Never Walked In High Heels

The orchid on my desk has begun to bud. Within the green capsule, clenched tight as if is was holding a precious pearl, there is a single violent red streak which holds a sign of the color to come. But for right now, the bud is mostly green, the stalk stands erect, shooting out from the pot on my desk, ignoring the fact that my roommate and I sit downstairs most nights planning Christmas cakes and cookies to make over the next month.

I bought this particular lady’s slipper orchid last June off of eBay, when it became otherwise impossible to find such a flower in red. I had successfully gotten orchids to rebloom for the past three years and, growing increasing tired of seeing the same orchids redundantly displayed at Tesco,  and desperately wanting to grow a  flower which was a passionate shade of red, I invested in an purchase I was otherwise clueless about. So much so that when I opened up the plant I quickly went back to my computer to ask the farmer why he used pesto as a potting medium… It ended up being a symbiotic form of algae.

For the next six weeks the little orchid did nothing but drop leaves on alternating sides. A total of five leaves turned  yellow and dropped off. Each time I’d loose another one  I would think it was over and the planted had righted itself after suffering and conquering whenever ailed it. But then inevitably another leaf  would crinkle slightly before turning a vibrant combination of yellow and red and dying. I was feeling as if I had no business buying an orchid outside of Tesco in the first place.  I knew nothing of taking care of something which had so much potential for beauty and grace. Frantically I attempted my cure all solution for every problem: I googled everything possible I could find on orchid care. Moving the plant into one room, then back out, watering once a week then everyday, I frantically tried to take everyone’s advice at once. Finally I decided on the obscurely obvious.

The orchid knew more about raising itself than I could ever know.

So, I brought the plant back to my desk, gave it a little bit of water each day, and resigned myself to plant succumbing to the fate of his choice. There was nothing I could do to force it  otherwise.

And then it lost another leaf.

Then, after a while and for reasons known only to itself, the plant started to be happy again. No longer did the leaves fall or turn yellow. Those that remained were healthy, smooth, and aligned themselves with the sun. There wasn’t panic every time I looked at my desk and saw it. Within a few more weeks a stem grew and a bud began to form, creating an optimistic fascination for me rather than blame and dread. Cells, multiplying on a molecular level at an alarming rate,  I watch day after day at the plant reads its own blueprint of how it should build itself. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to make such a feat occur. When the flower opens up, its intricacies and architecture will be of an incalculable mathematics. And I cannot help but humbled by the fact that all I can do is give the plant a little bit of water every few days. Much of anything beyond that is just interfering.

My assistant carries my duffel bag to the stage door and stops. My body, covered with baby oil to simulate sweat, takes its last calm breath before mayhem begins. After I knock on the door, I won’t be able to go at my pace, my speed until we make our final bow in exactly eighty four minutes. Until then I will be moving at performance pace, performance speed, trying frantically to make jokes and complex ideas understood, keeping the audience’s energy up, all while making every stylized move seem natural. This is the job of a performer. This is the job I always wanted. I raise my hand to knock  on the door. My sister in the play opens is and looks appalled, just  like the director intended. I barge onto the stage in my wheelchair.

Instantly and, it seems, undetectable to a great many people, I feel the audience clench up.  It’s not me, I’ve been in enough performances to know what nerves are and how to adjust to them. This isn’t me, its them. Even in our modern age it seems we are still living in a world where as soon as a professional actor with a disability comes onto the stage, the audience becomes nervous, as if they are expecting to watch a train wreck in slow motion. Its  the threat of live performance and part of what makes theatre so addictive. Although we don’t want them to, the idea that action on stage is happening in real time and that performers might drop the ball puts us at the very edge of our seats. We like this risk, to a certain extent.

Unless you put a performer like me onstage. Trained by professionals myself, my performance style is unique at best. My speech is of a slightly different cadence, my movements aren’t always fluid. But my intentions are precise, my ideas clear and innovative, and my stories are, for the most bit, entertaining. And yet each time I go onstage I feel the wave of nerves from an audience wondering if they are about to witness a train wreck. Can she remember her lines? What did she just say?  How long is  she going to be  onstage? Who cast her in the first place and why  didn’t they get a proper actor?

