Able

Photo by Seth kane on Unsplash

In 1960, my father was working with a team to move a large piece of equipment when the load unexpectedly shifted. As he worked to steady the weight, it turned again and crushed him. While he survived, the injury left him paralyzed from the waist down, relying on a wheelchair for mobility.

When my sisters and I were small, we hardly noticed the chair. It was just a part of our reality. Sometimes, when dad would trade the wheelchair for his comfy lounger, we would “steal” the wheelchair and do laps around the house. Other kids may have been playing catch with their dad, but we were perfectly happy with wheelchair NASCAR.

As I got older, I started to have more questions about the wheelchair, and dad was open to discussing all of it. Until one day, I asked this:

“Dad, what’s it like to be disabled?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he quickly responded, looking away. Thinking his answer was a little evasive, I phrased the question a little differently:

“Seriously, what’s it like to be handicapped?”

He turned and looked me straight in the eye. “I honestly have no idea,” he stated. He then went on to explain that while he had a handicap — that is, being unable to walk — he was not handicapped. He could do everything that anyone else could do with one exception, and the wheelchair made that exception moot. He also took exception to the word “disabled.” To him, being “disabled” was the same as being unable, and he took great pride in his ability to master whatever he could dream.

From that day forward, my attentions were less about the wheelchair and more about dad’s incredible abilities. A quiet genius, he could build anything, fix anything, and solve anything. I watched him create engine parts on a metal lathe with DaVinci-like precision, hang Christmas lights with an impossibly long pole (the ‘immaculate contraption’), and play an entire game of computer solitaire in under 60 seconds.

I’ve tried to follow dad’s example throughout my adult life. Setbacks happen. Things get in the way. Maybe I didn’t have the best education. Perhaps I’m not surrounded by the best people. Regardless, these are no match for the sheer and awe-inspiring power of human will. Limitations are for other people; I am ABLE.