I think in all of this, I have oversimplified my mother's response
(and my own). Even, as Dona pointed out, the choice of the word
"adjustment" is questionable, and it is not typical of the way I
useually describe the prcessing of experience post-injury. My mother,
I think, did try to hide her feelings of despair, and she did let me
set the pace and style of my reentry into the world, and did watch, as
dona suggested, with amazement and pleasure as I went back to school
and did stuff she didn't, and I didn't think i could. And I think, in
many ways, she did a wondeful job. Enough for now, I've got to get
this down on paper for posterity. Thanks all, Simi
> So when you write:
> >It was my experience that my mother was "adjusting" to my
> impairment/disability status,
> >long after I'd moved on.
>
> I suggest that what you saw as 'adjustment' might have been
> 'amazement.' Maybe she, like myself and Ruff's mom, just had a little
> trouble putting herself in your shoes (or wheelchair), after having
been
> raised in, and observing, an intolerant society.
>
> You write, more recently:
> >I was trying to understand the ways that her ideas about what my
life was
> >going to be like post-injury were different from mine. Her fears that
> >I would have a miserable life, and her wish for me to "get better,"
> >(meaning be able to walk again. . . .
>
> Can you see in this thought the conflation of "her/my" and
"she/me"
> that suggests something about your mother's conflict? We want for our
> children the very best--as we have known it. When disability
confounds the
> picture, when we cannot conceive of "I" as the actor in a disability
scene,
> we fail to see how the performance will unfold. We moms are tough
> critics--of the script and props and set, and especially of the
audience.
> What we *don't* have, is the ability to see ourselves in the role,
because
> we've become too familiar with 'tragedies' (and the Greek Chorus that
> prophecies disaster)--a far more popular genre, if we have been
raised by
> media, literature, charity appeals, and self-serving memoirs or "good
> cripple" eulogies. We fear for your 'reviews,' mostly because we
have BEEN
> part of that audience ourselves and have not seen the disability role
> performed in a way that would impell us to audition for it.
>
> I see now that you were not 'blaming' your mother, but were
puzzled by
> her attitude.
> Hope this sheds some light?
>
> Best,
>
> Dona
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Dona M. Avery
==
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Simi Linton
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212 580 9280 (phone and fax)
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