Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
After learning to drive, my mother was eager to teach others in need of liberation;
I was her most resistant pupil. I finally succumbed to her wishes when faced with the challenge
of renting a car in the British Isles during an upcoming vacation with a childhood friend.
By then I was in my late twenties and living in my own place in Manhattan; my parents had
left Queens for a new house in Long Island. It was a grandiose idea to think that I could
drive on the left side of the road when I had not yet mastered the right. But I was
still young and eager to please my license-lacking traveling companion who had lived in Scotland
and promised to show all, if I could do the driving. My mother seized her moment and showed
up on my doorstep two or three times a week for almost two months to give me driving practice.
I remember almost smacking a bus once and going the wrong way down a one-way street,
but none of my misjudgments seemed to faze my mother. She showed fearlessness and perfect
confidence that I could do this, I would do this, and I would like it. The promise of
a delicious steak dinner at the end of each session and her unshakable will got me through
those initial near disasters. As skill replaced images of myself lying dead on the highway,
I was surprised to discover an amazing sense of mastery and freedom emerging. I could drive
myself anywhere in the world, not dependent on anyone else's desires or whims! My fantasies
started nationally as I imagined driving to New Mexico to eyeball the magnificent red,
orange, and purple sunsets while pretending to be Georgia O'Keeffe or journeying to Cape
Cod off season to talk with the ocean and walk naked on the beach. Then I became more
expansive, driving to kiss the Blarney stone. I also imagined speeding past our family doctor
and giving him the finger. As I shared with my mother, tentatively at first, my newfound
sense of freedom and began reeling off all the adventures I might undertake, she shrieked
with pleasure and said, "Let's go." Her enormous enthusiasm surprised me. I suppose I had feared
abandonment—that should I, her youngest child, become truly independent, she would
become distant and disapproving. But clearly, she would not let me go so easily. When I
got my license on the first try, we celebrated with steaks, but as dessert, she insisted
on teaching me how to get on and off the Long Island Expressway so that I could drive to
her house. The trip to the British Isles never materialized, but it had already served its
purpose. When I drive now, more than thirty-five years later, whether on expeditions to freedom
or journeys to fulfill burdensome responsibilities, my mother is always there, calming me in stalled
traffic, beckoning me to undertake outrageous adventures, and warning me against the temptation
to be a passenger in my life.
[MUSIC]
"How do you know how you look, if you can't see yourself in the mirror?" A stupid question
for me to ask a blind friend. "Others are my mirror," she explained, "telling me if
my makeup is smudged, or there's a glaring stain hovering over my right ***." We both
laughed. But I thought she was lucky not having to confront that internal, eternal judge at
each encounter with the looking glass. At least she could choose her judges and moments
of condemnation. I don't know why I'm always shocked to see myself in a mirror. Full body
or head shot, the me in the mirror doesn't seem like me at all. Surely after sixty years
of myriad mirror encounters, I should know what I look like. Yet I encounter a stranger
each time. Who is that woman walking in such a graceless way, with her knees and toes turned
in, head and chest bent forward, body off balance, ready to trip over a crack in the
pavement, an unnoticed step, or nothing at all? Surely not me. Why can't I claim her?
Why in my mind's mirror do I see myself walking like everywoman, like any woman, like anyone
but this woman?
[MUSIC]
As the movie marathon begins, Sylvester, Gene's big, boisterous tuxedo cat, stakes out his
claim, leaping over Gene's body onto mine. He decides where to flop slowly, testing out
my stomach, ***, shoulders, and thighs for just the right combination of meat and bone.
He sits, curls, or sprawls without regard to whether his tail is in my face or his claw
in my rib. I am his chaise lounge, there for his comfort. His presence, his preference
for my body, tickles me. It also terrifies me. My body is in constant motion, especially
when I'm lying down. I am at my own mercy, watching myself shake with no ability to stop
it. Surely I could stop shaking if I really tried—a childhood myth perpetuated. My shame
pervades. During sex I wonder how my lover will react. One is supposed to lose control
through ***, not through a body wandering willy-nilly. My partner's reassurances are
not convincing, a problem not unique to me or my palsied body. As Sylvester lies on me
in perfect stillness, dozing off, my shame impedes my pleasure. Will my movements shake
him into wakefulness? Will I hurt him, pinching his tail now lodged between my thighs, or
his pink nose snuggled between my knees? Will he abandon me for Gene's more dependable body?
My fear intensifies the movements. I panic. Sylvester does not. My jerky movements cause
him to shift his position ever so slightly and resume his sleep. When I pull away my
leg, now cramping, he finds another available body part. There is little my body can do
to dissuade him. Except sneezes, Gene's or mine. Those will send him off the bed, running
for cover, only to return a few moments later to reclaim his chaise lounge. Gene jokes that
Sylvester always chooses me; his teasing is tinged with jealousy. He claims that Sylvester
prefers my body precisely because of my movements, that he finds them soothing, like lying on
a water bed. An intriguing notion, to be chosen for a bodily feature that has been a lifelong
source of rejection. Sylvester will not confirm or deny the theory. By picking me, whatever
the cause, Sylvester has reduced my embarrassment about my body. Better than psychotherapy—cheaper,
too. Maybe defects, differences don't matter all that much when it comes to being lovable.
Maybe we can all be the cat's meow if we choose the right cat.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]
One of the things that has been most meaningful to me is that many...a number of people who
are not disabled, but who have been made to feel different or marginalized in their own
way sort of relate to this. It's not the same. Each oppression is different, but there are
a lot of parallels so I think there is a lot of understanding there. Also, I've discovered
there're not so many people in the world who don't feel like they've been marginalized
one way or the other, sad to say. I mean, some. Some do, you know. But a lot of us have...I
think it's sort of in our culture to have a lot of judgements about how we look and
who we are and so there is a big community out there who can relate to the disability
experience more than I realized.