Before you protest and say it’s nerves getting the better of me, I have a confession to make. In marketing my shows disability is never mentioned. My plays really aren’t about disability as it just isn’t a topic which interests me. Leave ghettoized theatre to quota seekers and box tickers. I write the story of human beings which I can play for two reasons. First, I am honestly bored. No one else is casting me in work and many of the companies who aim to do otherwise don’t write interesting characters with disabilities. By accomplishing both I am creating a sound body of work for myself. Contrary to all rumors, this is a top priority for any artist. One must  create work which excites you, if you ever want to have a shot at exciting anyone else. Secondly, my plays are about the human condition. Disability is meant to be a metaphor which allows the audience to lock into a character, not an implacable monolith of a topic. As such, I don’t advertise my plays as being disability art any more than  Whitman saw his poetry to be about homosexuality. Art is a reflection of the human condition which is universal, provided of course, we don’t foolishly become too bogged down by the specifics.

So in a way I’m asking for trouble. I don’t warn potential audience members of a major characteristic of the piece, one which, in fact, might make a number of people very uncomfortable. To my knowledge there is no disability advisory warning or any plot spoilers required for theatrical advertising. Anybody should be able to come on stage in the course of an evening and, so long as their acting abilities hold up, the audience should accept they belong in that story. And throughout western theatre history, the range of acceptable actors has grown to include multiple genders, ethnicities, ages, and a host of other factors. Actors with disabilities should stay in disability theatre it seems. Outside of myself, they are  rarely seen in the West End. And with an audience reaction like what I’ve witnessed, who can blame the producers for not casting people with disabilities. A nervous audience is rarely a paying audience.

While onstage, there is little I can do to ease audience tension except play me role well which, admittedly, is easier some nights than others. I am tied to a script, my hands bound to certain actions at certain times. As much as I would like to call the audience out and say ‘trust me would ya,’ it can’t happen. I am told by friends that after a few minutes the tension dies down and the audience begins to feel more at ease. If this happens I can’t tell when it occurs. By that time I’m so far in the story I’ve forgotten about the audience’s existence. I have taken note of the tension but refused to take it on. I know my work is good and the audience can’t walk out. The door is shut, the lights are low, and for the next hour and a half they have to deal with the surprise of having an actor with a disability on stage.  If that’s such a shocking idea, then I don’t care what the reviews say, the fact the piece exists is enough.

What more could any artist ask for?

Through Fire and Friendship

By the time the phone was ringing on the other end of the line I questioned whether or not he ever wanted to hear from me again. It had been two years to the day since we last spoke and that conversation had not ended well. “Come back,” he had said to me. “Move to New York and…” for him the answers seemed so easy. To me they sounded trite. I screamed, he pushed back, and then nothing. That conversation was over and we went our separate ways.

The sound of an American telephone ringing its single long ring sounded foreign to me now. I had dialed the long-remembered number with a shaky hand after reading the news. His entire house had burned to the ground seven days before from being struck by lightening. And while no one was home on that fateful night, including his two dogs, nothing could be saved from the rubble. I called him out of gut reaction, thinking of his home and the beautiful things in it. In my younger days he had always seemed to me to be The Great Gatsby himself, with the exact home and life I had wanted. Yet, when he had invited me to do just that two years ago I had rejected him furiously, in a justified rage which burned out of control and smoldered for far too long. And now I hadn’t wanted his life for quite some time. I had my own. I am happy now, in London. Each day I find that my roots get deeper here, making me more and more stable in a town I am certain, for now at least, is my home. I had burned bridges with him to stay here. Now I wondered if he would let me swim back to meet him at the very least.

I wasn’t expecting him to pick up. He’s the type of man you always have to try a hundred and sixty seven times to get ahold of until it happens. I gasped his name and he shouted mine. And then the line went dead. Did he really hate me that much or had Skype failed me yet again? A screen popped up on my computer asking me a simple question: “Please tell us how you would rate your call?”

AWFUL. MISERABLE. I want to hunt down the moron who invented Skype this very moment and rip out his toenails after chucking my iMac into the River Thames. Somehow this wasn’t an option. I clicked cancel and redialed.

He picked up and said my  name first this time.

“Tell me what I can do to help you.”

“Nothing. Wait. No. Call me at this exact same time tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said reaching for my phone and wondering what meeting I had to cancel to make this call.

“Oh and, I’m sorry I have been such a crummy friend lately.”

“Me too.” We hung up. I couldn’t remember who forgave who.

