Minorities

In one of my classes last fall there were 8 students including me. While waiting on the teacher, we started talking about minorities. We were saying that everyone in the class was a minority of some sort. Two people were Jewish, two people were African American, several of us were female, a couple of people were gay and I am Hispanic. There was one lone person who was straight, white, and male. So in that class he was definitely the minority even though in the outside world he is the majority. We laughed that everyone was now a minority in the class.

When Jon was in the first grade I had some medical issues and had to have lots of tests run. It was scary and I lost lots of weight between feeling poorly, worrying and being at the doctor’s office all of the time. I remember standing in front of a mirror as I put on a hospital gown for one more MRI (I had 7!) It was around the Christmas holidays and I remember thinking as I looked at my skeletal frame in the mirror of my dressing cubicle that this could well be my last Christmas. (Yes, I felt that bad!) I finally got a diagnosis of sorts and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The best thing I knew to do was get an attitude adjustment and start taking really good care of myself. It was during this time that I realized something about minorities. Most men will never know what it feels like to be a woman, white people will never really experience what it is like to be black. Straight people are straight and can not fully understand being gay. Being any of these things is just how we are born and we deal with what we are. But there is one minority anyone of us can become at any given moment- handicapped, disabled, challenged, whatever you want to call it. A disease, an accident, any number of things can leave you struggling just to get in the door, pick up your glass, see your child’s smile. And it can happen in an instant.

After all of my medical woes I started really noticing if building were accessible and how hard life would be if things weren’t made accessible. Which brings me to today’s story. This is the last week of chemistry and today was to be our last lab. After studying for a couple of hours in the library I headed on over to the classroom where we meet before lab. The chairs in the classroom are molded plastic and horribly uncomfortable, so whenever I get there early I sit in one of the soft wing back chairs in the hall. I was checking out twitter when Manny rolled up with the nice lady who is usually with him. She sat in the other comfy chair and told Manny I was there. He smiled and said hi. She began to complain about the night nurse who checks on Manny and unplugs his chair before it gets fully charged, causing this lady to have issues during the day. I had so many questions I felt I could not ask so I just listened. She showed me how the mechanism on the chair worked and how much she loved Manny who just grinned from ear to ear. His smile can move mountains and it made me smile to see how much they cared for each other. She told me she was a nurse and I asked her if they lived near by or had to travel a long way like I do, to attend school there. I knew Manny had gone to Gardendale High School and I wondered if he still lived there. She told me she had a house in Trussville but didn’t live in it. She said it was too difficult, too many memories. I did not say a word, but she continued.

She was a brain trauma nurse at UAB years ago. And several years ago her oldest and youngest sons were in a car wreck. The youngest who was 18 was driving, but her oldest was killed immediately. Her youngest suffered a traumatic brain injury and she was told he would never speak or walk again. She thought she had lost both of her sons and she saw no reason to go on. For several months she couldn’t get out of bed, there was no reason. Eventually her son was ready to come home and she had to pull herself up and do something. She realized that maybe she was a brain trauma nurse for a reason so she decided she was not going to lose this son. She told me she had done lots of off the wall therapies with her son and tried anything and everything she had heard of. Why not- she had nothing to lose. Now she said her son was walking and talked more than she did, if that was to be believed. She laughed and said he was about to go to Auburn when the wreck happened, but now he wanted to get a job and so he did.

She dropped her gaze and looked at her hands in her lap as she continued. She knew her calling was to help others, but every time she walked back in the hospital to get her old job back her knees buckled and she couldn’t get inside the door. All of the memories of that awful day when she “lost” her boys came back every time so she finally quit trying to make herself go in there. Instead she found a job being a private nurse for people with those types of injuries. She has been with Manny since he began the “college experience” and she plans to be with him when he goes across the stage to get that diploma. From the way they talked he might actually graduate when I do next May and I would love to be there to see him get his diploma. He is getting a degree in history and she says he makes really good grades. Chemistry, however, has been very difficult for him and he is worried about what kind of a grade he might get. He has a tutor but is just not connecting to the subject. About then we had to go into class and that was the end of our conversation.

That could be anyone of us, any day. God gave us our body and what do we do? We don’t eat right, we don’t exercise it correctly, we stay up too late, etc. And it keeps carrying us around and letting us open the door, walk down the hall and sit. It lets us see the sunset, hear the ocean waves, and talk to our friends. And even though we abuse it, we expect it to work each day and get mad when it doesn’t. We complain if it hurts. We are blessed and we take it for granted. After my rough patch back when, I remember wanting to walk as much as possible, just because I could. One of my ministers told me he had never known someone who wanted to walk everywhere just because they were grateful that they could.  I had forgotten all of that until today. A friend commented several days ago that I was Jesus to Manny. Well, today he and his caregiver returned the favor. I think I will go for a walk.