From Maria C. Smith's column in the Orange County Register:IRVINE, Calif. -- It takes all of Bridget Beresford's strength – all 4 feet, 5 inches and 55 pounds of this skinny, blue-eyed, blond-haired, Hannah Montana-loving, 11-year-old girl – to crank the pedals on the stationary bike and make the wheel go once around.
She did it. With her tongue poking out the side of her shy, toothy smile. With her slender hands wrapped so tightly around the handlebars that her fingertips turned white. With her ramrod arms and legs tugging and pushing and her breath strained. With her parents watching.
"It's going. I'm training for my run," she says proudly of her latest triumph, which is how her parents see everything their little girl sets her heart out to do and does.
She wants to run a 5K in the next Orange County marathon – a big dream built from each day's tiny victories. Simple things – tying her own sneakers' shoelaces, writing B-R-I-D-G-E-T on notebook paper, walking without falling or pedaling a bike – make every day a Thanksgiving.
Bridget has cerebral palsy, the non-progressive disability that explains why she limps when she walks, why she loses her balance and trips and often catches herself a dozen times a day, why her speech is difficult and why homework takes a few hours more for her.
When Bridget was nine months old, doctors gave Grant and Linda Beresford varying diagnoses about their second child's condition. Specialists told the parents that their daughter would have seizures, never walk, never talk, never be – this is a word neither of them says easily – normal.
"And look at her today," says Grant Beresford, 47, glowing and glancing at Bridget who is seated at the kitchen table, stringing together beaded jewelry with her schoolmate, Kelly Seidler. "She's always doing something."
A holiday like Thanksgiving is always one of Bridget's happiest moments because her extended family gets together. This Thanksgiving her parents, brother Sam, 13, and Bridget are spending the day with their grandparents in Mission Viejo.
"I'm making apple crisp for dessert," Bridget says, smiling, showing more than one sweet tooth. "Everyone will be there."
Her story is a lesson about being grateful about what you have and not begrudging what you're living without. Bridget, all of 11 years young, sees her world glittered, gift-wrapped and bowed, embracing a life of Cans instead of Can'ts.
Being born with cerebral palsy – she's starting to realize – has dealt her a life with some limits. She knows she has to work harder than other 11-year-old girls to run across the playground, try harder than other sixth-graders to do a math problem and take longer than most people do to most things.
She had to quit playing soccer and tee-ball because the games were getting too competitive, the other kids getting faster and stronger and Bridget lagging too far behind. So she goes to watch and cheer on her brother, Sam, two years older and ahead in so many other ways.
"Just seeing how she goes at life gives me inspiration every day," her father says.
"Once she puts her mind to doing something, she does it," her mother says.
Bridget has a motto on a bedroom poster and she's happy to recite it, "Never, never, never give up," she says, slapping her hands against her lap. She found a hero and a friend from a Register article her mother read to her about Bonner Paddock, the Ducks' senior director of corporate partnerships, who has cerebral palsy and, in September climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for the Orange County chapter of United Cerebral Palsy.
"When I met Bonner," Bridget says, "he was so nice, and I wanted to help him climb his mountain."
She and her friends started a charity, Acts of Kindness, opened a lemonade stand last summer outside her Northwood community home and raised $750 in donations toward Paddock's fundraising goal.
"She saw what Bonner was doing and wanted to find her own mountain to climb," Linda recalls. "So she decided to run the 5K in the 2009 Orange County marathon and started training."
"Well," the sassy Bridget jumps in, "I'm going to run or walk it. But I'll try to run as far as I can."She started her own running team, Team S.M.I.L.E. (Strength, Motivation, Inspiration and Limitless Enthusiasm), and set out to raise $100,000 for UCP-Orange County. With slow, jagged steps, she ran for stretches around a park as her parents followed. Her friend, Shaina Rosenberg, has jogged beside her on some Saturdays, encouraging her at each turn.
"I can do this," she says about the run, nodding her head confidently. "I like to do a lot of things."Like walk her two dogs: Knuckles, a beefy, tan and white Cavalier King Charles Spaniel; and Hershey, a chocolate-kiss colored Yorkie Poo puppy. And swim in her backyard pool. And play tag in the sand with her cousins. And ride a chestnut mare named Sedona.
At Canyon View Elementary, she goes to classes with other sixth-graders. They talk about "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical" and have, as her parents call it, "sixth-grade drama." On Halloween, she went trick-or-treating with her friends. "I was soda pop can, Cherry 7-up, and we, my friends, were a six pack," she remembers, giggling.
Each day, she can appreciate a bright day and how the sunshine glints off her long, fine blond hair that bends into a curl below her shoulders. She can feel the rain drizzle on her freckled cheeks. She can laugh. She can smile.
And she's thankful for the life she can live.
