By Kimberly Phyfe 
She didn’t start out as a Gaga. She started out as Grandma. A name my son couldn’t say for two years. There were lots of things he couldn’t say or didn’t say, but we didn’t know why at the time.
When James was eight months old, he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. When he was just two years old, he was diagnosed autistic. In an instant, I became Mama to a child with special needs. In the same breath—and with one of his first words—my mom became Gaga.
Gaga changed her whole life to accommodate everything James needed. While we lived with her for several years, her world rotated around him. Every day, our house was filled with special education teachers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, behavioral therapists, feeding therapists, and speech-language pathologists. Our living room became the Grand Central Station of faith, hope, love, and LeapFrog toys.
Gaga researched every book, every toy, every support available to toddlers with disabilities. Gaga showed up to every meeting, sat in on every session, and talked to the teachers as though they were old friends over cups of tea so that she could carry on the work they were doing with James the other 23 hours a day.
Gaga made a new room just for James and turned the entire house accessible the best she could. She redesigned the backyard and filled the gardens with appropriate outdoor play pieces he could learn from and interact with.
Gaga learned how to hold him up in the harness of his walker and take him for short jaunts up and down the block. Gaga patiently stopped to let him pet every single dog they met along the way and knew that puppies are better at socializing than most humans. Gaga figured out which playgrounds within a 25-mile radius were accessible and inclusive for kids like James.
Gaga bought approximately one million pints of blueberries and raspberries and strawberries when his sensory processing disorder didn’t allow him to eat anything but berries for months on end.
Gaga tucked him in with stories for afternoon naps. She woke him with chocolate milk and songs each morning. She read Little Blue Truck so often that she had it memorized.
Grandma became Gaga, and Gaga became the heart and soul of James.
As a mother, we know the pain of watching our own children suffer. My mom was watching me struggle with his diagnoses, his IEP meetings, his doctor appointments, his milestones, his deficits, and she held my hand through all of it. Gaga wasn’t just there for James. She was there for me—her daughter—as she has always been.
I am never too old to be hugged by her, comforted by her, made whole by her. I am never too smart or too right that I don’t ask my mom’s opinion or advice. I am never too strong to turn away her helping hands.
She held me both as her daughter and as James’s mother. She held James when my hands were too full, my shoulders too heavy, my heart too aching, my body too tired. Gaga’s love is big enough for the both of us. Bigger than cerebral palsy. Bigger than autism. Bigger than whatever comes our way next.
So God made a Grandma into a Gaga.
by Linda Orleans 
by Sara Borgstede 
