I remember standing with my 5-year-older sister in the screened in back porch beside the milk separator that my mother ran twice a day to separate the cream from the milk as we sold cream and fed the "nonfat" milk to the calves. Mother was not there. I must have been around 5 because we had a new neighbor. The new neighbor was rich from oil wells somewhere else and had bought the ranch across the road. They had a television set. We got to visit on Saturday and watch the cowboy movies. It was a totally amazing experience. We had been able to go to movies a little every once in a while, but to have a movie in your house? That would be like living in heaven to us. I remember my sister hissed with virulent hatred at me, "If it wasn't for you and your foot, we would have a TV set." I felt a sense of shame that consumed me with sadness and it never stopped. I hold it today. I was a club foot and I cost my family more than it could stand. Somehow I had to make up for that, somehow. As an adult I called the hospital and asked for my admission dates. I was born in 1944. My first admission date was 1944. I was born at home so it must have been my first "corrective" surgery. I was admitted again in 1945, 1946, and 1947. The few pictures there are of me are of me as a toddler, I am in a cast up to my knees and I am holding a cat. The memories of the surgeries are gone at a conscious level, but the memory of twice weekly visits to the physical therapist are there and the intermittent visits to the orthopedic clinic are also there. The discussion was always whether to operate again and how to "fix" the inward curved foot I had. The pain was always a new pair of shoes required every 6 months. It felt like a nail driven into the outermost curve of the foot and I could not cry because the shoes cost the family so much and I was the cause of all the problems of the family--my foot, my shoes, and my visits to physical therapy and doctors.
When I went to the county seat school in the sixth grade, I understood that there were other club footed children in the school. One was retarded and had a club foot. The other was a boy. His was "uncorrected." His walk was with a limp. I did not limp I didn't think. He was quiet, but the other, a female, was retarded and made fun of constantly. I lived in fear that they would turn on me and do the same. Since the female was retarded, I thought that I must be retarded too, maybe not as bad.
Why was there 3 club feet in a small community? Although my generation had many cripples in it and the birth defect of a club foot was similar to the deforming limbs appearing from polio, all 3 of us were born with the defect.
The burden of shame that a handicapped person puts on families and society is a tragic one to carry for the individual, but it also carries something that non-handicapped people don't understand as fully. It is the burden of empathy. It was sorely needed then and even more so needed today. The late 20th century appearance of empathy is surprising, but it is so misdirected. It causes vegetarianism instead of people out in the streets demanding birth control, sex education, and the right of abortion. It exhibits itself in pampered dogs and cats who have more medical attention than most poverty-stricken children in this country. Misplaced empathy is worst than no empathy at all to one who has no future.
So my sister created me, the young adult, seeing a picture in the newspaper of a barefooted little dead man in a foreign country in Vietnam, understanding that I am being lied to in the 20th century. A little man who has no shoes could not possibly be a threat to the well-dressed and well-shod Americans! Why was my country lying to me? And what other lies were being told?
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