Part 7 of "Miracle Boy"

First of all, readers, I have finally posted a promotional clip for this book proposal. It seems to be necessary these days for authors to double as pitchmen (or pitchwomen).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0eyffGTHLU

Now, on to the business at hand -- the latest installment of MIRACLE BOY GROWS UP ... (O, that I were in your shoes, encountering these words for the first time!)

***

Finally, finally, finally the door opens and Mom and Dad come out and they're smiling and talking and shake hands with Dr. Spiro, who waves at me.


"So what was that all about?" I ask in the elevator. Dad's pushing me. I'm facing the back wall but it's a mirror so that's okay.


"Just grown-up talk," says Mom.


Mom is intense and coiled-up inside, like something forceful and beautiful wrapped in a tight package. She's about a foot shorter than Dad; Dad's a good six-feet-two-inches, with broad shoulders, though he's not athletic. One of the things Mom and Dad have in common is a great faith in doctors. To them, medical science holds all the answers. "It's not so many years since a man named Dr. Salk cured polio," Mom has told me many times.


I'm not too keen on the idea of a cure for my amyotonia, though. I'm used to my life as it is and any change would be really weird to get used to. I'm not so badly off as many people think I am. I'm not. I'm not like other handicapped kids!


In the car, my chair folded and crammed between the front and back seats, Dad driving, Mom tells me more. We always take the car to Dr. Spiro's because his office is in the Bronx or Queens or someplace like that. "Dr. Spiro is pleased with you. He feels you're doing fine."


"He always says that,” I say, even though it feels good to hear.


"He sees almost no change from last year, which means your amyotonia may be stabilizing. He says it's now called spinal muscular atrophy. You're not losing strength, and you should stay the same your whole life. You know there's no cure still, but you're not getting worse."


You mean I could have been getting worse? I can't recall a time when I had more strength than I have today. I'm told I crawled a little as a baby, which I can't do now, but I figure I was smaller and lighter then. In any case, I don't remember it. I have no sense of lost capacity. So Mom's news ripples past me with little impact.


Mom says we know the worst of it now. She sounds relieved as she says this. From behind the steering wheel Dad adds, "That's good news," in case I didn't understand. If it's such good news, why was I kept out of the doctor's office? And what took so long in there? Just grownups' way of doing things, I guess. I look out the car window. It's getting dark.


If the bad guys pulled up alongside our car now and started shooting, I'd crash out through the window and jump on top of their car. I'd reach inside their window and pull out the driver. If the car started to skid off the road I'd jump off just in time. I'd roll on the ground with guns flaring. They'd run and I'd chase. They wouldn't have a chance. Even if they thought they had me they'd be proved wrong. Just when the bad guys felt I was down and out, I'd shock them by coming up strong and defeating them all, just like I surprise doctors with my strength and intelligence ...


"Of course, you're not going to get any stronger either," Mom says then. "There are no treatments for spinal muscular atrophy, none discovered yet anyway, but that's okay, isn't it? We'll keep hoping, but meanwhile we have to get on with our lives."


I can't read her face. There's a sharp turn at the end of the Triborough Bridge. I know it's coming. It always makes me tip over sideways in my seat, and I silently brace for the inevitable.


***

Part 4 of "Miracle Boy"

The picture is irrelevant. It's Microsoft's clipart. But I figured I needed some illustration here, and it might as well be one that could draw in a few curious readers. (I considered uploading nude photos, but I didn't want to pander!)

Anyway, here's the next installment of "Miracle Boy" Grows Up...


Parents of kids with disabilities tend to be unduly overprotective. It's the extra layer of guilt. From the start they feel responsible for their child's limitations. It doesn't matter if the disability is from an accident or heredity; parents see it as a gnawing reminder of their own shortcomings. They feel intrinsically blameworthy. I'm grateful my parents aren't overly overprotective, but they feel the guilt. For Mom, the day she learned my floppiness was permanent and inborn was the worst of her life. She tells me this whenever I ask and even when I don't. That's partly because she's concerned about my future, but she also questions what she did to deserve this. For Dad, the guilt feelings evolve into a hunt for someone to blame besides himself.

Many parents turn angry—an animal rage directed at doctors, bureaucrats, God or even the child him- or herself. Sometimes these feelings spark a crusade for remediation or justice, a frantic pursuit of a lawsuit, a cure, or political action. But whatever the merits of the cause, the fire is stoked primarily by the need to alleviate the parent's unbearable burden, which is not necessarily in the child's best interest.

"You must, must, must remember the seat belt," Mom scolds Dad, who stands silently nodding. "How could you forget?"

A spate of rhetorical questions follows. Could she trust him ever again? By extension, if my own father can forget my seatbelt, what about other people to whom my care is entrusted?

"This cannot happen again!" she says repeatedly.

Then Mom's hard tone turns abruptly to me. It's in her Republican upbringing to have no patience for self-pity and whining. Look out for yourself. Don't wait for a handout. She's always quick with advice to step up to the plate. She keeps an ongoing, or quickly composed, mental to-do list which she likes to whip out like a gunslinger.

"And Ben," she says then, "Ben, it's your responsibility to check if the person with you has forgotten your seatbelt. Do you understand? Do you hear me? Ultimately it's your responsibility. You must always, always speak up. Understand?"

Not yet four, I'm stunned yet struggle to comprehend. I try to take her admonitions as seriously as I can. Speak up. Don't be shy. Ask for what you need. People aren't mind readers. You've got to speak up. I hear these phrases a lot. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness. The squeaky wheel, etc.

In those days, the mid-1960s, there are scant resources for my parents to draw on, other than doctors. No support groups. No disability-rights organizations or independent-living centers. No sense of a shared, group identity disability-wise, except perhaps for disabled veterans. Any notion of the disabled as a class of ordinary citizens, a population worthy of civil rights, is years away. The first Civil Rights Act, passed in July 1964, when I'm 19 months old—two years before my garage accident—applies almost exclusively to Blacks, of course. It never occurs to anyone, let alone my parents, to extend antidiscrimination and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. Not like in the early 21st century, when we know that some 51 million Americans—or 18 percent of the population—have a disability, making us the single largest minority. The percentage of disabled Americans in the 1960s is probably smaller, though, because medicine and technology aren't yet doing such a good job of keeping us alive.

Medicine aside, to survive with a disability involves equal doses of toughness, pluck, and grit mixed with humor, a stiff upper lip, love, luck and money. In those days, and perhaps still today, you'd best follow the Franklin Roosevelt model: Hide the handicap and its apparatus as much as possible. Minimize them. If and when they slip out, simply flash a winning grin. Use your limitation as a sign of strength and courage, not sorrow, shock or loss. An emblem of overcoming, of achieving despite all.

Or is that best?

***