bad with your good

On one of the longest, hottest days of the year here in my corner of the Southwest, my air-conditioner decided to take the day off. My hypotheses: it's been feeling overworked as it is also the heating unit--or, it is having an identity crisis.

Either way, I am currently sitting directly under the ceiling fan, contemplating an escape to the sanctuary of the closest movie theater.

I've been struck lately by the necessity of taking the good with the bad. What's really behind the pithy statement? What does it mean to 'take' what life hands out?

As you may recall, a few weeks back, I was excited to get a call from Heidi Latsky about an upcoming film exploring disability in dance. She asked me to send audition tapes. I cleared out my entire living room to create a makeshift dance studio, only to find, several weeks and phone calls later that the film is already way over budget with too many dancers.

"I promise you will be in the next movie," Heidi tells me apologetically over the phone.

"Ok," I laugh, thinking she might have said "I promise you can go with me the next time I get an invitation to the White House."

But who knows?

No one knows about a next time, or a first time for that matter. Am I sitting on the floor crying, listening to Sarah McLachlan? Not yet. As I mentioned, I'm sitting under a ceiling fan, sweating.

So, I've had some disappointing news. So what? The older I get, the more I realize that sometimes dreams come true, and sometimes they don't. And sometimes they come true later, much later than we wanted.

And it's not that it's not a big deal; I was over the moon with the prospect of working on a film like that. It was a perfect opportunity, in one fantasy, launching my platform as a celebrity disability advocate. I imagined myself on the Today Show.

But it is not to be. And it's ok, something else will come along.

Meanwhile, I will keep enjoying my morning coffee and dog park visits with Keeper the dog. I will keep learning how to teach a little girl to communicate with her horse. I will keep trying new dance inversions with my fellow acrobats. These are the dreams that come true again and again each day.

I don't think taking the bad with the good means denying your attachment to feelings that arise. It's OK to be ecstatic, and it's OK to be heartbroken. You take each development, each emotion like you would waves as you make your way deeper into the ocean. You let them wash through, past, and sometimes overtop of you, but you keep going, never forgetting how good it feels to swim.

OneArmGirl

erasing the line

At the dog park recently, I met Tom from Guam. Almost as soon as I met him, he asked about my arm. No, this is not Dr. Seuss. If it were, I would have said he asked about my 'aam.'

Interpretation by friend Noam.

While this question still catches me a little off guard, I am always happy to meet someone willing to be honest and straightforward in their curiosity. I explained that I was born with one arm and that I think it is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

"Really? How do you mean," Tom asked.

"It's allowed me to see the world in a different way, to think outside the box...it's also opened many opportunities to talk to people."

I didn't mention, talk to people like Tom who is now a regular follower.

In case you haven't noticed, I like to talk about disability. It's often the superficial starter to some very deep conversations. One can hardly bring up disability without finding out where another stands politically, spiritually, and socially; whether he or she is more of a half full or half empty glass sort.

"Do you consider yourself disabled," Sarina (another dog park colleague) asks me as we walk together around the Old Town plaza. She is clearly unconvinced.

But that's just it. Where is the line between disabled and able-bodied (both terms I detest, for the record). It's strange to me that someone would question my handicap when everywhere I go, people stare at me.

I was recently at a large theme park with Dragon Boy and Mama. Standing in line for the next ride I was sure to regret going on, I was surrounded by a sea of children whose parents, regretting their unlucky position near me in line, attempted to divert their children's curious eyes.

If I'm not disabled, what am I? Do I exist in some gray area between normal and disabled? The town freak, perhaps? If I don't seem to have a disability, try going just one day using only one arm; and maybe the other arm above your elbow--just to keep things fair.

But do I have a disability? Maybe. Maybe not.

This blog is less about claiming a label than taking the piss out of pariah. [Someone who is British tell me if that sentence made any sense]. Even more than celebrating my own freakishness, I write to show our great commonality--as people. But I have to highlight the line before I can erase it.

OneArmGirl

behind

Dear readers,

I'm on vacation this week and running a bit behind. My apologies.

OneArmGirl

dog park destiny

Destiny. Whether you believe in it or not, you can't help but notice occasions when something seems to come together just right. 

I debated whether or not to go to the dog park this morning, but off we went in the end. The place was deserted until another regular and her two mastiffs showed up. Keeper the dog is not a fan of big dogs or any dogs for that matter, but mastiffs hardly even notice she is there.

Just as I was starting to think about taking off, a Jack Russell Terrier with owner in tow entered the park. The owner ended up being a savvy German gal, road-trippig around the country. We got talking, our dogs actually started playing together, and I offered her a room to stay.

So just like that, I have a houseguest. Sarina and Slick couldn't be more amenable and lovely to hang with, and it turns out you don't have to be back-packing across Europe to meet europeans. This is nice for a more domestic, home and hearth gal like me.

We toured around the old town plaza (after a stop at Starbucks, of course), discussed our mutual love of candy sculls and un-scheduled road trips, and now we're sitting quietly in my living room, each absorbed in her own technical device as if we've been friends for decades.

It's a good day to remember that anything can happen any day. So I guess it's important to stay open.

Also, the Germans are obviously stalking me.

OneArmGirl

the end and the beginning

Ever have one of those hours, days, weeks when the world seems to be coming to an end...well, at least your world...but then it doesn't?

