Take Five: The Little Lame Duck

by Mary McHugh

The other morning I walked past a little pond surrounded by willow trees. I sat down on a bench to watch a family of ducks and I noticed that one of them walked with a limp.  The others just left him there on the bank and sailed off around a bend in the pond. The lame duck walked stiffly into the water and floated along, his disability now invisible, but he swam alone.

      The other ducks reminded me of the way people reacted when my daughter became blind at the age of 22 because of diabetic retinopathy.  Suddenly saleswomen and waiters, repairmen and flight attendants treated her as if she had lost her intelligence when she lost her sight. We would enter a store and the person behind the counter would turn to me and say, “Would she like these earrings?” My Kyle, never one to suffer fools gladly, would say, “She can hear you and would like you to talk to her. She’s the one making the purchase.” 

      I couldn’t believe people could be uncomfortable with her. With Kyle!  My sociable, bright, charming, college graduate who worked for a Massachusetts state senator after becoming blind, earned a Masters degree at Harvard, traveled as a health consultant to England, northern Ireland, Germany and Kiev, and lived  a full, rich life in Boston. 

      One of the  most difficult things for my daughter as she learned how to live in a dark world was her inability to make eye contact with people in a social situation. She had to wait for people to come to her. Why do we so often back away from people with a white cane or those who must use a wheelchair to get around or people who use hand signals to communicate? 

      There are many people who lead full, active lives with a disability -  Christopher Reeve comes to mind first; John Hockenberry, an NBC
correspondent who travels through war zones in a wheelchair;  Joe Hartzler, the prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing case who has multiple sclerosis; the former Miss America who is deaf. But there are people whose names aren’t in the papers who are leading interesting, active lives and who would be fun to know if we just gave them the chance. 

      A friend of mine, Ginny Thornburgh, who is Director of Religion and Disability at the National Organization on Disability, is campaigning to persuade 2000 churches, synagogues and mosques to commit to making their houses of worship more accessible and welcoming by the end of this year - not only with ramps, but reaching out to people with disabilities and making them a part of their family of worshippers. Religious leaders say it’s too expensive to renovate their temples and churches, but it’s not really a question of ramps and wider aisles. It’s a question of reaching out in friendship, of including all people in their community, of treating people with dignity and respect. If you can persuade your own minister, priest or rabbi to join Ginny’s campaign, check out the web site of the National Organization on Disability (www.NOD.org), and sign up your own congregation.

      Don’t let those little lame ducks you meet along the way swim alone.

 

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