The Still Point Of The Turning World Read Online Free PDF Page A

happiness and fulfillment hinge upon radical transformation followed me throughout my life. From an early age, I had fantasies of being “healed” of my disability, a miracle I envisioned as rather more Disney than biblical. As my body levitated from the bed in a haze of glitter, my hair, spun in a French twist, would sparkle. My skin would shine. Free of my wooden leg and the need for it, ball gown spinning out around me, my perfect body would land in an adult-sized version of that dollhouse along with my adult-sized husband (attractive and successful) and slightly smaller children (brilliant and Ivy League bound). I would effortlessly serve elaborate dinner parties, be the perfect mother and write a best-selling novel every month. I would finally be at home.
    I was born in Nebraska, and one morning when I was four years old my mom was out on the porch with me when a woman walking by on the street approached her and started asking questions: “What’s wrong with your baby? How come she looks that way?” I had just been fitted with my first wooden leg—a scary-looking contraption made of cloth, metal and wood, a leg right out of the Iron Age, but circa the late 1970s, in this case. (People are often shocked at or even disbelieving of the rudimentary technology of my first legs. My parents were simply offered what they were told was available, and they accepted it.) My mom told this passerby about my disability and she replied, “Well, I guess you can love her anyway, even if she only has one leg.” My mom was angry, naturally, but at this time she was not yet comfortable with being confrontational. Instead, she hauled me inside, wooden leg and all, and loved me. She never stopped.
    One of the hardest parts of living with a disability is dealing with other people’s responses to it. People often find this baffling.
Don’t you wish you could just have two legs?
Yes, it would be easier, but it’s impossible, and this body is what I’ve always known. It would be nice, however, to move through the world without people assuming that when you are disabled, the devastation is constant, total, consuming and ever present. It isn’t. But if you fall too far outside culture’s ridiculously restrictive assumptions about what a “good” body looks like and does, people believe that one quick glance is enough to pass judgment on your quality of life, your prospects, perhaps even your state of mind and your basic goodness. I’ve been both pitied and admired because I wear an artificial leg, and it’s sometimes difficult to decide which is worse. Some examples: “If I had one leg, I’d never leave the house!” Really? That seems impractical. “I can’t imagine how you live.” Day by day, just like everybody else. “You are so brave and amazing.” What would make us hibernate, as people with disabilities, what would make us hide? Why this shame that grips and won’t let go? Why this idea that people with disabilities are “extraordinary” when they are only trying to live ordinary lives? I crossed continents—Africa, Asia, Europe—to try to find answers to these questions.
    What I realized was that people across this country and across the world suffer from a lack of imagination when it comes to disability. Disability lacks a frame. We get no assistance from the media, literature and popular culture, where the stories are either full of pity and sadness or impossible physical feats performed by inspiring people with disabilities who run marathons or climb mountains using expensive prosthetic equipment. Most disturbing of all is a common reaction that is rarely questioned: what people view as the “tragedies” of others makes them feel better about themselves. If somebody else has it worse than you, you can walk around feeling lucky for a few minutes. In the weeks following Ronan’s diagnosis it upset me to think that Ronan and I had no purpose at all in this world other than to serve as reflections for