Read a fabulous post from Maggie Kast, one of our contributors, in the Beacon Broadside blog. Here’s an excerpt:

As the parent of a child who failed to sit up, walk or talk when expected, I faced the question of what to call his condition. Never fond of euphemisms, I still dreaded the harsh sound and still harsher meaning of the “r” word and yearned to call my son anything else. At the same time, I wanted to say the word before it was said to me. More than anything, I hoped my son would never hear it, would never know this cruel fact about himself.

Maggie’s story “Joyful Noise,” appears in the anthology Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs, edited by Suzanne Kamata. Kast is also the author of and The Crack between the Worlds: a Dancer’s Memoir of Loss, Faith and Family (Wipf and Stock, 2009).