I always liked children. When I was 15, I was a junior life guard at the local YMCA and taught arts and crafts to children and always thought I got more out of it than the children did.
It was there, at the Y, that I was shot one afternoon. My family was very strict about knowing where we were at all times, and I was calling my grandmother to say I was about to start walking home, when I was shot in the back. It was another junior counselor, a gang member, who`d said he was going to scare me one day with a gun. He said later that he didn`t know it was loaded, that he`d just meant to scare me. The bullet went directly through the center of my spine and blew up in my stomach–it was the kind that explodes.
At first they didn`t expect me to live. I was in surgery for more than 10 hours, paralyzed from the waist down; I lost 70 percent of my stomach, half my intestines, my spleen and my pancreas, and what was left had to be pieced together and rerouted. Later when I was off the critical list they charged the boy with assault and battery and illegal use of a weapon. He got one to three years and was out in nine months. I was always afraid after that. Afraid just to be in the city.
I never lost consciousness through the whole thing, but it took me several days to really realize I was paralyzed. My first reaction was disbelief. I was very athletic and liked a lot of sports, and all I could think was it was a bad dream and I would wake up. The longer I didn`t wake up from the dream, the more it became a reality and the more depressed I got. I kept bargaining with God: ”If you let me walk again, I`ll do all these great things.” But it never happened. And I was in a lot of pain and on a lot of medication, and eventually I became addicted to prescribed medication and had to go through withdrawal. I spent eight weeks in the hospital after the shooting; then I was sent to a rehabilitation center for nine months. I was a hard person to deal with. I didn`t adjust in two days. I wouldn`t go to school; no one could convince me there was ever anything I could ever do that I`d ever need school for.
At the rehab center I developed a blood clot, and they rushed me to Northwestern Hospital. I just wanted to die. But then I met this girl there named Carol. She was about 23 and had just been in a car accident in Indiana and was paralyzed from the neck down. She was married and had two children
–the baby wasn`t more than three months old–but she was so happy: She`d say she couldn`t wait to get to rehabiliation, that she had to do this and get back to her children. She had to do it for her children, she`d say.
I thought to myself, ”Clarinda, the world is not that bad for you. She has to wait for someone to answer the phone for her. I can do that myself; I can feed myself. From the waist up I can do everything.” When I went back to the rehab hospital I was a different person.
They told me I`d never walk again, but I never accepted it. I bugged them `til they let me try with splints, and eventually I was walking. It was slow; what would normally take 5 minutes to walk took me 30. But my parents were always very supportive; my family was great and always has been. When they released me from the hospital, I walked to the car.
My family insisted I finish high school, and eventually I decided I wanted to go to college. Every step of the way there were obstacles to overcome. My own attitude was one. Even though I was developing and accepting myself, I still thought of myself as this ugly individual. There I was, 16, 17, 18, thinking why would anyone want to date me or marry me? I`m ugly. Then I remember one day looking in the mirror and thinking, ”You`re not a bad-looking person.” I started to believe that if no one dated me, that was their problem, not mine. When I began to see myself as a worthwhile person and developed some self-esteem, others began to see me that way, too. You know the way you see yourself is the way you portray yourself to other people.
I got a full scholarship to Luther College in Iowa, and even though they went out of their way to arrange things to be convenient for me in the wheelchair, eventually I needed some independent transportation and my parents had hand controls put in their old car for me to drive around. Along the way, at Luther, and later in graduate school in Missouri–I earned my master`s degree in special education–I was becoming more and more independent in the sense that my living situations required me to rely more on myself, and it meant I had to let some of the emotional walls down that I`d built up for years and let people get closer. I needed them.
I was offered teaching positions in Iowa and Missouri, but I wanted to come back to the big city. When I got here, though, no one would hire me as a teacher. I applied as a substitute just to prove to them I could manage a classroom, but no one ever called me. I finally applied for a job with the federal government–I thought it`d be good interview practice–and I was hired to manage a summer youth work program.
Then I got called by another federal agency–dealing with civil rights, and race and handicapped discrimination–and I worked on cases there for about two years before I was selected, one of just 40 nationally, for a three-year management training program that rotates you around the agencies. My last rotation was with the Public Health Service, and I found the work very satisfying. I stayed and recently moved into a new position as program consultant for the National Health Service Corps: Doctors who the government has loaned money to for their education repay their debt by serving in communities where there`s a need. We match the doctors with the community.
It was about December, 1983, when I realized I was not at ease with myself. I had a good job, my own home, I was living the life I wanted to live, but I felt something was missing. One night I went to bed and prayed. I asked God what more could I want–I`ve got so much–what am I doing I shouldn`t be, why do I feel this way? I woke up and saw a silhouette of the Virgin Mary on my wall holding a baby. I said, ”You must want me to have a baby, but You haven`t sent anyone to have a baby with.”
Then a woman I knew from my volunteer work at a school for handicapped children–she`d said before she thought I`d make a great mother–one day asked me if I wanted to adopt a baby. A friend of hers who had several children had become pregnant and couldn`t handle any more children emotionally or financially but wanted to find a good home for the baby. I said I`d consider it, but I never thought it would happen. I met the woman, and we talked frequently and were working on legal papers for the adoption–the baby was due in February `84–but I never thought she`d really give the baby up once it was born.
Well, she called me on the way to the hospital to deliver, and then afterward she calls and says, ”Your baby is crying, what do you want to do about it. The doctors are here and need to know his name.” I went into my supervisor`s office and said, ”I think I`m getting a baby and I`m going to need the next two weeks off. I don`t know how I`m going to do it, but I have faith things will work out.”
I got my second child, a girl, from the agency in January of this year;
she`s seven months old now. I wanted another one because first, I felt I would be a good mother, and second, I didn`t want my son to be an only child. The agency was leery of me at first; they`d never dealt with a disabled, single person before, but eventually we worked things out. My son just started preschool, and I have a babysitter to care for my daughter.
I enjoy my children so much. I look forward to the time I spend with them. No matter how difficult a day I`ve had, no matter what type of negative things have happened, I get new energy when I walk in the door and see them. Just watching them grow and develop; it may sound dumb, but it`s a real warm feeling. I travel a lot with my job, and I usually take my children with me everywhere. I have to take someone else along to watch them, so it costs a lot, but I don`t like to leave them. I work with a lot of older men–their children are high school age–and I hear them say, ”I missed all the growing years. When my son took his first steps, I was in Atlanta,” and they say if they had it to do again, they`d do it differently.
I thought a lot about that and decided I`d take my children with me as much as I can. I love them enough to know I wouldn`t be happy with them 24 hours a day–I love my work, too–but I cherish the time I have with them. I believe today that if there`s something you want to do, you can figure out a way to do it. You just can.
