I believe in the concept of tipping points. I’ve seen it in action in the world and in my
own life, when experiences, or phenomena that are part of a continuum suddenly tip from one end
and become part of the other. So it is
with disability. Part of my job of
developing new supportive housing projects is to educate housing developers
about disability. One thing I always
stressed to them was that the world isn’t “us” and “them”, the world isn’t
divided into the abled and the disabled.
Instead, we all exist on a continuum with ability at one extreme and
disability at the other. As we age, we
journey along the continuum, but at any second, any of us, due to accident or
illness, can tip from one to the other.
Except for a broken ankle when I was a teenager, my stroke
was my first experience with a disabling condition. And what a condition it was. For the first two weeks, I couldn’t even sit
up in bed. I made rapid progress,
though, and after five weeks I was walking
with a cane, and after eight weeks walking unassisted. I’ve continued to make steady progress in my
recovery, even though spasticity has slowed it somewhat.
The area where I notice the biggest difference in my
physical abilities now compared to what I used to be able to do, is working
around the house. I still manage to get
most of the needed repairs and maintenance done, just slower and with more
effort. There are some things I won’t
even attempt, though, like going up the ladder to clean out the second story
gutters. I used to do that without a
second thought.
I live in southern Kentucky, a part of the country not north
or south, sort of on a continuum between the two. Indiana residents consider us
southerners, Tennessee residents consider us northerners. Similarly, our winter weather is between the rain of the south and snow of the
north. We get a lot of ice. And our
latest ice storm was this past weekend.
As ice storms go, it was minor, but it did deposit a layer of ice thick
and heavy enough to bring down a
neighbor’s tree. The neighbor lives
across the street, and some of the tree made it to our yard, but only the
topmost branches. Since it blocked the
city street, the city road crew was soon out to saw it up and haul it away,
leaving us with only a bit of raking and hauling to do.
As I drank coffee by the window and watched the road crew
work, I remembered previous, more severe, ice storms when our own trees were
brought down and I spent days afterward
cutting them up with my chainsaw and hauling the debris to the landfill with my
utility trailer. I recognized a tipping
point had occurred in my life. The next time the ice brings down our trees, I
won’t be able to clean up the damage.
Someone else will have to do it for me.
I realized that I could no longer do what those men were doing, I was no
longer the person who could help others.
I had become the person who needed help from others.
All of us face these changes in our lives and have to deal
with them as best we can. I know I’m not
unique in this. I’m just saying that we
live on the continuum of life, and at those times when we are forced to notice
how far we’ve come, and how short the distance is we have to go, it can be
jarring.
