Winter 2001 #12  

I DETEST the use of capital letters to add emphasis. And I LOATHE!! the inane habit of doubling or tripling exclamation marks to further exclaim their exclamity.  But what I ABHOR is the way people invariably direct their questions and comments to the taller, walking person when I am out with an able-bodied companion.  Their (perfectly reasonable) assumption that I can’t fend for myself DRIVES ME NUTS  !!!  

I was slow to notice how frequently this happens; and I had well-developed defensive mechanisms in place long before I consciously identified the ‘Walkie Talkie Effect’.  For example, in able-bodied company I would race to be first at a counter; I would prepare all my typed messages in advance; and I would always keep my computer on standby, ready for action should anything need to be communicated to anyone!  Over time, however, I have learned that my defenses are ineffective against the powerful Walkie Talkie paradigm: people will chat over my head, and there is little I can do to stop it.  I am hypersensitive to an ironic cruelty that occurs with regularity: while I am the one with no voice, the able-bods above me instinctively revert to non-verbal communication to mutely discuss my competence.  I have seen this a hundred times: in a furtive glance away from me and up to the Walkie Talkie, the person I am attempting to engage will search my companion’s face for some clue as to my fitness to conduct business in public.  I can read it in their eyes, “Is it OK to talk to this man, or should I talk to you instead? Are you his carer? How handicapped is he?  Can you rescue me?”  GOSH I hate THAT.

Recently I was travelling by train with a cherished (nameless) family member, and the Walkie Talkie Effect was in full swing!  On this occasion I was definitely the ‘expedition leader’; my companion having considerably less rail experience, and none whatsoever with a wheelchair. But do you think anyone believed that?  Not for a moment.  CRIKEY!! It was on for young and old (there is a tiny clue there) with railway staff almost oblivious to my presence, let alone my consummate ability as a locomotive pilgrim.  My DISPLEASURE reached a crescendo when a passenger standing onboard our carriage (my unnamed relative has rather a penchant for engaging complete strangers in jovial banter) said, about me, verbatim: “And doesn’t he look smart too, nicely turned out in his cap and scarf”.  AARGH!!! How DEMEANING!! The memory makes my skin crawl.

I understand the Walkie Talkie effect, and I’m certain that if I were either one of the walking persons, instead of being the odd-bod in the wheelchair, I would do just the same.  I probably have done.  Most folks genuinely want to help, after all; and how are they to guess the degree of my ability?  I suppose it’s reasonable for anyone to conclude that my difficulties are due to some sort of brain damage; or a mental handicap.   I sometimes get the feeling that is what people are thinking, and I have a little card in my collection that I flash now and then:

It HURTS! In the same way that we often feel much younger than our years, I am inclined to forget starkness of my circumstance until something or someone reminds me.  These moments can be tipping points for many collected emotions: ANNOYANCE, FRUSTRATION, JEALOUSY, EMBARASEMENT, FEAR, UNCERTAINTY – you name it. 

But mostly, it pains me to say, it’s sheer pride. Few of these feelings are any different in nature or intensity from those I felt in different circumstances as a ‘normal’ person throughout my life. It’s so tempting to make excuses.  It’s all too easy to indulge the feeling of being wronged.  Attribution is a delicate matter: a wheelchair can be a great pretext for making one’s own issues everyone else’s problem.  I have had a long attraction to the ‘quieted soul’ that King David describes in Psalm 131:

My heart is not proud, LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.

Rejoice!

Winter 2011 #11

Little One can be a touch slow of a morning.  But let’s delve into the thesaurus for a moment and refine that description:  She can be obstinate, obdurate, refractory, ponderous, intractable and just plain stubborn!  Getting her out the door for school on some mornings requires super-human creativity.  Something within her adorable character is acutely sensitive to the tiniest hint of urgency; and once triggered her cooperation is then available in inverse proportion to its necessity!  The more dire punctuality becomes, the less likely we are to achieve it.  But, I guess parents the world over have played School-Morning Stand-Off.

