Bless Your Heart!

Its inevitable.  If you have spent any time at all, permanently or not,  in a wheelchair or on crutches or a walker, have pretty much any visible impairment and you know exactly who I'm talking about.  You're going along pushing yourself down the aisle at the grocery store, or making your way up a ramp, or going through a door, you'll hear that phrase "Bless your heart!" chimed from behind you and suddenly feel that sudden jolt of momentum forward or the cart or basket whipped out of your hands or shoved out of the way so they can get a door open for you.  Its the well-intentioned person that perceived a need and then decided to act with charitable kindness in behalf of a less-fortunate.  In my experience this situation is compounded exponentially when you become a parent.

Its frustrating, really.  I am probably one of the most independent people you'll meet.  Probably to a fault.  I've always tried to find ways to do it myself and when I added children to my life, the challenge of finding ways to manage them and my chair became paramount.  And I figure for the most part I've done a pretty good job.  Dealing with those stupid car carriers for infants is something I'm particularly proud of.  I balance the carrier on my dominant leg while I hold the handle with one hand.  I then use my other hand to propel one wheel forward.  Then I quickly switch hands on the handle and push forward on my other wheel with my other hand.  Once I gain a fair amount of momentum, its easy peasy lemon squeezy as my daughter says.  It looks terribly awkward.  Thus it become a magnet for the well-intentioned.  The other day as I was heading into our local Wally-big-box store to get some things, I had almost made it across to the front doors when I heard the familiarly grating sound of "Bless your heart!".  Promptly, my child in his carrier was taken from off my lap, carried into the store, and put in a cart all before I could say "Hey!"  The woman beamed with pride as I and my other children caught up to her.  I just didn't have the heart to scold her with so much well-intentioned-ness exuding from  her.  I just mumbled a thanks and took control of the cart.  But I couldn't help but think that if something like that had happened to an able-bodied person, the woman could very well be leaving Wally-big-box in handcuffs for attempted child abduction.  But how to explain that to a person without delving into a long, bitter-sounding diatribe that I would appreciate being asked first, like anyone else.

To be fair, a good number of people I've come across do ask first.  Its probably one of the only reasons that when the well-intentioned do ask, I have a really hard time telling them "no".  I, when I had only two children to deal with instead of three, had gone to a different Wall-big-box to get some much needed grocery shopping done.  A full basket is usually not an issue when you've got a very well-trained three year old at your side and the nine-month-old sitting peacefully in his car carrier on top of the basket.  But it had dumped quite a bit of snow the night before.  Wally-big-box, in their infinitely cheap wisdom, decided it wasn't important to plow their parking lot.  Its so huge and that would be expensive.  And to add insult to injury, it had dumped quite a bit more snow, wet snow, while I was in the store.  Wet snow + full grocery basket + wheelchair = big problem.  I sat there staring at my van only 30 feet from me.  It might as well have been across the Grand Canyon.  I guess I looked pretty pathetic because I heard "Bless your heart!" chime from in front of me.  It was an older couple who were heading in from the blizzard to the store.  They asked me if I could use some help and what could I say?  I knew I wasn't getting across the frozen slush pile by myself.  In no time I found myself and my kids neatly packed up in my car with the groceries in the back.  And before they left they said "God bless you, honey."  And I immediately said back to them, "He already did."

Odyssey

I am not a perfect mother.  My kids can be brats.  I sometimes yell too much.  My house looks like a tornado hit it almost every single day.  So this won't be a blog solely about those precious moments you see on Mother's Day commercials with a beautifully coiffed woman snuggling her cooing baby to her.  Motherhood is messy and wonderful at the same time.  Then add a wheelchair to the mix.

I'm a full-time manual wheelchair user.  I have been since I was two and a half.  My awesome parents always encouraged me to do what I could do - which I did.  I wasn't a sports star.  I didn't break any records or discover new ways of doing things.  I just lived my life as best as I could and didn't let people tell me I couldn't do something.  I went to regular schools.  I went to college for a while.  I had jobs.  Then I met my husband and a year later we decided we were going to try to have a baby.

And thus my odyssey began.  I didn't see doctors very often at that point in my life.  I saw them a lot when I was little and my disability was new.  But after a certain time, my parents and I were sick of the constant round of doctors and physical therapist appointments that were only accomplishing the maintenance of my muscles but offering no hope of my walking ever again.  Plus, in the late 70s, so very little advancements had been made in the realm of physical rehabilitation, let alone information available to doctors and parents about how disabilities and spinal cord injuries affected the daily lives of people, that my parents and I just dealt with what we were given and didn't keep up with the disability community or advancements in physical medicine.  The few doctors my parents had approached about whether or not I would be able to bear children could only shrug their shoulders.

Time marched on and like any other young women, I started menstruating in my early teens.  Both my mom and I took it as a sign that something was working down there, but in the back of our minds there was always doubt.  And the doubt became concern when my husband and I were still not pregnant after trying for a year.  We were almost at the point of trying infertility treatments when that wonderfully pink second line showed up on the pregnancy test.

I don't think for this post I'll go into my pregnancies because I could seriously write a whole book by itself about that.  But suffice to say, that both pregnancy and motherhood have been a very rude awakening to someone who has always lived her life as if she weren't disabled.  The only way I can explain it is like being disabled all over again.  Your paradigm has to shift.  You cannot do things they way did them before.  So as a result you have to figure out new ways of doing almost everything.  The one positive among what could seem like a whole slew of negatives is that you have this gorgeous child that is your very own.  And they do one thing that sometimes seems so very hard to find from people if you have a disability - they love you unconditionally.  Your child doesn't know you have a disability (well, at least not until later anyway).  They don't care if your legs don't work or your eyes don't see, or your ears don't hear.  They depend and love you just the same as if you were able-bodied.  And they grow and adjust right along with you.

I've been a mother for six years now, or seven if you count the nine months I was pregnant with my oldest.  I've learned so much in that time, and I've got a lot more learning to do.  I have two awesome kids and expecting my third soon.  I'm very aware that life is about to get super crazy.  Probably even more crazy than I thought it would be, with a school-ager, a pre-schooler and an infant.  I think this blog is an attempt to find the funny in all the craziness.  Because really, eventually its all going to be funny to me.  Life goes by so fast, and I'm starting to learn that my kids are growing up way too fast for my liking.  So why not document how this all plays out and maybe learn something in the process.