by Tanisha Shvetal D., 16
“It’s one. It’s not them and us. It’s one.”
As I open the Zoom app, a flushed pink fills my screen. A pair of squinting ocean-blue eyes hone in on the screen, and as she moves back, I see an autumn-colored face—pink, peach, yellow. The sun paints her skin gold, matching her blonde hair that falls over her face and frames it like a painting.
If autumn is a rebirth, I see a youth in Laurie past the wisdom lines. And, like autumn, her presence washes a warm wave of happiness onto me, and as its crest crashes, I relax.
As she begins her story, Laurie’s face utterly transforms as she introduces me—and you—to Chrissy D’Amico, the founder of Blue Dot, whom she first met while she was an assistant filling in for a teacher at her daughter Malen’s dance class. With a bright face and an even brighter tone, she tells me about Chrissy’s passion for her work.
“You can be educated, you can go to school, [and] do all kinds of things, but she (Chrissy) and the other girls she went into business with are [more than that] passionate. We’re so lucky to have met her.”
Laurie looks into the distance as she talks of Blue Dot. Her eyebrows draw close as she tells me, “Everything they do, it’s from the heart. I can’t even express it enough.”
I ask her about her happiest memory of Blue Dot, and her eyes fade just a little. “I can’t pick one,” she admits. “There’s just something about the smiles on their faces when they see each other,” she whispers now, and her eyes tell me far more about how much this community means to her and Malen, her beautiful young daughter with Down Syndrome.
“Even in the face of challenges, or whatever, they work it through, and in such a positive way. If the whole world could operate that way, it would really be incredible,” she beams.
Something is interesting about the way Laurie talks, I muse. Gentle, emotional, and unapologetically honest, she could tell me aliens were invading the earth, and I’d probably believe her.
Laurie’s face breaks into a wide smile as she talks again of Blue Dot and how lucky they were to be a part of its inception.
“My parents, they’re on Instagram, and my mother always laughs and says, look at the smiles on this kid’s face when she’s there!” she chuckles.
Something I often hear during our conversation is the emphasis on how wholly positive Blue Dot is as a community.
“If it’s raining, if the sky is cloudy,” she clears her throat, example at the ready. “At Blue Dot, they’d just say—oh, it’ll clear up later, and it won’t be so bad!”
She goes on about how Chrissy’s connection with Malen was a game-changer for her.
“Chrissy has such a positive flare to her, even in the face of challenges,” she says. “You just can’t be down in the dumps around Chrissy.” It’s so clear how infectious Chrissy’s optimism is.
Laurie’s favorite part about Blue Dot is the social afternoons on Tuesdays. Picture an outdoor park, sweet dewdrops on buttery grass blades, clouds in the sky higher than your spirits. Or, if you prefer, a quaint little kitchen, the scent of something mysterious but intoxicatingly delicious brewing in the distance, and you’re ready for dinner. That’s what Laurie describes to me.
“The car doesn’t even pull up, the door isn’t even open, and everyone’s already shouting, Malen’s here, Malen’s here!” she laughs, and it’s like bells. Crow’s feet line her eyes as she beams even further. “And to see—to see Malen’s face just light up, and everyone there when she gets out each time, it brings me to tears.”
“Anywhere our kids go, they are welcome.”
I ask Laurie how her life has been different than how she imagined, and she freezes. She looks away, out her car window, and time has paused. “I don’t want to get teary,” she admits shortly.
“Malen’s birth,” she says firmly, even as her eyes turn shiny, animating the ocean in her eyes. “Malen’s birth has changed the lives of everyone in our family for the better.”
Her eyes soften, and so does her voice as she turns into the Laurie from twenty years ago, taking me back to the birth of her daughter. Her voice shakes as we replay her life. “I didn’t know she had Down Syndrome before she was born. But she’s humbled us. She makes us understand that differences are a wonderful thing. And it took me a really long time to have her.”
A single tear rolls down her cheek as she tells me how Malen was her miracle baby.
“I don’t think things happen for a reason and all that … I think things happen. It’s how you take them that matters.”
“I had a second daughter after her. Different packages. Blessed twice,” Laurie shares.