Little One takes this pastime just a parsec or two further than our other children dared to even dream.  Back when we lived in a home with a rather grand front staircase, Little One would sometimes commence a special morning dance on the top step: three steps left, hop, three steps right, hop-hop; stamp both feet, rock side to side, and…….jump!  Three steps left, hop, three steps right, hop-hop; stamp both feet … you get the idea.  The OCD two-step. Our sole parental defence against this attack was complete absorption: watch, smile, don’t blink.  The slightest whiff of frustration, or a stolen glance at a wrist watch, could risk a dramatic escalation to the OCD Salsa, or even the Tango!  You may think we are soft, indulgent parents:  I assure you, with six children and almost 250 parent-years clocked up between us; that is most certainly not the case!

Little One also had imaginary pets that attended preschool.  Impressively, the invisible companion that left in the morning was often the very same friend that came home six hours later, and we could read up on the activities of this exact animal in the teacher’s communication book that evening.   My favourite was a crocodile who first visited our home around the time of Steve Irwin’s fatal encounter with a stingray.  In order to be put in the car the make-believe croc had first to be violently spear-tackled in the hall by our then four year old, wrestled into submission, roped, and dragged unwillingly with one hand, school satchel in the other.  Several years on my Favourite Wife still rises at 5.30am, hoping each day to gain the strategic high ground in the daily battle of wills!

Lately I am also ‘a touch slow of a morning’.  So slow, in fact, that three weeks ago I finally called it quits on the all-important Tuesday bus ride to our church office, where I have held a gradually diminishing role these past couple of years.  This journey has been the regular highlight of most weeks. The productivity and banter of our staff and team have been a rich delight, and a privilege to share.  More recently communication (or rather its absence) has eroded much of the pleasure of this routine; but the death-knell of my career was sounded by something far more mundane: Personal Grooming.  I can no longer both dress myself and catch a bus on the same morning.  For weeks I have been juggling options, tweaking bus connections, even arranging Home Care to come in the late afternoon – just to squeeze the last little bit out of Tuesdays.  But all to no avail. 

Like a midnight ebbing of the tide, the last days of my thirty year vocation went unnoticed by friend or colleague. No fanfare, no gold watch. I don’t know why, perhaps the required words are too hard to phrase, but more likely no one noticed.  It’s a pathetic little tale, don’t you think?  And I am dreadfully aware of the indulgent self pity in my melodramatic retelling!  

Nothing has been as hard to surrender as this; perhaps because one’s occupation is something of a metaphor of other strengths.  As a carpenter when we were first married there was immense satisfaction in packing up tools after long and productive days, driving home, sitting at the dinner table with our young family, sensing the pleasure of sheer exhaustion, the tingle of small wounds  and the buzzing of muscles well stretched. Good days!  Later on in ministry my fulfilment sometimes rested on the delivery of a good sermon, or in a valuable counselling discussion, or in the myriad other enjoyable details of a busy church.  I dearly miss the purpose and accomplishment that attended several decades of life; but I also question my own attachment to industry.   Business, achievement and – above all – popularity, are heady opiates that have shielded me from prolonged exposure to aspects of my own soul; and these new days of long and silent inactivity require a fortitude and peacefulness that I wonder if I possess.

But I am fortunate as well, or blessed.  No doubt Little One will entertain us (or terrorise us!) with a new rendition of morning-slowness again tomorrow; and then the house will grow quiet for many hours, until the sun sets and they return home once more.  I will have my own unhurried company for much of that time; to spend – I hope – in reflection, gratitude, prayer, correspondence, language and thought. A Golden Watch, perhaps?

 

Rejoice!

 

Winter 2011 #10

We are up in the air.
Figuratively that’s often the case; today, though, it is literally true.  My Favourite Wife, Little One and I are flying home from my mother’s funeral service.  Completing our foursome Bugger, the power chair, is riding safely in the cargo hold somewhere down below. 

