Photos By Rick Rappaport
Every day is different. An exhausted mom trying to understand why her autistic child never rests. A foster dad needing to know how to feed a premature baby who can’t swallow. A 70-year-old woman who now has charge of her methamphetamine-affected grandchild whose mother is in prison. Sometimes they call. Sometimes they e-mail. Sometimes they walk in the front door. However they reach the Jean Baton Swindells Resource Center for Children and Families, whatever problem or crisis they bring, coordinator Anne Saraceno greets them with the same philosophy: Joy will follow. Joy always follows.
There was a great joy and a lot of struggle when seth and Zeke grey were born. They came into the world within seconds of each other in 1. Though they were identical twins, their lives quickly took dramatically different turns.
The black-haired, brown-eyed boys were born three months early, each weighing less than two pounds. On the third day of their fragile lives, each of them suffered an intense stroke. Zeke recovered from the stroke better than Seth, but both came away with cerebral palsy.