I look back through the center of a gray funnel cloud to a point in time and place where everything seemed to change. The world never looked the same again. All of my perceptions and feelings were shaped by events that shattered the innocence of my body and spirit, yet set me on a journey of mystery and understanding that continues to this day.In the summer of my tenth year, I ran and leaped like a deer through the orange groves and open fields. I was free. I roamed and explored as far as my legs would take me. When I rested, I would sit under a giant elm tree at the edge of a grove and stare at the mountains that towered above my own special valley. When my hands and face were sticky with juice from my orange feast, I would return home to my family where no one seemed to understand the importance of my adventurous journeys.
I was a dreamer. My day dreams and night dreams were only interrupted by growing pains. I complained to my parents about the aching which seemed to get worse. It hurt. My leg and hip hurt so badly that sometimes I could barely turn over in bed. The aching came and went and came and went and I was told that the "growing pains" would soon go away for good. But the pain didn't go away.
That same summer, my family and I took our usual vacation. We pulled our house trailer to a state park at the beach and set up camp for two weeks of sunburn, wild surf , beautiful sunsets and spectacular starlit nights. It was paradise. Several times I scrounged up some money and went to the pier arcade to conquer the pinball machines. I was good. Sometimes I even drew a small crowd who stood in awe of how many free games I could win. I could play for hours on a dollar. One day at the arcade as I caressed and cajoled my machine to do my will, music came over the juke box that I had never heard before. It was dangerous, rough and powerful. It shook and lifted my spirit. Patti Page had brought in the shrimp boats and Fats Domino had gotten his thrill on Blueberry Hill, but Bill Haley and his Comets shot right through my soul with that sound and beat.
"One o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock, rock..."
It played over and over again and my body began to sway in its spell until the pain in my hip and leg seemed to melt away into sensuous and powerful ecstasy.
The next day I was still euphoric as I strutted back to our trailer after a short hike... when I fell. There was nothing in my way and no one to shove me down. I just fell. My left leg gave out, gave up and crumbled under me. There was no one there to see me fall. And there was no one there to see me try to get up several times and eventually drag myself back to our trailer where I climbed onto a cot - hyperventilating - and with sharp pains shooting through my hip and leg. I told my mother what had happened and I lay on the cot for hours in shock. I could see the look of fear on her face and we both knew then that my growing pains were something different, something ominous. That was the beginning of her guilt and the beginning of my journey through darkness and light.
I was able to limp around in a daze of confusion and pain for the rest of that fateful vacation and when we got back home, a doctor's appointment was set up. After numerous tests, x-rays and visits to the doctor, the verdict came in. It was not good. Polio in the left leg and a bone disease in the left hip where the hip ball was literally rotting away. I tried to take it like a man.
"Will I get better?"
"The polio is a mild case and physical therapy should eventually restore the muscles. The hip disease will have to run its course. It will get worse, but there may eventually be some restoration of the bone."
" What happens now?"
" The hip needs complete rest. Initially you will have to stay at home in bed and then you will have to use crutches with the left leg in a sling. The polio requires physical therapy, but that won't be able to start for a while and then it will have to be exercise that does not put any weight on the hip."
I was devastated, but I held my head high. My dad was a proud man and I was a proud boy. I walked as tall as I could from the doctor's office that day. It was the last time that I walked on land without crutches for three years. When I got home, I cried as I had never cried before. It was a helpless and desperate wail with feelings ranging from anger to fear. My world seemed shattered.
During the next two years, I watched and felt my leg wither to a dangling and useless piece of baggage of skin and bone, and I began my conversations with God. I thought I was praying and I guess I was, but I didn't really know how to pray. Over time, my "prayers" went something like this:
" Why, God? Why did you do this to me?"
" Please, God. Please make me better. Please let me walk again."
" Are you listening, God?"
"Are you there, God?"
"God, I beg you. Please help me."
"I'll do anything for you, God, if you will help me get better."
"Are you there, God?"
Life went on. I competed for my place among the young bucks on two crutches and one leg. I was obsessed with being able to do everything that other kids could do. Kick-ball, dodge-ball, tether-ball. I could run as fast on my crutches as most other kids and I loved to see the looks on their faces when I sailed down the hallway, crutch after crutch, with my good foot only touching the ground every thirty feet or so. But I could hear the whispers of, "He's crippled", and every stare of sympathy that I got was like an accusation of inferiority. When people asked me if I was crippled, I was indignant.
"No, I'm not crippled! Are you?"
