Lingering sting, and a vote for change in attitudes

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

I thought I would never forget the time, the place, the season. What I wore. What she wore. The faces of the people I met that day.

But I have forgotten. It's a blur. The only thing I remember is wanting to cry.

I had taken my granddaughter, Lucy, into Boston to a modeling agency. She was 17 months old. My grandson Adam, Lucy's cousin, was barely 7 months. It was his mother's idea.

``Look how cute they are,'' she said. ``This agency is looking for cute babies. The place where they're interviewing is easy to get to. Let's try, Mom. What do we have to lose?''

I learned the answer to that question within minutes of arriving. Children with disabilities were not being considered, I was told. In New York, maybe. In Boston, not a chance.

The woman in charge said this politely. She explained that the companies her agency represented wanted typical kids only. I'm sorry, she added. And maybe she was.

Only I was sorrier.

I had set Lucy up for failure. She had been dismissed before ever being considered, and all I wanted to do was pick her up and take her home and close the door and not go out again for a long while. Not until the world changed and could see Lucy as her parents and family and all the people who know and love her see her - perfect exactly as she is.

Lucy has Down syndrome, and I suppose in the culture in which we live, if you put a picture of a child with Down syndrome on the packaging of a car seat or a stroller or a baby toy, some people might think, ``I don't want that because I don't want her.''

And that's what killed me that day. Not just the deep personal rejection. (How could anyone have looked at this child, with her pixie face and her dark blonde hair and her big blue eyes, and said, ``No, we don't want her.'') But the infinitely deeper cultural rejection, the idea that no one would want her.

I sat on the steps outside that agency feeling as bad as I had ever felt.

But I didn't cry, and I didn't take her home and close the door. We ate lunch at the Boston Park Plaza hotel that day, and strangers approached our table and said how beautiful the children were and how well behaved Lucy was.

I continue to take Lucy - whenever I can steal her away from her parents - to restaurants and zoos and movies and malls and theme parks and real parks. And everywhere we go, people welcome her.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise, then, the e-mail that arrived recently from Andy and Sasha Camacho, a couple in Texas asking for my vote for their 2 1/2-year-old daughter Solana to be on the cover of Parents magazine, with last Wednesday the deadline. But I was surprised because Solana, like Lucy, has Down syndrome.

``If she were to win the contest, she would be the first known child with Down syndrome to grace the cover of the magazine,'' the parents wrote. ``However, this is much more than a magazine contest. It is about giving the 5.8 million people in the world that have Down syndrome a voice.''

A voice, yes, but a mirror, too.

In bold print at the bottom of Solana's photo is a truth I wish I had shouted out 5 1/2 years ago instead of standing mute and walking away: ``Princesses can have Down syndrome, too.''

Indeed, they can.

It's a little-known fact that this beautiful child may soon teach the world.