Amazing Grace: Couldn't You Just Run Over My Toe?

By: Laura Young
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:25:30
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Helllloooo...it...is...VERY...NICE...to...MEET...you!

I stood, transfixed, trying to wrap my mind around the scene.

My mother was meeting Mike for the first time, after hearing about him for many years. Mike Schwass: national speaker, published author, coach, therapist, namesake for the high school Blackhawks MVP award...and quadriplegic.

Maybe it was the wheelchair height that threw her. Some innate, hard-wired grandma response that kicked in when she bent at the waist automatically signalling to her brain that she must be talking to a six year old.

My...daughter...speaks...very...HIGHLY...of...you!, she boomed.

I winced. Oh God, please don't start trying to use sign language. Mike just smiled and chatted with her and making no attempt to run his wheel chair over my toe, cruelly denying me any chance of satisfying my urge to scream. Now, I know that my mom didn't even realize what she was doing and I have heard enough stories from my years of working in rehab to know that she is not the first person to clump several disabilities into one big crazy pile. I remember hearing other wheelchair (w/c) bound adults telling me that waitresses in restaurants sometimes ask their spouses what the person in the w/c would like to eat, apparently assuming they could not order for themselves. And for some reason people often do feel compelled to speak loudly, more slowly and to use simpler words with folks in wheelchairs. People just get different when faced with people who do not fit the norm for them. This can happen with any readily apparent disability. An amputee friend of mine once told me how bummed he was when he went to a handicapped accessible beach. It was the first time he did not clear an area by taking off his prosthetic leg. Clearing a private area for himself was a phenomenon virtually guaranteed on the typical "able bodied" beach.

Even Mike has told me of times he has been avoided while shopping, denied levels of customer service that the rest of us would consider to be meeting the most minimal standards.

When I would hear stories like this I guess I always felt like I was hearing about the world "out there". The "out there" where people sometimes just don't know any better, were uneducated or uninformed about such things, lacked awareness, or empathy, or just don't know how to cope with things they didn't understand and maybe feared. Where people sometimes were well-intentioned but misguided and where others were just plain mean.

And "out there" implies that there is an "in here". Somehow, I guess I thought that through osmosis or virtue of a blood relationship or friendship that everyone in my universe would just know everything. That Mike would just be my Mike to everyone...the smart, funny, aware, cool guy I know him to be.

But here I was, in my own backyard, with my own mother, God love her, and all I could do was stare in disbelief and pray that Mike would run into my shin really, really hard. Almost like I had this idea in my head that nothing awkward or bad or even innocently misguided would happen to him under my protective bubble and that somehow I had let him down and deserved some punishment.

Please understand I do not want to disrespect or embarrass my mother. She's got a very good heart and I know she was delighted to meet Mike. Further, I hope it does not sound like I think he needs a mother hen around him or that I do not think he can handle life or that I am infantilizing him in someway. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is just that it is so hard to see someone you care about having to deal with so much in life without a break and I would like to run interference for him, to give him islands of "don't worry about a thing, I've got you covered" when I can. And when I do something ridiculous like spill something on him or nearly flip him in his chair when taking a turn to fast in his van, I feel like I've broken a promise. Maybe just a promise I made to myself on his behalf, but a promise nonetheless. But, no matter what, he always takes our human failings in stride.

Maybe that's it. It's his grace in the middle of our blunders, insensitivities and blindspots that always blows me away. He's a bottomless well of forgiveness and understanding.

Up until now I haven't had that temperment. I haven't been able to tap into that immediate grace. When I get annoyed it takes me some time to shake things off. I get there eventually, and a heck of a lot sooner than I used to. It wasn't until the next day when my brother addressed a butter knife at the dinner table with "Helllooo...it's VERY NICE TO MEET YOU" that I could laugh. And in that moment of laughter I forgave my mother her dorkiness. And most of the time I can forgive my own.You are right about the power of "Amazing Grace", Michael. Yours amazes me every time.

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