We very nearly stayed at home, the logistics of travelling so far with not one, but two disabled passengers seemed way beyond our reach. But early last week I took my chair out to the airport, and after much measuring, weighing, discussion and consulting of manuals the staff assured me that we could indeed fly.  My ever-resourceful brother flew down to be my travelling companion.  Some people call him “Q”, for his uncanny ability to resource almost any exploit.  An aviation journalist and amateur pilot, he is allowed onto the normally prohibited space of the busy runway apron; and it was fascinating to watch him at work instructing the Captain and ground crew in the finer points of loading my wheelchair onto their plane!  He’s a hero, and I could not have flown without him. 

Little One and I flew separately. For her first experience in the air there would be just one parent to give her undivided attention, and definitely no alternate parent in her sight.  Little One is a walking-talking-wedge, dividing and conquering with the skill of a political campaigner.  But she did very, very well, because she is a hero too. She has been a wonderful girl all weekend. (…except for the moment when she oh-so-innocently persuaded me to show her how the hotel key-card worked.  With the door barely open a crack the temptation was too great. Through she shot, a ten-year old filly on the home straight, full tilt, with Bugger and Mother flat tack behind.  We finally caught her just as she rounded the farthest corner of our hotel floor.  She is our Little (tricky) Hero.

My Best Girl; now she is a hero of the constant, enduring type.  Her heroism is not the sort that emerges in moments of crisis – although it can.  She is an everyday hero of the most uncommon kind.  Every day she carries us, her family, in her hands and in her heart. Without her we have no tomorrow.  She is my Favourite Hero.

My father, now he is a true Hero too.  I wrote of him last week, and he is still the same: embracing so many with love and gratitude and peace and fun and love.  We have been to a funeral, but we have been fully alive. In coming together to say farewell, our large and diverse family have met one another more deeply and afresh.  I can only speak for myself, but my sadness is far outweighed by joy.  We have lost one of our own, and in one sense must be poorer.  But in dying we live; and a life well lived lives on: not only in its own eternal way, but in the life and love we share as we all live and grow. My mother’s sons, cousins, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, great grand children, and on and on; one and all we are family, an immeasurable wealth. 

Rejoice!

Winter 2011 #9

I didn’t write last week. Lots of interesting thoughts were jotted down, ready to go, but nothing was close to honest beside the singular truth that my mother was dying, and I wasn’t ready to write about that.

Am I ready now? “It wasn’t time for her to go”, a friend once said to me with moist eyes; adding words I have not forgotten, “There is never a right time to lose your mum”. Right for Mum, perhaps, and in time it might be right for all of us; but today it is wrong.  Today I need to open memories, fondle the texture of sights and sounds from all the years, and fold them away for another day.  I am still wondering where part of me has suddenly gone, a dislocation, an amputation.

I am wondering, also, how to utter this grief.  I’m a talker; not garrulous or even florid (as far as I know!), but I have always talked a thing through in order to find its core.  A mathematics equation at school often fell into its obvious solution while I explained my attempt to a fellow student.  A crossword blank will sometimes jump out in the very moment that you read aloud the clue.  And on any day when my world seems dark, a conversation with a friend – a conversation about anything at all – has always seemed enough to brighten the sky.  I need some banter, a chat, just a moment to tell someone how I feel; how well my family is dealing with the news, how proud I am of my own father.  I’d like to reminisce out loud, to recall the incomparable aromas of my mother’s kitchen, revisit the safety of childhood adventure, embrace – in words at least – my Mum who kept us safe, and talk about the one I dearly miss.  Instead I have this sterile, Helvetica vocabulary of keyboard phrases and the odd whispered thought.  If grief is a passage, I am wedged between its walls; trapped, unable to gain traction and establish my gait. Wordless emotions are lying at bay, itching to emerge, hungering for their cathartic declaration; but their moment will not come. How do you process grief without giving voice?

My father, however, amazes me.  He has set the standard in saying farewell in love.  He has stayed completely at his post, a helmsman of the family ship, steering unerringly to safe harbour with warmth and humour and stamina and great courage.  Our much-loved cousin found words to capture his spirit…

so calmly
so peacefully
so logically
so acceptingly
so positively
so lovingly

so today

 

 

Rejoice!