“We are rebuilding,” he told me confidently. “It’ll take years to get it back to where it was, but we want to do it. I feel obligated in a way. It was such a lovely house and just added so much to the town.” I knew he was right. The home had most likely been featured in a plethora of home and garden magazines in the past two years. He had always loved opening his home up to people. I could tell this is what he was missing the most. “And when its all done we’ll have the biggest party you can imagine.” I already knew I wanted to be there.

He and I spoke for over an hour, which, for a man fielding calls from insurance people while trying to rebuild his life, is a very long time. I told him of my own fires over the past years, more metaphorical than his, perhaps, but every bit as searing. Two years ago he caught me at the front end of it. These fires were far from being put out but at least, for now they seemed to be under control.

“It sounds to me as if there is more than one way to burn a house,” his voice had changed dramatically. He was right. My own fires had forced me to stay here. Even when he could not comprehend it, I had to stay in London. I could not go ‘home.’ There was no home to go back to anymore. It is true, once you leave home, you can’t go back again.

There was the ash and rubble of the past several years. There were times of playing the fiddle while the flames raged on because there was nothing left to do. From all of this I had stumbled out, changed and transformed into a woman rather than the teenage girl he met thirteen years before. A few short years ago I thought fires shouldn’t happen. Now I’m a bit better at calmly walking through them without getting as burned. My friend had missed a good many of these fires over the past two years, even though they had been burning long before that. Maybe if he had been around the flames wouldn’t have gotten so high and enveloped me as much. But then again, without it all burning down, I wouldn’t have to get up out of the ashes and rebuild either. Without that, I wouldn’t be able to off my strength as a grown woman. Now that we had reconnected after two years I was his equal. And when everything goes up in smoke around you, sometimes what you need most is a friend who has also gone through the rubble and made it out the other side.

“It sounds as if you are exactly where you belong.” The silence was deafening on my end as I let these words sink it. This was what I longed to hear him say these past two years. It was all over. This fire had been smothered, the rubble cleared, and out of the ashes and destruction from two years ago came a new and stronger friendship, made purer by the flames.

“Let me know know if I can do anything for you.” Things were winding down and I just wanted to reach out and hold him in whatever way I could.

“I think you just did,” was all he said.

I hung up telling Skype that my call was ‘excellent with no problems.’ Walking into my room, I opened my window and looked over at Canary Wharf on a clear summer’s afternoon. I could feel my dress flapping at my ankles in the breeze. I think for my friend purified things were already appearing in the rubble after the fire. Our phone call was one of them and a redeemed friendship was another. They are small in the face of catastrophe, but they are glints and gleams of treasures  to come. What mattered was, after the fires, we both knew that there were some things worth the effort of digging out.

When our eighth grade teacher assigned us to create a family tree, mine was the size of four large poster boards taped together. We were to find the names, dates of birth and deaths going back three generations before ourselves. Mr. Bowman, our teacher said that if we knew our parents names, birthdays, etc and our grandparents should be able to do the same. The assignment sheet ended with the statement “just go as far back in your family tree as you can.”

Thanks to some very adventurous relatives, my drive to be class valedictorian, and a father who harbors some not so secret passions for family research, my family tree went  back sixteen generations and included soldiers enlisted in every war between the American Revolution and the Second World War. Mine, I have often been told, is a family tree peppered with people who sought out lives full of adventure and opportunities. Over and over these quests led them back to America and back to defend the country that was, for them, the land of opportunity.

Not long ago I was reminded of this as my plans for the future were mentioned, plans that didn’t include going back to the United States any time soon.

“How can you think of doing that? Don’t you realize how much your fore fathers gave up  just so you could have the advantages of being an American,” I often feel as though wanting to live somewhere else puts me on par with Benedict Arnold as people whom I normally consider to be very open minded suddenly start going on about how enlisting in the US army should be required for all citizens and how freedom is never free.

I know freedom isn’t free and opportunity doesn’t come cheaply. I am an actress with a disability and I have chosen to immigrate half way around the planet to have a shot at chasing my dreams.

Within the past year alone, I’ve worked with two different television networks,  contracted my play to premier in central London, and worked with a major casting director. And while all these opportunities are available in the United States, my disability is seen as an even bigger hindrance to my artistic career there than it is here. If I was born to be an artist, the land of opportunity is where I can achieve the dreams and ambitions I have set for myself to achieve.

