was in there with me, and nobody got on when the doors opened," she says. "I think that's when it hit me." Cue the goose bumps. --Richie Whitt
