Matty Struski - Head First and Harvard Bound

 

When I ask my daughter, I say, “Rain, what do you do when you topple over?” She answers, “I get back up.” Rain just turned three in November. She's already toppled over more times than I can count. And for her, it can be incredibly frustrating. As a parent, it can be downright heartbreaking to see. And in most ways, she's just like every other kid out there. She loves space and animals and the movie, Frozen, and dinosaurs and playgrounds. There's this one playground we go to all the time that that's got a structure that's actually shaped like a dinosaur. It's got steps for a tail, and a bridge and a tunnel for a back and a slide for a face. It's as amazing as it sounds. And she loves the thing. 

 

And other kids can run and jump all over this thing really easily. And for Rain, it's a bit of a challenge. She primarily gets around doing something called a commando crawl, which is exactly what it sounds like. She's on her elbows and her belly, and she drags herself from place to place. So, she drags herself up the steps, and over the bridge and through the tunnel. And as she's doing this, other kids are running by her and literally jumping over her. She doesn't see anything weird about that. It's not odd to her. She's just doing her thing and having a good time. 

 

And in reality, it's pretty miraculous she's here to do any of this. She was born almost four months early via emergency C-section. She was just over a pound when she first came into the world and she was stone cold silent. It was the most terrifying night of my life. The doctors didn't want to talk about the odds of her survival, at first. They said, “These kids are resilient. Every kid's journey is different. So, try not to pay attention to what other kids are doing and just focus on your kid.” 

 

And more than once, it looked like she wasn't going to be coming home at all. And eventually, after five months intensive care, she did. And amazingly enough, she started preschool in September. And so, naturally, my wife and I started thinking about where she would be going to college, [audience laughter] and we decided it would be Harvard. 

 

I actually grew up in a town not far from Boston. So, recently, we took a trip back east to see some friends, and some family and to show Rain our future stomping grounds. And one evening we said, “We're going to go for a walk.” And so, we put Rain into her gait trainer. And a gait trainer is this assisted walking device, where it's got wheels and a bar that she holds onto, and you strap her into it for additional support. It basically allows her to practice walking upright without falling over. 

 

When she's in this thing, she stands out from the crowd in it. But she doesn't care that she stands out. Other kids don't seem to care. A lot of them don't even notice it. But other adults, and I've noticed mostly parents, they notice it when she's in it. When they see it, they see her cerebral palsy and they see her disability and they see her as different. They often have this look of pity in their eyes. And as a parent, it drives me nuts, as I have the hardest times with it. 

 

So, we go out into the city, and we end up in the north end of the city, which is the oldest part of the city, and it's one of the most beautiful parts of the city. It's got these really charming narrow streets and it's got this beautiful cobblestone, but the cobblestone presents this real challenge for Rain. Her gait trainer is getting caught up on it, and it's taken us forever to get anywhere and she's getting really frustrated. I have this moment where I think, how is she going to live in this city when she gets older, and how is she possibly going to be able to go to Harvard? 

 

And on top of that, the streets are packed with people. It's a really nice night. I can see people staring at her, and they have that familiar look in their eyes, and I start to just get really pissed off. I want to grab people and I want to say like, “Do you have any idea who this kid is? Do you know how hard she's fought just to be here? She spent the first two months of her life on a ventilator. She's had five major operations, and she's had two infections that literally almost killed her. And that was in the first five months of her life. So, please don't look at this kid with pity, because she doesn't need it. She's already stronger than all of us.” But truthfully, it hurts to see people looking at your kid like this. 

 

We get through the evening and the trip ends and we come back to Los Angeles, and I'm still feeling a bit down about how that walk in Boston went. But Rain, she doesn't care about that. She wants to go to that playground. So, we go and we get there, and she crawls up the steps and she crawls across the bridge and through the tunnel. And normally, she would turn around and come back to me. And tonight, she decides she's going to do something different. She looks over her shoulder at me and flashes this little smile, and she decides that she's going to go down the slide by herself for the first time. And not only that, she's going to go face first. And before I can get over, there she goes. [audience laughter] 

 

I can tell by the looks on other parents faces that it has not been a graceful descent, [audience laughter] so I go running over there and she's at the foot of the slide and she's a mess. She's got dirt in her face, and wood chips in her hair and she's wailing and I'm like, “Oh, man.” But she's wailing with laughter and she just thinks it's the funniest thing she's ever done. [audience laughter] She looks up at me and she says, “Dad, I toppled over. I'll get back up.” I'm beaming with pride at this moment. 

 

I think back to what the doctor said when she was first born and I'm thinking, “Man, she is resilient. Her journey is her own journey. Our journey together as a family, it might not be a typical one, but that's a good thing. I just need to stop focusing on the looks that people are giving her and I need to focus on the things that she can achieve.” And in this moment, I think about the rest of her life, and the life she's going to lead and the adventures she's going to have and the path she's going to walk. At this moment, it feels wide open to me. That path may or may not lead her to Harvard, but if it doesn't, it's not going to because some damn cobblestone stops her. Thank you.