I had one of those last week. I was working on an audition video for Heidi Latsky. I just needed a phrase or two of choreography that would allow her to see how my body moves. I cleared out the living room, leaving a makeshift studio (with all of my furniture piled at one end). I moved around the space. I turned on some music. I just needed to condense my dance ability into a fifteen second video--no big deal. 

Except that for a perfectionist/artist, that is a huge deal--damn near impossible deal, actually. I was an hour in, hot and bloated (for other reasons), and I only had about eight counts of movement. Then I made the mistake of recording myself and watching it. Within ten seconds of recording, I was piled under an avalanche of horrible high school dance audition memories--not to mention thirty-four years of frustration with my own body, the way it moves and the way it doesn't move. I might as well have been onstage before the judges of So You Think You Can Dance with all of them grimacing and shaking their heads. 

I felt untrained, unprepared, and like a complete idiot for even thinking I could do something like this.

I sat down on the couch, now wedged in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. I felt as discombobulated as the room looked. This was only the tip of the iceberg currently threatening the buoyancy of my self confidence. I was already feeling like I'd made a huge mistake becoming a therapeutic riding instructor when I'm really interested in physical therapy--the night before I had to teach, I'd decided I hated my job and I've only been at it for a couple months. And somewhere within the same week, I decided I'd adopted the wrong dog, that she was too nervous and not friendly and needed more space. The end was in sight.

Nothing made sense. So I went to bed. I really did. I took a three or four hour nap. I woke up hungry, called Dragon Boy's Mama and Little Gen, and went out for sushi, leaving the living room in disarray.

Back in the 'studio' the next day, I reminded myself that I was making an audition tape for a woman who wants to work with different bodies. I also told myself that I needed to do it, at my current ability level, and get it over with, or I would assuredly be committed when I stumbled out of my apartment a week later, malnourished, naked, and mumbling something about Baryshnikov.

Over the next day or so, I finished some semblance of choreography that I could stand, sent off the recording, and put the couch back in place. Life had to go on...

And it did. A week went by and I heard nothing. I started to console myself, saying I'd done the best I could (though myself never quite believes that).

Then, this morning I woke up to an email from Heidi. The subject read: "working with you." There was one sentence inside: "I would love to so please call me when you can so we can organize this..."

OneArmGirl

uninspired

I recently watched an inspiring news story about a young woman, born with a partial left arm, whose friends raised enough money to buy her a bionic hand.

The problem: I was not inspired.

In fact, the longer I watched the segment, the more uninspired I became. I started to get frustrated, then a little angry.

It's not that I have something against prosthetics per se, and I'm definitely pro dreams coming true. But the way the story angled, one got the impression that this poor deformed girl needed a new hand to be happy; that she was not whole and, if only she had this fancy bionic hand, life would suddenly be peach pies and daffodils.

In an interview, her father tearily explained how worried he'd been about his daughter's success in life. How was she going to do things? I wanted to tell him to just watch and learn. No doubt, he already has.

Her good friends had obviously put a lot of love and energy into their bionic arm fund campaign. They presented her with the money on a stage, in front of a cheering crowd.

I have a lot of thoughts. Firstly, it doesn't matter how many people tell me what great advancements they are making these days in prosthetics, I refuse to get excited. I've been there, I've done the casting, and the waiting, and the fitting, and the waiting...and if you consider that we started with nothing, it is a great achievement in medicine, or mechanics, or electronics...but at the end of the day, when it comes to usability and actual quality of life improvement, prosthetics leave much to be desired.

[Yes, I do know they are now using electrodes to allow brain signals to move electronic fingers]

Secondly, this heartwarming story gave the impression that being without a fake arm left this young lady at a deficit...despite the fact that she was clearly a driven person, successful student, basketball player with a loving family.

My guess? Give it six months and she'll hardly be wearing that bionic hand much at all. And the next thing you know, it'll be in the closet.

What would this world look like if we spent as much energy, money, and time on helping people to appreciate their bodies as we do on science to improve them?

OneArmGirl

and so it goes

The show is closed and I'm in recovery. I feel a little lost not going to the studio every day. I'm making friends again with my apartment, trying to wash the dishes on a semi-regular basis...

I also need to wash Keeper the dog. She's now had dried milkshake drops on her ears for several days--it's pretty bad. 

It seemed generally agreed among the dancers that this show was quite physically demanding. It's notable that I weathered it so well. I was certainly tired, even wiped out by times, but I survived. 

The final pax de deux was a great success, if I do say so myself. One show-goer described it as the sigh of relief at the end of a beautiful nightmare. When the lights went down on our last performance, I nearly kissed Zach on the lips. I refrained because, I think, I need to be a bit more European for that.

There was special mention of Finneas under the Thank You credits in the show program and now the ego of that little arm isn't so little. Unfortunately I'd rather be indoors curled up on the couch, while he's itching to get out and meet his public.

In the same week as our aerial extravaganza, Barnum and Bailey made national news when their rigging failed and eight aerialists hanging from a huge wheel by their hair fell to the ground with the apparatus on top of them. There were some serious injuries, but no one died. 

All press is good press?

Speaking of fans, I'd like to extend a big thank you to all who attended the show and promoted it via social media and word of mouth--and lots of love to those of you who were unable to attend for various reasons.

I guess I'll just have to do it again.

OneArmGirl