Because my ancestors crossed the ocean in the 1600′s, one can hardly argue that they “came to America, the land of opportunity.” The country that we now call the United States didn’t exist when they boarded a ship headed for a place which, at that time, only existed in rumors and letters. The act of immigrating to America, rebelling against the king of England, and defending the territory against the red coats, was not so much an act of sacrifice as it was an act of risk. Nobody, even as recently as one hundred years ago, knew what America would become. No one in my family came to America because it had been branded “the land of dreams.” People who came much later, no doubt came as a result of such titles. My ancestors came because risking everything to get to a place which might lead them to a life closer to the one they dreamed of outweighed the risk of not doing so.

Am I rebelling against my forefathers if I decide to pick up and live my life in the land of Mad King George and the rest? Hardly. They picked up their families and moved to follow what their dreams dared them to do. No doubt the family members they left behind mentioned sacrifices their ancestors made in attempts to keep order and stability in the family. But dreams hardly ever take much notice of man made constructs, even ones as seemingly grand as nationalities and traditions.

After all, if my ancestors were willing to pack up and leave everything they knew to even attempt to have a life they dreamed of, am I actually rebelling if I am willing to do likewise?

“You are a very very brave young woman,” she said turning towards me and placing one hand on her walker for stability. We were on a pedestrian island in the middle of Trafalgar Square, making it halfway across the street before the light changed color. For me it was because I had arrived at the crosswalk towards the end of the green cycle that I had gotten only partway across the street. I had seen this woman edging across long before I myself had reached the crosswalk and, due to her age and gait, only had made it this far.

“Not as brave as you,” I replied, smiling at her gumption. If there is one intersections which distresses me above any of the others in London it is Trafalgar Square. Here, cars guide their way through a maze which resembles a bowl of spaghetti more than an intersection. For every crosswalk there is at least one pedestrian island which warns you that crossing in one go may be difficult for some. Indeed, the lights a choreographed in such a way that it almost takes a study in geometric principles to work out how the lights can be timed in your favor. And, to top it all off, being one of the most famous and photographed squares in the world means that when you are there, you feel like one is at the centre of the universe and everyone in all galaxies both known and unknown is watching you attempt to cross from one end of the square to the other in some sort of existential trek, metaphorically symbolizing the frailty of human efforts in the attempt to strive for meaning.

Or a least that’s my perception. My friends think I’m nuts and offer the advice “when you see the green guy go, when you see the red guy stop.” Thanks.

Suffice it to say, I wouldn’t let my grandmother cross Trafalgar Square alone. And the idea of anyone else over the age of seventy five doing so made me very nervous. I edged forward to offer assistance. Maybe she could hold on to the back of my chair to gain support to cross the street. Even when one is dependent on everyone else, it is still impossible to squash the reflex to help someone else in need when you see it.

“In my day, young women like you barely even left the four walls of their home unless they were heading for a shelter during an evacuation. Good for you.” I froze.

In London, it is impossible for me to look into the face of an older person without wondering if they had been around during World War II. Unlike the majority of working age Londoners, those from the generation who survived the Blitz still look you in the eye. And every once in a while, I catch a fierce gleam inside of the person, without exchanging any dialogue which says “I have seen parts of this city reduced to rubble. I have seen it built back up again. I know that life is filled with both pain and joy.”

This was a woman who had survived much in London, her eyes asserted it. Which is why I was shocked that she would ever call me ‘brave.’ A person who had watched her country be attack by enemy fire when victory wasn’t certain surely cannot begin to find courage in a young woman crossing the street on a sunny day, holding a patent leather bag with one hand and getting ready to dial her iphone with the other.

When local heroes are interviewed we hear them say over and over “I was just doing what anyone else would’ve done in my position.” And perhaps heroism, at it’s root is not about what you do when the stakes are high, but rather what you do when there isn’t much of a choice. Live or die. Fight or roll over. Go out or be a shut in. Cross the street or stay stagnant. In extreme situations, there really are just two options. And more often than not “heroes” are the ones who choose the more desirable option rather than facing destruction.

If two women on opposite ends of the age spectrum can meet at a crosswalk and admire the drive for life in the other, then the best things in this world are both inexplicable and universal. I don’t feel particularly brave just because I choose to cross the street, even in Trafalgar Square. In my mind it’s what everyone does, so I do it too. And maybe those who saw bombs falling on London, who waited it St. Paul’s Cathedral with buckets of water to put out fires, and who rebuilt their lives choosing to keep pushing hope, did so because there was little other option. At our core, we want to keep straining away for more life.

The light turned green in Trafalgar Square, and everyone around us started crossing the street, making it natural for her and I to do likewise. We were on our separate ways again.