I became somewhat of a loner and felt most comfortable with people when I was entertaining or being a clown. That role gave me distance. I still went on my adventurous journeys of exploration, and when we went on our vacations to the beach, I would crawl out into the surf until I could float. I leaped over and dove through the waves off my good leg and I body-surfed for hours at a time. I felt strong and free in the waves and we played rough together. The sea became my friend, forever.
"Four o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock, rock..."
After almost two years on crutches, the condition of my hip stopped getting worse and I was able to begin physical therapy five days a week to begin to revive the muscles in my leg. My weekly schedule of therapy included two days of leg exercises at an orthopedic center and three days of water therapy at a children's rehabilitation center. The physical therapists that I worked with became heroes to me. I will always be grateful for their skill, guidance, dedication and compassion. They gently pushed me to work hard, and I responded by always working harder than they expected. I was determined to run and leap again through the groves and fields.
The physical therapists were a guiding light to me, but the light that still shines most brightly for me from those mostly dark days came from a strange and unexpected source. You can search to the ends of the earth for any form of enlightenment without finding it, and then again, you can stare it in the eyes but not realize it until long after... if ever at all. I stared enlightenment in the eyes at a children's rehabilitation center on a small hill in the countryside where love was born every day and children got well and grew up... or were given up... into the hands of God.
There were three of us that worked with the therapists and played in the pool during our one-hour sessions. Me, Billy and Mario. Mario and I always looked forward to our time in the water where we felt liberated and buoyant. But Billy didn't look forward to much of anything. He was angry. He was bitter. And he was sad. Billy was sixteen years old, but his disease had stopped his body from growing when he was around five. He was confined to a wheel chair and he was not expected to live past twenty. Basically his attitude was, "What do I have to live for?", and his language was filled with obscenities inserted into phrases like, "So what? Who cares? Welcome to another hopeless day. I might as well be a vegetable." Billy cursed the world and everyone around him. He cursed himself and he cursed God.
Mario was fifteen years old. His disease had also left him with a body the size of a five-year-old. His bones were brittle and they broke easily. Dozens of metal pins had been put into his bones to help hold them together. And like Billy, Mario could not expect to live past his teens.
Mario and Billy were buddies. They were almost always together in their tiny wheel chairs or in the pool. They both were young men in the bodies of small children - bodies that were feeble and aging rapidly. They had a bond that was unbreakable and that transcended what anyone else could possibly understand.
But Mario was very different than Billy. Mario had an attitude of playful joy. He expressed himself with self-deprecating humor and was always able to bring a lightness to situations and to those around him. As a nurse rolled him into the pool area, he would proclaim in a boisterous voice, "Let's play water polo! I'll be the ball.", or when Billy was making one of his constant complaints, Mario would counter with something like, "You think you've got problems? I'm a human pin-cushion and I live in constant fear of magnets." Once when Billy and Mario were informed they would be going on a field trip to see a movie, Billy characteristically pointed out that he didn't give a damn and Mario gently teased him.
"Look on the bright side, Billy. Just think, we can still get in for children's prices."
Mario made us laugh. Even Billy would crack a smile, and occasionally, a strange and glorious sound would come out of his mouth. It was a chuckle. Mario's humor made us forget where we were, who we were, and what handicapped us - and even if just for an instant, we were all alone, together, in suspended animation, in a place of joy.
"Seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, rock. We're gonna rock around the clock, tonight."
Mario took care of Billy, the nurses and everyone around him, including me. He helped free me from my self-pity. When I would surface from my underwater journeys and see him teasing Billy, or when I would watch him joking with the nurses from my corner world of the pool, I was always hypnotized with amazement at his unselfish and joyous spirit.
* * * I went on to run and jump again through the groves and open fields. And I conquered the athletic fields with an obsession to prove that I was not crippled and that I was whole and that I was worthy of my father's expectations. But I never went back to the children's rehabilitation center on the small hill. I could not bear to see that Mario and Billy were gone. And I could not bear to look back at the pettiness of my self-pity.
Through my life since those overwhelming experiences of my childhood, there have been some people who have said that I still carry some psychological crutches, and I suppose they may be right. But sometimes when I find myself wallowing in uncontrollable feelings of worthlessness or futility , I feel a tiny hand resting gently on my shoulder, and my tears are joined by a chuckle and then laughter. My mind races back through the center of a gray funnel cloud to a point in time and place where everything changed, and I see that life is a joyous gift and that there is good to be done.
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