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| 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?)
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.
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Posted from Chinook, MT