Most creative people will often say that they want to give up their profession for something more sensible. All armature dramatics aside, I often find myself debating on whether my career as an actress and writer will ever really be worthwhile. This is especially the case if you know you can do something with your life—anything in fact—you set your mind to. At my age, I am still young enough to go to law school or do a plethora of other things if I set my mind to them. I am often reminded that God tells us to wait and to trust him, which is a combination that contains two of the hardest things for me to do in my life. The combination is excruciating, and it seems that if I took things into my own control, everything would and should happen much faster.

Last week I found myself having such a day. With the assortment of facebook, twitter, and other necessities of the modern age, I am able to share in my friends milestones and see the lovely pictures that show up as a result—the weddings, the births, the job promotions—none of which have shown up in my life as of yet, and in many ways, I feel that my road stretches on and on before me without a single bend in it or any sign to act as a marker for how far I’ve come or how far I have yet to go. Still waiting for so much that I want to accomplish, often overshadows the massive amount that I already have.

When you first meet Jeremy you aren’t quite sure if he is an actual person or a character attempting to be a human being. He was a guest teacher in one of my acting classes last week—he creates the figure of a sort of man-clown, who dresses in a green hat and vest with a suit coat and a handkerchief. The sort of outfits that people used to wear all the time, but now when the entire ensemble is put together, looks vaguely comical. He goes about the country teaching that to create anything one must be willing to take risks. The risk of failure and then come to the realization that there is security in failing, especially when one hits rock bottom—for then there is then no where else to go, which can be any more diminutive and where the ground offers no padding but plenty of support. After a brief lecture, he took off his hat which in the style of David Larible, seemed to have a mind and style of a movie all its own. His hat came alive rolling across his shoulder, beckoning from the floor to pay attention to him, and finally in a brief moment of risk itself through it into us the class and challenged us to make it land on his single finger as he stood on a chair. I was not amused and for that matter neither was the rest of the class walking around the room which seems to be a favored activity among any and all acting teachers, was something that I found exhausting on that particular day. I didn’t want to train anymore perhaps if I did train to be an actor nothing would become of it. So, while the rest of the class attempted in vain to land the mysterious and seemingly rebellious hat on Jeremy’s finger I meandered around—not wanting to perform in the least. He rest of the class soon got fed up with the game and began tossing the hat back and forth to each other as much as attempting to take aim at the target.

Perhaps now is an appropriate time to say that I can’t throw anything. My aim is terrible and more often then not I am unable to let go of the object that I’m attempting to toss, so it falls to the floor. Even my dog knows this fact and when we attempt to play fetch together, he picks up the ball and throws it himself after my vain attempt to create some distance from the object has failed. Then after throwing it himself, he retrieves the ball and hands it over to me so that I may have another try. When I used to play competitive basketball, I was known as a “defensive player.” If ever I was in possession of the ball, one could be assured that something was completely wrong.

As the girls tossed the hat back and forth, I found not a familiar face in the entire class this being are very first time of meeting together. Whenever I am in the company of strangers I feel, compelled to justify my existence—to illustrate that I am every bit as capable in achieving my goals and keeping up with the best of them—but the need to justify oneself never leads to creativity. One of these strange and unknown students eventually tossed the hat to me and I quickly began to belittle myself. How nice I thought to myself, they wanted to attempt to include the crippled girl. I knew that attempting to land the hat on my teacher’s finger was completely out of the question, and so without thinking, I simply tossed it aside.

As I watched to see just how measly my throw had been, I saw the hat land squarely on the target.

By the time I got home that evening the shock of it still had not managed to wear off. It was an unbelievable and in many was inexplicable experience. Despite all this, it offered me encouragement. As cliché as this perhaps is to say, it is often when we take one small step backwards from our dreams to truly examine what we want and how far we are willing to go for it—one step away to attempt to gain some distance and perspective—it is then that we are able to perform are best. It is in taking this step in the seemingly wrong direction that we release ourselves from trying to justify ourselves and set free the creative forces, which are ultimately uncontrollable.

On that particular day, reaching my target in the little sense allowed me to reach for my dreams in the metaphorical sense. After all, the hat with my deficiency in aim and leverage could have landed anywhere in the room, and even though I was not thinking of it, it dropped off exactly where it needed to be.