“Their sisterhood is where I witnessed something truly miraculous. People tell me it must be hard having one daughter with special needs and their sibling bond. I say no. It really isn’t. The bond between them is miraculous. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
And there’s something in how she says it lets me know I’ve stopped talking to someone. I’m communicating with her soul. She speaks entirely from her heart beyond the barriers of oceans and tricky Zoom calls. And it’s so incredibly clear how much she loves her daughters.
“Even my parents and in-laws will declare Malen their favorite grandchild,” she grins ear to ear.
“The other ones don’t get upset. I think it’s because of her special needs.”
Her eyebrow quirks, and so does her upper lip as she shakes her head.
“But if I ask them, they’ll say no. They’ll say we don’t see Malen as someone with special needs. Malen is just Malen.”
Malen is just Malen.
Malen is just Malen.
There’s something so human about that sentence and how Laurie says it, reminding us that we’re the same at the end of the day. We’re all humans. Whether it’s humans of California or humans of Dubai, we’re humans of the world.
“We just love her and the way she is.”
And there’s something so deeply moving to learn from that.
I ask Laurie what advice she has to give us.
“To feel happy is so much better than to feel mad, angry, or sad,” she says gently, placing a hand on her chest as her eyes widen.
“Just give it a try. Leave it behind; let it go. Look at the positivity. And that’s what you learn at Blue Dot. In my twenty-five years of being in this world of care, that’s the greatest lesson Blue Dot has taught me.”
I ask her a question I’ve been putting off for a while now.
“If this was your last day on earth, who would you spend it with?”
I can tell this question immediately shakes her. She counters with a question of her own, “Does it have to be one person?”
That tells us a lot about Laurie, and it’s my turn to be caught off guard.
“No, it doesn’t.” I don’t mean to say it—but I do.
Without missing a beat, Laurie says, “My family. I mean, my children for sure, my husband, and—and if my parents were alive …” her words die.
“I wish we could all be together. And if I knew I was going to die, I’d be happy. We’d be happy. It would not be a sad day. I would want it to be happy,” she closes her eyes in resolution.
“You want your last day to be the best. Think about the great stuff you had. Not the end. And that’s something Blue Dot has taught me.”
As we discussed happiness and finding joy and love, she excitedly told me how she loves caroling on Christmas with the Blue Dot Community. The words spill out of her mouth like a river.
“We went store to store in the downtown area,” she tells me. “We’d walk in, start to sing, and the store owners would just join in.”
One of her favorite parts of Blue Dot is the dances they host. She shares that they see the Blue Dot community intertwine with the rest of the population, especially at these community events. “It’s one. It’s not them and us. It’s one.”
One time, Chrissy’s parents allowed it to be in their home at Thanksgiving. She beams, “It was everyone cooking, eating, laughing, and socializing!”
“My daughter, seeing her smile,” Seeing Laurie smile at the thought of her own daughter’s bright beam tells me exactly what kind of mother Laurie is.
“Tell you what, if I could send you some pictures, Tanisha,” she exclaims. “I’ll send you some of my daughter. If the financial peace and the red tape hurdles weren’t there,” she admits. “It would be so, so much better for everyone.”
I ask her about Malen’s future with the Blue Dot community.
She tucks a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “Truth be told, I worry about Malen when I’m gone,” she whispers. “I’m not sold on the idea of a group home, and I’m sure there are some great ones …” she trails off. “I hear a lot of mixed things. If Blue Dot was able to get to a point where they were able to …”
I nod emphatically. Laurie’s thoughts need no words to be said. She smiles. “I think that would really be great.”
She leaves me with a sentence that she writes in my heart.
“I just wish people knew more about Blue Dot. I want people to learn about the community. You could have ten children or none. You could be single or married. It doesn’t matter. They just—they just have so much to offer. And if people could just follow their example—just be optimistic and excited about life, but most importantly, kind …” She leaves me with what I now know is a signature Laurie beam.
In every essence of the word, Laurie is a mother.
And I don’t think Laurie is just Malen’s mother.
Laurie is a mother of Blue Dot, a mother of children with Down Syndrome, a mother of people with disabilities, and a mother of society’s forgotten. And I think the world could be much happier, brighter, and kinder if, like Laurie, we could all smile a lot wider, love harder, and dream bigger.
Bridge Ink 