Never Walked In High Heels

We had been driving in the car for about 45 minutes when I proudly began to explain to my mother what I had learned in school that day. My legs were not anywhere near long enough to touch the floor of the car as I explained that certain letters made certain sounds. For example, the “B” made a “buh” sound. At that moment we pulled up to a stop light and I pointed to a sign and slowly read out: “B-A-N-K. That sign says bank.”  It was the first word my mother had seen me read out loud, and with that, I was on my way.

Now, my parents make it sound like they always knew I was smart. Maybe they did, but I doubt it. Having a child with special needs, it seems to me, has always been an area of great apprehension. What can she learn? What will she learn? How will she learn it?  Will it be enough, or will she need something more in her life that is beyond her mental grasp. The first words that I ever spoke, “shoes” and then “juice”.  My vocabulary doubled in a single day, something that I would later wish could happen again as I was studying for the SATs. But then afterwards, those were the only two words I could say until my mother took me to a speech therapist who ran a number of tests as she did for a great many children entering the early childhood development program. “Whatever you do, don’t speak in baby-talk to her, this one is very intelligent.”

“Intelligent? She says two words, shoes and juice. That’s it.”

“She understands a lot more than you realize.”

From that moment on my parents were never want to use a short word when a long word would expand my vocabulary. They would see other parents cradling their babies in supine and refuse to do so. They read everything they could get their hands on, experimented, and made absolutely certain under no circumstances I would be treated as a sub-normal child. In this way, I was brought up in an educated house. One night my father spent the last two dollars in his bank account to buy a set of used encyclopedias that were published twelve years before.  It was turning the pages of these books, which were older than I was, in a household that refused to stoop to sub normal standards simply because there was a little one in the house, that I acquired my language skills, and, as a result, my self confidence.

Language skills often seem to me as a summation of all you are. Children, of course learning spelling, don’t know this, and adults rarely see. But parents who want the best for their sons and their daughters realize it in full. To use proper language, interesting terms, and changes in words require a certain amount of devotion to reaching beyond your present state. A child with a brain injury, in a special education class, if he dares to read the right books rather than the ones the teacher deems “appropriate” for him can reach exponentially above the low standards the adults around him have set as his goal.  A waiter who refuses to use slang, and refuses to succumb to the standards of “simply a member of staff” may not only receive a higher number of tips, but also be sought after for additional opportunities which would not otherwise come his way if he was just trying to live from paycheck to paycheck without improving himself. The language we use are the building blocks to state who we are, where we come from, how we think of ourselves, and who we intend to be someday. Being someone who simply wants shoes and juice, or bigger goals like someone who probably intends on recognizing the importance of a bank, even at the age of five.

In London, I have a neighbor who routinely plays in our backyard with a best friend.  The two of them share tea parties in a bright pink tent. Yesterday, she ran out to ask my help on a school project about Pluto.

“What exactly do you know about Pluto”, she said, playing with her hair and trying to balance on the outside of her feet. At her age, she still cannot stand still for any length of time.

I thought back to her age, the time when my father would lay down next to me with an encyclopedia and read about any article I liked. I can still picture the ink drawing of Pluto as a ball of ice on the yellow onion-skin pages of our ancient Encyclopedia Britannica. I told her what I knew about orbits and eclipses, Pluto changing places with other planets and how long a year is on a planet that is so far away from the sun, it is only a ball of ice.  I told her everything about it my father had taught me. She smiled, thanked me, and ran back inside.

As soon as I walked through the door I called home to see what my parents were reading these days.