T+51: Multi-Bodied Beings

Mile 1264: Cutbank, MT



Judith Snow

The great Judith Snow, a disability activist from Canada, changed my understanding, not only of politics, but of social life as well, when she described herself as a “multi-bodied being.”  She has extremely limited mobility, and requires the use of other bodies—to help her eat and attend to bodily functions, to make her art, and to attend to all the duties and requirements of speaking and advocating internationally.   She points out that we all are multi-bodied beings, but that some people live in a state of grace that allows the essential interpenetration of our lives to be recognized and understood. 

This lesson was remembered in the delightful 24 hour visit we had with my niece, her husband, and their family during our visit in and around Whitefish.  I had not seen Kelsey for a number of years.  Actually, I saw her very little as she was growing up.  My brother (her father) and his family lived in Nevada; we lived in Detroit.   It was hard to make our paths cross with any regularity.  I kept track of her life through the family rumor mill, but I had never met her husband, Justin, and only knew from a distance about their travels to Australia and Argentina.  I had followed on Facebook the progress of her pregnancy and the birth, a few months ago, of their son Jasper.

So we were very pleased to receive a phone call from Kelsey, who had been tipped off by my mother, that we would be in the area.  We met for breakfast, but the visit stretched into the next day and touched me on several levels.  

Babies, of course, are the exemplar multi-bodied beings.  They utterly depend on the actions of others to move them, feed them, and ensure their safety and needs are met.  Kelsey and Justin move in sync in this task, taking turns carrying Jasper on his or her back.  When Kelsey wants to go out into Whitefish Lake to wade and swim with us, Justin stays behind, Jasper in the carrier on his back, while he wades up to his knees in the water, then sways gently as he watches us move into deeper water.   They are a smooth parenting team, getting the diapers, cleaning the baby, toting the inevitable bag of baby paraphernalia.  Both Wes and I remark how different it was in our parents’ and our generation.  Dads were commonly quite distant from moment-by-moment needs of the baby.    Kelsey and Justin very much were Jasper’s extensions into the world—but they were also that for each other.

When we met Justin’s mother, Carolyn, the lesson was brought home in a few more ways.  It was very sweet that Justin and Kelsey offered us a place to stay, to wash our clothes, and generally catch up.   After attending to various chores (getting a brake job on Wes’ bike, buying Wes new shoes, and replacing my worn-out bicycle gloves), Kelsey and Justin pick us up, take us swimming in Whitefish Lake, cook us delicious chicken brats, and then take us to his family home.   

The house is in between Kalispell and Whitefish.  It is a lovely house that the family designed and built in 1988.   Carolyn says, “We had an open plan before it was even called that.”  We are invited to stay in Justin’s boyhood room.  This tickles us to no end, as we look at his award for scholastic achievement at the age of 10, find out that he was a great soccer fan, and see his smiling schoolboy pictures from the age of about 12.  This is truly an unfair advantage for visiting relatives.

We discover two things during this visit that remind us how important we are all to each other.  Carolyn, to our great delight, is the union president of her bargaining unit for the Forest Service employees in the Kalispell region.  What a relief for all us--who normally have to watch what we say in this part of the country-- to talk about the way that his country is set up, more and more, to benefit the few at the expense of the many. (How did we get to the point that expressing any negative analysis of capitalism is seen as dangerous and unacceptable?) 

We talk about the necessity of solidarity…about how we need the support of other people to balance the scales in a capitalist society.  Without other bodies, without other strengths, none of us stand a chance against the oppressive structures built into this economic system.   

Wes, particularly, revels in this discussion with Carolyn.  We realize, later, how much we have been self-censoring our views during our travels.  We spend a lot of time disabusing people of their negative views of Detroit (tough work now that Detroit’s bankruptcy is constantly in the news.)  Even though most people agree with my comments about the “system” no longer serving the needs of its people, we don’t go much further than that.

Also, the Snyder family is facing a situation that will come to all of us, sooner or later.  Justin’s dad, Carolyn’s husband, Chuck, is facing the debilitations of a Parkinson’s like syndrome.  People in the disability rights community have a term, “Temporarily Able Bodied,” (TAB’s), which should move into more common usage.  We are all TAB’s.  It is a common human experience to require the assistance of others to live our lives.   First of all, we require the work of others to feed ourselves, build our roads, construct our bikes.  I haven’t the slightest idea how I would feed myself if I had to do it from seed to feed.  Could I make my own clothes?...Maybe…but I sure as heck couldn’t make my own cloth.    I utterly depend on the work of other bodies to make my life possible.

That our culture doesn’t recognize this is ridiculous.  In fact, we tend to participate in a mass delusion about our individualism.  This view of rugged individualism is extremely prominent in the West.  It is not unusual for people to say, in person, or in the newspapers, that the only responsibility a person has is for themselves and their immediate families.  Until we each build our own roads, sewers, and schools, those statements are laughable.

But it so much more profound that these usual inanities.  One of the innovations of the disability rights movement is making obvious how much each of us depends upon a circle of support.  Culture exists to provide that support for each of us, whether through the structure of a family, a church, a neighborhood...or a government.  We can’t do it alone…ever.  We don’t do it alone… ever.  We just lie to ourselves about independent we are.

A circle of support makes this true fact obvious and discuss-able.  It says through action that humans are by nature and by necessity multi-bodied beings.  We require each other to live.  As we go through our lives, those needs change, but the need never changes.  When each of us, whether babies or elders, mated or alone, travel through life, we do it through a necessary and vital interpenetration into each other’s lives.  A wise society recognizes this and makes these structures visible, accessible, and acceptable.

As we have seen, over and over, in the various situations of our family and friends, disease, disaster, and bad luck are constant human companions.  We need other bodies/other beings to keep us alive, to fill in our gaps, to add strength, and power, and joy where there would otherwise be weakness, emptiness, or foolishness.  We are, always and inevitably, multi-bodied beings who exist through and because of other people, who create and support everything we need to survive.

**********

Posted from Chinook, MT