You Are Not Who You Were

I almost failed typing in high school.  It was a shock to my goody-two-shoes honor-roll self.  But now, freed from the failure-creating restraints of a typewriter without a correction tape, I type fast enough to be paid to do so.

Our family had a computer before we had a TV (and that’s another story), and I never thought of myself as being particularly good at it.  In fact, I thought I was terrible at it.  But now that we’ve moved beyond computers-for-programmers, I’ve learned enough about computers that people actually ask me for help.  On Sunday, our minister at the Anchorage UU Fellowship described the workshop on social networking that she’d attended at General Assembly, and she said, “Basically, they said we need to be on Facebook and I don’t know how to do that but I’ll ask Heather.”  I’m the Heather she was talking about.  Weird.

As a child, I was terrified of dogs.  I had very little experience with them, since we only kept the one dog we ever had for about 2.5 days.  Now I love (most) dogs, and I can actually get Brady to do most of the things I ask him to do.  A few weeks ago he learned “roll over.”

Like everyone else in my school district, my seventh grade electives were divided into four quarters, one quarter each for metal shop, wood shop, cooking and sewing.  Three guesses which one I liked, and was good at.  Did you guess cooking?  Ding, ding, ding!  We have a winner.

I grew up cooking with my mom.  Some of my earliest memories are of sitting the kitchen counter while she cooked and baked.  It was, for me, the best kind of learning–the kind you absorb, rather than consciously acquire.  Seventh grade cooking class just felt natural.

Sewing class, on the other hand, was more alien.  My mother also sewed–but I think she sewed out of obligation, rather than joy.  As I think about how she was when she sewed, it was with a determined concentration that just looked less fun than the creative chaos of the kitchen.

When my seventh grade self applied that determined concentration to sewing, it didn’t work out all that well.  I made a dress (light blue calico) that didn’t fit, and I never really liked.  And I made a stuffed pillow that was supposed to look like a surf board.

I didn’t like the precision that sewing required, and I had trouble keeping steady pressure on the foot pedal.  I decided that I just wasn’t any good at sewing, and I haven’t touched a sewing machine in the years since then.

Until today, when I unpacked this from its box:

It’s a Brother CS6000i, and it was an amazing bargain via Amazon.  I wanted a new creative outlet (crazy quilts), and I wanted to be able to mend and alter our clothes.  This model has an amazing option that tipped me over the edge:  I don’t have to use the foot pedal.  If you follow the link to its Amazon page, and watch the video there, you’ll see that there are buttons just above the foot for forward, backwards and speed control.  (Not only is that good for me, it means that my partner will be able to use the machine as well, without having to find a way around a foot pedal.  An accessible sewing machine, in more ways than one!)

I’m kind of afraid of my new sewing machine.  Well, not of the machine per se.  I’m afraid that I will still be terrible at sewing, and that my bargain will be an expensive doorstop.

But I’m choosing to believe the lessons I’ve learned from typing, computers and dogs:  I am not who I was.  And that, as Gandalf says in The Lord of the Rings, is an encouraging thought.

Barrier-Free Welcome

In your mind’s eye, take a photo of your church’s entrance.  Better yet, look for a picture on your church’s website or Facebook page.

How many stairs are in that photo?

I’ve looked at photos of several UU churches online this past week, and I’ve got to tell you, there are a lot of stairs.

Today I “liked” a UU congregation on Facebook (this is one of the easiest ways for an Alaskan UU to “visit” other member congregations of the UUA).   A photo of the church shows it built on a hillside, its back to a wooded area, with at least twelve stairs built into the hillside leading to the front entrance.  No parking-lot level entrance is visible in the photo.

My first thought as I looked at that photo was to wonder how my wheelchair-using partner would get in.  Further poking around on the congregation’s website reveals other aspects of the building that would make her experience of attending services separate, and unequal.

I’m writing this, not to shame congregations whose buildings are less than welcoming to wheelchair-users, but to make a pragmatic argument.

Here it is:  churches thinking about new buildings should first increase the diversity of their membership.

Buildings emerge from imagination, and imagination emerges from experience.  If the combined experience of a congregation’s members is very diverse, than the congregation will imagine a building that works for a wider variety of newcomers.

Of course, the logical question is, “How can we increase the diversity of our membership when our current building keeps us from extending a barrier-free welcome?”

I don’t have a good answer to that question.  I suspect that an answer begins with humility, with admitting the limits of our welcome, and with asking for help from those our buildings exclude.

Lucky in Love

Coming to terms with spinal cord injury is a life-long endeavor.  Lately I’ve noticed that my partner is talking about it simply as being unlucky–no one to blame, no need to find a reason why it happened.  Just unlucky.

But we’ve also been talking lately about ways in which she’s been really lucky.

She was lucky that her mom is a disciplined, detail-oriented person who taught her the excellent self-care habits that have served her well through 30 years of paralysis.

She was lucky to meet a teacher who joined forces with her mother to fight the public school system for the things she needed as a student–things like making sure the sidewalks were plowed in the winter.  Her mother and this teacher were my partner’s most faithful cheerleaders, telling her repeatedly, “Yes, you can.”

