mechanic knocks at the door. My husband answers, and a hefty man wearing steel-toed shoes comes through our kitchen carrying a small tool box. I’m in the living room, strapping on my five-year-old daughter’s orthotics. The mechanic stands beside“Do you need anything from us?” I call out, pulling the laces of her shoe tight.I hurry up, and when my daughter’s all laced up, I lift her to her feet and send her over.
I get up from the carpet. I’m going to have to do the thing. It’s a thing I don’t always even realize’m doing in the moment, and yet it’s a thing I’m compelled to do with regularity. I’m going to have to go and show someone that my kid understands, that she’s not a dog but a human., and the words she can say aren’t usually intelligible to people who don’t spend a lot of time with her. “Hat” is sometimes “ha.” “Daddy” is “geggy.” Strangers don’t immediately know how to relate to her.
“OK, honey,” he says again in a high-pitched voice. “Let’s have you come out.” But before she can stand on the footrest and lower herself down, he grabs her around the waist and pulls her out of her chair himself. I calculate that my methods have so far failed. “Yesss,” I said, willing myself not to roll my eyes. I wondered what it must be like for my girl to have to hear this kind of talk about herself all the time.
We need to see the world through a differently-abled person's lens.
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