By the time I put her on the plane, I had no idea how I was going to survive without my friend. A s.n.a.f.u at immigration put a friend who came to visit me on holiday back in the US for another six weeks. Thus all my plans for companionship, a friend to lend an extra hand, and not having to come home to an empty house, were thwarted.

At the same time, my long time assistant was moving out, leaving me very little time to find someone new to cook, clean, feed me my meals, and help with other minor but much needed tasks. Then, in a moment of divine irony, an email came through my inbox with the subject heading “What feeds you?” The gods were laughing.

The most difficult thing about my disability is that, even well into adulthood, I cannot make a meal or feed it to myself. All other aspects of life in a wheelchair I’ve just about been able to wrap my head around. I wear shoes which I never have to tie, I get my hair washed by a salon, I’m even quite good at flirting in pubs so I can get guys to help me walk down the stairs to visit the toilets. But all of this requires calories to burn, which in turn requires the intake of food, which is one area of my life that I have zero control over. Having to depend on others for food is like a country having to depend on OPEC for energy, sooner or later everyone else has you over a barrel.

I once heard a homeless woman being interviewed remark that the hardest thing about being in her position was not knowing where her next meal was coming from. Although I am far from being homeless, I know exactly how terrifying that feels. It is a kind of poverty which is not dictated by the wallet or by some stockpile of faith. At least three times a week there comes a point where I have no idea when or how I’m going to eat again and unless I’m willing to put some pieces together, I have no idea how that can possibly change. My last meal could quite possibly be exactly what it sounds like.

There’s about as many differing definitions for the word poverty as there are organizations set up to work towards its end. In my flat in London I’ve never dared to think of myself as being impoverished. But, after my curiosity being peaked and doing a little research, I realized that every single one of these definitions mentioned a lack of what is essential for survival. Does the fact that I have gone multiple days without food put me on the edge of the poverty line, even while I sit in a riverside flat trying to figure out the next alternative for food? Or perhaps this simply makes me a bad planner.

No parent wants his children to grow up not knowing where their next meal is coming from. For that matter no parent wants to see his child lack in anything. If the certainty of a next meal is the minimum standard for successful parenting, then my mother and father failed miserably. And yet the wealth of what they could give me allows me to survive in a world where nothing is guaranteed, even my next meal.

If poverty, as some organizations such as the UN defines it, is simply the lacking of a necessity in life, then we are all impoverished in one form or another. And in many cases it is the “wealthiest” amongst us who are actually the most impoverished. The myth of an independent and self sufficient life, reflected in even these definitions of poverty, not only perpetuates a misconception but also actively pulls us away from relationships of interdependence. If we are loved, we may not know where the next meal is coming from, but we do know those around us will not let us starve. Someone will notice, someone will help, provided we are willing to show our blatant vulnerability freely, and admit we are all lacking in something which is needed to survive this difficult task called living.

Looking back to the times I’ve been without food, without help, temporarily impoverished as it were, much of it has been due to my own stubbornness and unwillingness to admit to my own need. I am not saying that doing so would wipe out poverty or all hungry people would have their problems solved if they simply admitted they needed help. My disability does not go away simply because I have the assistance I need. The fact I am being fed does not negate the fact I cannot feed myself anymore than the fact a homeless man has a bed for the night negate the fact that he is, indeed, homeless. But we are lying to ourselves if we do not admit that each of us are in need of something which makes life livable.

I cannot feed myself and that’s awful. More days than I care to count I’ve spent vast stores of energy trying to figure out where my next meal is coming from. By some standards this would label me as being ‘impoverished.’ But it is what we lack as well as our excesses which make us interact and inspire life into each other when no other solution would allow us to maintain momentum. I am unable to eat on my own and the solution to this problem means I have a wealth of dinner dates and friends to meet for coffee who tell me that I feed them as much as they feed me. Usually I do a pretty good job lining up these appointments 3 times a day to ensure I do not go hungry. On the days that this fails, I am forced to admit my weakness rather than letting it be implicit. I am forced to call someone and say “I need help.” And I am forced to admit that with the number of people who love me enough to come to my aide, I am far from being impoverished.

Last summer I saw two of my friends get married. In many ways it seemed as though they were already wedded long before they walked down the aisle and said their vows to each other. The second they went on their first date here in London it seemed that they were perfect for each other.