And more recently she has been lucky enough to find a master aircraft mechanic who was able to imagine that someone with paraplegia might actually be an excellent mechanic, who decided to give her a chance, and who was willing to learn from her about what it’s like to live life in a chair.

This is her boss last Sunday.  He crawled into the laundry closet on top of the dryer, reaching down to the bottom of the dryer to attach the gas line, and up to the ceiling to attach the dryer vent.  I didn’t get a photo of him leaping out nimbly from behind the washer (before we stacked the dryer on top).

We also had heavy lifting help from a new neighbor who has become a very good friend.  My partner doesn’t feel comfortable with very many people–the result of a lifetime of being treated badly by people who can’t handle the chair.  But this new friend is someone she has trusted from the moment she met him, and he and his wife have become treasured friends.

Lucky in love, indeed.

One Good Thing You Can Do

My partner and I flew out of Anchorage last Saturday morning, in search of summer.  We arrived in Chicago almost six hours later.

Sounds uneventful, right?  It was, relatively speaking.  No mechanical or weather delays.  The flight wasn’t overbooked.  We left on time.

But commercial aviation is rarely uneventful for those who use wheelchairs, and for those who travel with them.

My partner is always the first one on the plane, and the last one off, extending her time on the plane by at least 45 minutes.  Unless she’s really lucky (seated in the first or second row), she’s been strapped to an aisle chair by airport workers who usually have no clue how to attach the chair’s four or five belts, let alone how to preserve a person’s dignity.  They almost always ask me what seats we’re in, assuming, I suppose, that my partner is not a competent adult.

When we arrive at our destination, we watch with amusement as the great rush to deplane begins.  After our last fellow passenger has left the plane, the aisle chair ordeal begins in reverse.  When we finally are under our own power on the jetway, the race for the bathroom begins.

What I haven’t told you yet is that using the onboard bathrooms is not really an option for my partner.  So when she flies, she has to time her bathroom breaks precisely–once just before the gate agent tells us to board, and as soon as possible after we deplane.

Unfortunately, this fine-tuned process is almost always derailed by other travellers, most often ones who are able-bodied.

Last Saturday in O’Hare, my partner had to stop at three different bathrooms before she found an accessible stall she could use.

When she wheels into an airport bathroom, after the experiences I’ve already described, and sees empty stall after empty stall, with the accessible stall the only one in use, her blood pressure goes through the roof.  It’s absolutely infuriating.

People like the accessible stall because it’s roomy.  Sometimes they “need” the extra room because they’ve dragged their luggage in with them.  Sometimes it’s because they’re (like me!) oversized Americans who don’t like feeling cramped.  Sometimes it’s a parent and child. And sometimes there’s no visible reason at all.

What none of these people understand is that the stall they’ve chosen is not a choice for my partner.  It’s her only option.  Her wheelchair does not fit in a regular stall.

So here’s one good thing you can do in the world:  save the bathrooms!  Not just at the airport, but especially at the airport.  It’s hard for us to educate people without taking their heads off.  Those of you with less skin in the game have a better chance of doing so in a calm and reasonable manner.

See an able-bodied person using an accessible stall, when others are available?  Just say, “You know, some people really need that stall.  It’s for people who use wheelchairs.”

And if you have anything to do with designing public bathrooms, please stop putting the baby changing stations in the accessible stall.  I know it’s easy to think, “This stall won’t be used all that often–let’s use the extra space.”   But people who need accessible bathrooms usually need them right away, not after waiting for a parent to change a child’s diaper.

Thanks for letting me vent, and thanks to those of you who may choose to save the bathrooms!  In my next posts I’ll tell you more about the summer we’ve found in Tennessee.

BAWAKE

For the past several weeks we have been trying to find a rental cabin on the Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  It shouldn’t have been difficult.  Cabin rentals in the area are big business.

We wanted a pool table.  We wanted a mountain view.  We wanted peace and quiet.

Getting what we wanted was easy.

Getting what we needed–accessibility–required a lot more effort.

Life in a wheelchair, or living with someone who uses a wheelchair, teaches you to pay attention to detail, not because you want to, or because attentiveness comes easily, but because it’s necessary.

How many stairs into the cabin?

Is the bathroom door at least 26 inches wide?  Are there any other important doors or routes through the cabin narrower than 26 inches?

Is the toilet tucked away in its own little closet, behind a probably-too-narrow door?

Is there enough clearance on all four sides of the pool table?

We looked at photos.  We checked out floor plans.  We talked to the reservations agents–four or five times.

Yesterday morning we finalized our cabin reservation, then headed into Anchorage for the afternoon.

One of our stops was the ATM at the credit union.  As I stood in line, waiting my turn, a car careened into the parking lot, its driver clearly in a hurry.  He parked on the stripes between two accessible parking spots, completely blocking the only curb cut between the parking lot and the door of the credit union.  He was clearly oblivious, and perhaps he didn’t care.

Sometimes you get tired of educating oblivious “able-bodied” people.  Sometimes anxiety about conflict wins out over anger about narrow, self-focused vision.  I didn’t say anything.

We pulled out of the parking lot, moving on to our next stop.

A few minutes later, my partner said, “I like that license plate.  It says, ‘Be awake.’  Wouldn’t it be nice if people actually were?”