Falk-allen - Not a Poster Child: Living Well With a Disability

not
a
poster
child

Copyright 2018 Francine Falk-Allen

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-63152-391-5 pbk
ISBN: 978-1-63152-392-2 ebk
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018936550

Book design by Stacey Aaronson

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

For Richard

My life as a handicapped person has been in many ways a normal life, filled with the great joys, great sorrows, and the commonplace or mediocrity that all people enjoy or endure.

My purpose in writing this memoir is to convey what it is like to live a full life while handicapped with a paralyzed, short, atrophied foot and leg, and to get all my early memories of polio treatment written down before I begin to forget them. It takes guts to be handicapped. People will say unkind things. There will often be more that we cannot do than that which we can. Ive spent a lifetime striving and struggling to be normal. We need folks to be patient while we adapt; independence is our fond desire but is sometimes unattainable. There are, however, solutions, and myriad ways to have a good time.

It is my deepest intention that this book will honor and represent millions of physically handicapped people. I realize that many have been far more physically limited than I, and do not mean to flaunt the ability I do have, or to convey a tone of self-pity. I also know that there are some with more severe limitations who have strived and accomplished far more than I did, whether in public service or in their personal lives. I am in awe of those folks. I have done as much as I could without exhausting my little body (and often have more than exhausted myself). I sometimes feel I should have been more focused. As Lily Tomlin said in her performance of Jane Wagners The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific.

The reality is, I was crippled by a merciless virus as a small child, and it changed what might have been. My choices and personality have been driven and created by awareness of my acute physical limitations as much as by what I desired. People have oftenthough not alwaystreated me differently than fully able people as a result of my disability; thats just how it is. My story is defined by those parameters.

It is impossible to write a memoir or reflection upon personal difficulty without thinking about oneself a great deal. Over the course of these six years of writing, I have had to take occasional breaks to avoid feeling too self-centered. I hope that whatever humor and sense of the absurd you may find here may make the writing tolerable if I have not succeeded in avoiding narcissism. Lots of people will find my stories not funny, but if you are a fan of Monty Python, I ask you to remember the irony of the song, Always Look on the Bright Side of Lifesung while Brian was being crucifiedas you read on.

For anyone whose life has been changed dramatically by disease, birth defects, war, injury, or aging, I salute your bravery and commitment to finding ability, meaning, and joy in your life despite your daunting challenges. This book is written for you and me, and with gratitude to the amazing rehabilitation people who have given us the gift of function.

Although everything in this book is true, some conversations are not verbatim, and a few names have been changed to protect privacy.

not
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Francine, Easter, 1950, age 2 1/2

Its my birthday, and Im three years old today! Im running down the sidewalk on our street, West 109th, in our middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, near the edge of Gramercy Park. A northern leg of Westmontlater to become owned entirely by black and Hispanic folks. But today its a very Anglo place to live, and kids are coming over to our house for my party.

In early December 1950, its a little warm out in southern California. Im wearing a full, very short, ruffled chiffon dress my mother made, and a round, flat, gathered paper hat set at a jaunty angle on my head. Mama is a remarkable seamstress, and her sister, my Aunt Marie, used to sew professionally, as a member of the garment workers union.

I cannot tell you, sixty-some years later, why I am running, or why Im out on the sidewalk without an adult. Possibly I escaped... something I will spend much of my life doing, until I hit forty or so. Maybe Im running with a big birthday present I was excited to receive; I remember a box with a fat, overstuffed doll in it that I decided to call Ollie Dolly after the childrens TV puppet show, Kukla, Fran and Ollie. Or maybe Im just gleeful that its my birthday. My mother will later tell me that when I was even smaller, I would steal cut lemons from the bottom of the fridge and scoot away in my Taylor Tot stroller, refusing to give up the lemon, although when I sucked on it, I puckered my entire face.

That day, high-tailing it down the sidewalk, is the last recollection I have of ever running, and I never want to forget it, which is part of why I am telling you my story now.

When I was perhaps in my thirties I told my mother about another early childhood memory: I was out in the backyard, alone, and eating a somewhat fresh banana skin out of the garbage can. I might have been quite hungry, but maybe I was just snacking or curious. Planes flew low overhead and scared me. I ran and hid under the stairs, stairs that were too steep and high for me to climb and get into the house. I put my hands over my ears. I was crying and afraid.

Decades later, Mom looked at me in disbelief as I recounted this story. You were only two years old then! she exclaimed, then turned to stare out the window and watch the smoke from her cigarette waft around her kitchen. We both took in the thought that she had left me down a long flight of stairs alone at two, expecting me to play in the backyard, and instead I ended up eating banana skins out of the stinky garbage can.

Throughout my childhood, Mother would proudly say, You played so well by yourself as a toddler, you always did. When I shared with her the memory about the planes going over and being alone down in the back yard, I could tell she was stunned by the knowledge that I could remember back so far, and I suspect she wondered what else I could recall. I said nothing.