The woman was a friend of mine previously to the couple coming together. One afternoon she came into my flat insisting that over Valentine’s Day weekend, she would make haggis as a sort of rebellion against the overly commercial, sappy, syrupy, sociological dedication towards Valentine’s day. What could be a better rebellion than stuffing a sheep’s intestine full of herbs and spices while listening to punk music then tucking in to enjoy the hard work? So she did what any single, self respecting woman would do to prepare for Valentine’s day, she went to Borough Market and bought a sheep’s gut from the butcher’s. While there she bumped into a young man queuing up for the same ingredients. His version of the perfect Valentine’s day weekend was exactly the same as hers. Three years later they were walking down the aisle.

We were in a world which teaches that people are not fully complete until they have found a mate. This is not only a teaching of all the major religions, but also that of the mass media. Nearly every song one hears on the radio is about love. Every television show goes round and round about romantic interests, breakups, and the inevitable make up sex; as well as the news stories are filled with weddings and gossip about divorces. Romance, we are told, is one thing that everyone always ought to be looking for.

The idea of being a complete person and alone is almost unheard of. Churches and synagogues are full of singles groups where you can meet like-minded individuals of the opposite sex. Even in the modern world where marriage is not necessarily encouraged, it is difficult to be seen as a whole person. Everyone, at the very least, lives together as a couple.

What’s so amazing about my friend’s story is in many ways cliché. Over and over you hear, “It’s when you aren’t looking that you find someone,” and then we try to convince ourselves when we find someone that we are attracted to that we weren’t looking for anyone in the first place. I highly doubt that either of my friends were looking for their future mates when standing in line at a butcher shop, holding a sheep’s intestine. In many ways, that’s what makes their story so special. The fact that both of them, as individuals, were able to stand up to the and insist that a day which everyone else swears up and down was meant for love was actually meant for stuffing a sheep’s stomach and listening to of punk rock. There are two people completely content and confident with how they see themselves as well as refusing to cave in to the expectations of those around them hunting for happiness in another person simply because they are still single.

What makes an individual complete or a full entity is how satisfied they are with themselves, not how they are seen in the eyes of other people. If someone is without a partner, he must believe that he is still complete, not lacking in anybody’s expectation simply because there is no wife to show for it. Anyone who swears otherwise can, well, stuff it as they would a sheep’s gut. 

What I Know Of Her Son

She is a woman who I have been wanting to meet for years. Ever since I first heard my friend describe his mother, I knew that she was amazing just by examining his outlook, and that she had a degenerative nerve disease. When he spoke of his mother, he keeps the latter fact quiet and simple telling me of what she’d done and what she used to tell him. “She’s fine…well she’s not fine she has a nerve disease. But it really doesn’t affect her that much.” And so, when I finally bumped into her visiting her son while walking down the road at a Sunday pace, I was surprised as she was further along in her condition that he had made it out to sound. As close as we were I wish he would have told me honestly what her status was like and what her troubles were. But maybe he is as blind to her disability as he is to mine.

I always wanted to meet his mother. It amazes me whenever I meet the parents of any of my friends. I begin to understand where they got their values and which matters were the greatest influences on their life. This particular woman raised my friend incredibly well. For my own sake, when I am out and dependent on him it is as close as I can possibly imagine to possibly being fully independent. In such cases I am particularly interested in meeting the mother of the family, mothers teach their children to stretch their boundaries and to think beyond what is normal in order to incorporate people of all types. The influence of such a woman can mean that for the rest of their life, their child does not feel awkward whenever meeting someone strange. Mothers open up the world of acceptability to their children, making the entire universe more inclusive. I have met two of this woman’s sons and I can safely say that she did a wonderful job in raising her children to be as accommodating and as understanding as human beings can possibly be.

As soon as we were introduced, her eyes lit up with a flicker of recognition. She was holding on to her walker and instantly called me by name. From this I gathered that she somehow knew my name and that it was familiar in their home. Watching her watch her son handle my bags and meet my needs for minor assistance, it suddenly dawned on me that this behavior that she was witnessing in the young man that she helped raise, nurse, feed and carry was new to her. She probably never saw anyone rely on him in such a dependent way as I do on a regular basis. The fact is, I depend on all of my friends, but particularly him, and I forget that this often looks strange to the outside world.

Then, almost instantly, I came to another realization, that because of her own disability, someday soon she will be dependent on him as well. For many individuals with a long term degenerative illness this impending dependency is the most fearful thing to overcome. The fact that someday you will be dependent on your children, and at that point in time it is how you raised them that will reflect on how they will take care of you. Again, it is the classical instance of an individual reaping what they sow. As parents teach their children to care for human life and value it in all its forms, the trickle down effect is that eventually they will be under the care of their children in one form or another. Those families who do not bother to teach their children such values and ethics will no doubt feel it when the older generation inevitably starts losing its own independence.

