The Wave
I was born on Labor Day, a holiday whose name will forever have a dual meaning for my mother. I was born right on schedule, healthy, seven pounds, seven ounces. My kids came into the world the same way, ten fingers, ten toes, textbook deliveries for picture perfect children. My neighbor’s experience with children has been different. Their son was born with a crippling childhood condition, which, among other difficulties, has confined him to a wheelchair for his entire life. Each morning on my way to work, I wave at that father and son at the end of their gravel drive. They wait there together for the bus with the chair lift that takes the boy to a school, which serves the handicapped children in our area. Handicapped. That’s a tough word for those of us whose bodies are mostly all right. I have no idea what it would feel like to have a disability, or to have a child who was disabled. And deep inside, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to understand what it feels like to be trapped in a wheelchair watching my friends ride the merry-go-round at the fair. I don’t want to feel the eyes of a thousand people staring at my deformity as I move through the mall. I don’t want to develop a keener sense of smell or touch because I cannot see, or learn sign language because I cannot hear. I do not want to know what it means to be handicapped. Instead, I will wave as I pass the boy in the wheelchair, I will look away, even from the blind man as he shuffles my direction. I have learned to avoid any real contact with disabled persons since I was a child. Rather than loving and understanding, I learned to laugh at the “cripples” in school. We all did. It’s was how we dealt with something about which we did not want to know, did not want to feel or understand. But my neighbors do not have the option of escaping reality by merely diverting their eyes or making a joke. That boy’s condition is as real as it is gets. It is right there in front of them every moment. It hurts everyone in that family to watch him struggle; his condition limits their freedom, demands their time, and tries their patience.
And I don’t want to know about it. Because I know that if I begin to understand what he and his family are feeling, my heart may begin to bend in a new direction. I may have to turn my truck around and go back to that driveway and say something to the two of them waiting for the bus. I might start wanting to offer to take their son places when I go, maybe for rides in the country. I might ask, from time to time, if there is anything I could do around the house to ease some of their workload. Yes, I might do any of those things if I allowed myself to understand what it means to be handicapped. But I do not want to know, just leave me alone and I will pass you by. Didn’t you see me wave? But I cannot fool you my disabled friend, because in your heart you know which of us is the more handicapped. You have learned to deal with your disability, but I have never learned to live with mine. If the world would pity only one of us, it should be me... for I believe that I was born without a heart.