For me the most humbling realization was that suddenly I knew something about her children, particularly her sons, that she knew nothing of, that she would someday be reliant upon. In this small way, I know how her sons look out for people in need, protecting and advocating for them. Both in the slightest and most dramatic ways. They are both unafraid to feed someone when a spoon becomes too difficult to hold onto. They can tie shoes without breaking the conversation and are experts at making sure that someone not only survives, but that they are happy, healthy and know that they are valued. If such a day comes for her when she can no longer perform the tasks of daily living without a great deal of assistance, she will also find that her boys are exactly as she raised them and I am already thankful for those effects.

Somedays I wish I could tell her now that her children will take care of her when she is in need. I wish I could tell her that when her body rebels and she is no longer able to do what was once considered a natural reflex without a massive amount of frustration, she will have no need to worry. I wish I could tell her all the ways that I see my friend stepping up to the plate and preparing himself to take care of his parents when they grow older. I wish I could tell her all the stories of all the times he advocates for me, and that I am grateful to have such a fabulous friend.

And then I can’t help but wonder, if she and her husband raised their children to become such honorable and humane people, perhaps she knew what he is capable of all along.

When I woke up in the North Carolina humidity, the only thing more confused than my brain was, of course, my body. The cool shadows of the afternoon did nothing to stop the fact that I was sticking to the sheets, or that I was suffering from severe jet lag as I had just flown back to the States for a week to visit friends. It was two in the morning for me and my friend had just shaken me awake and murmured something about dinner. I placed my unsteady feet on the floor and made my way into the next room in hopes of getting my bearings a bit better. There, on the wall, was a map of the world and my eye flicked straight to where I had just come from: London, UK.

In that second I knew something in my life had changed.

Ever since I could remember, whenever I saw a map my mind would automatically look for Chicago, Illinois. This was where I spent the first twenty some odd years of my life calling ‘home.’ This could very well be attributed to the fact that Chicago has Lake Michigan acting as a large blue finger pointing to it for the rest of the world to notice. When I had completed college, spending all four years in the state of North Carolina, my eye would still jump to Chicago every time I looked at a map. I simply assumed, like so many other habits acquired in childhood, seeing Chicago first would be something I always did.

I stared at my friend’s map for quite some time attempting to almost drag my focus back to where it normally settles. Focusing my gaze there just felt uncomfortable and like a magnet I kept being drug across the ocean back to London. I went to help my friends cook dinner.

“Hey, when you guys look at a map, where is the first place you look?”

“Russia,” one friend said without thinking.

“Chechnya” blurted out another.

“Medellin, Colombia,” spilled from a third.

All of these places, random as they seem on paper, were not just places they had been to. Over the past seven years I had known them to go everywhere for months at a time as all three of them were desirous to pursue human aide as their professions. Rather, the specific places they mentioned were the areas they determined as where they wanted to serve for the rest of their lives. Here was where they had written me letters saying that they had fallen in love with the people who occupied the area. Here were the places that, when mentioned on the news, caused their hearts to skip a beat and then cry out in anguish. The places they named without stopping for a moment to think, were where they hoped to raise their families, live their lives, and invest in their professions…because they already knew that place would be home.

It was then it dawned on me for the first time, that England had somehow become my home.

I went back to the cool dark room which held the map after supper to rummage through my bags and find some toiletries. My eyes kept floating back up and finding the outline of England. I tried to think of possible explanations for this phenomenon but could find none. I hadn’t spent the last years looking at maps trying to figure out where I was as I did growing up. Outside of coming to America, I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a world map. I had spent the same amount of time away at university as I had in the UK and my eyes never searched for North Carolina. There was no habit I could think of to justify the new reflex.

By weeks end I was still searching out England before anything else. My best friend took me to the airport and although I was sorry to leave her, I couldn’t help but talk about the plans I had for the upcoming weekend in London. I didn’t want to stay with her, I wanted my friend to come with me. The flight attendant came to help me board the plane as I gave my friend a last hug. Although I looked back after being taken from her, I smiled, thinking about all the people and wonderful things that were waiting for me when I got off the plane. These details were what made the little island mine.

“Are you heading home now,” the flight attendant asked me while supporting my arm and helping me walk to my seat.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”