I sat in the doctor's office awaiting Andrew's advice. Hopefully, I wouldn't need a cane. I never have, but that doesn't mean I never will. Anxiously, I gripped Steve's hand awaiting the verdict that I thought would determine the course of my life. He squeezed back as if to say "I'm here for you, Caitlin."
Occasionally, when I could not stabilize myself on the walls of an ordinary restroom stall, I needed to use the large one for the grab bars. I felt guilty because, according to outward observers, I did not need them. That little spot on my cerebellum ruined my life for as long as I could remember. At least now, my arrhythmic gait and frequent falls had a name: ataxic cerebral palsy. However, I could never display it like the Ender Dragon egg in the same way that others did.
"Are you nervous?" Steve looked at me with concern. He seemed to share my anxiety, though I wasn't sure why.
"Nervous is an understatement." In those four words, I described my past of trying to stay out of sight and out of mind. The years of hiding from my sisters, getting tormented by my peers, and having to play in the pit as a clarinetist in marching band because I could not march came to the surface. Sometimes, I wished I could lock my cerebral palsy in a vault and toss said vault into the void.
"I understand that you want to fly under the radar, but...it'd do you good to be noticed."
"Want to? I had no choice!"
"You do now." At that point, I burst into tears out of sheer emotional overload. Andrew came as if to prophesy my death.
"It would greatly benefit you to have a cane for balance and AFOs to correct your foot position." The word "benefit" means "receive an advantage, profit, gain". How could I receive an advantage, profit, or gain from having "cerebral palsy" slapped across my forehead? Without another word, Andrew turned his attention towards something else. He left the room saying he needed to get something. Steve attacked me, not with sword, but with a tongue sharper than diamonds.
"Get over yourself and stop being such a whinging wimp. It's not like you died." With those words, he stole my voice. I could only look down at my splayed legs and envy his effortless tread. I wanted to say I wish you wouldn't be so aggressive, that you'd care more about how your words affect others, but my voice was absent in that moment. What I could muster came out in a foreign language that I was ashamed to speak.
"Non. Zut! Ça va mal." Steve looked at me confusedly. He took me by the arm without a word and led me out the door.
When we got home, I collapsed into another tearful outburst. I cried so much I had an asthma attack; therefore, I was even more upset. Taking up his enchanted diamond pickaxe, Steve left without a word. Upon taking out my clarinet, I played a B flat, which came out in a crackly rasp. Cringing at my subpar intonation, I replaced it with a reed that I had sharpened to perfection. The B flat was smooth and in tune, but I was still dissatisfied. Dispassionately, I played a plaintive sarabande. I played the passage again and again until my embouchure tired. A playful xylophone leitmotif sounded, alerting me that someone from the DuPont family was trying to reach me.
"Hi! This is Alex. I'm coming for my vocal lessons. In choir, we are singing something about loving ourselves for who we are. The notes are hard. I hope I can hit them." I prepared the study for Alex's arrival. I uncovered the piano, set up two music stands, washed my face, and drank some hot water to relax my vocal cords. An insistent rap on the door indicated that Alex had arrived. Gracefully, she skipped in, planted herself in the chair, and placed her glittery, pink binder on the stand.
"Let's start with Alouette." Alex handed the accompaniment to me. I plucked the keys as Alex sang the words. When I played the final chord, she asked if it was good.
"It was good, but I know you can be great. Sing it with more bite. The lyrics are about plucking the feathers out of a lark." Alex sang Alouette with an aggression that matched the impact of a pickaxe hitting stone.
"Diminuendo here. You were crescendoing." Alex obliged and sang it again. She pulled up the piece titled "For Who I Am" and handed the accompaniment to me. I took the tempo slower than written. Alex belted out the following words:
It's hard to see that I'm beautiful
When society is throwing standards around.
I know I shouldn't envy and compare
Myself to the ideals I shouldn't be bound.
The world is sometimes harsh and unfair,
And sometimes I think that nobody cares.
But I need to be strong and love myself
For who I am (For who I am)
For who I am (For who I am)
My feet could not strike the pedals with the precision that the piece demanded. Eventually, I gave up on the pedals and just plucked the keys. Deftly, my hands moved across the piano while my feet dangled stationary and flaccid. Alex ran out of breath several times; I reminded her to breathe from the diaphragm. When she stopped, she gasped for breath, her face red. I let the vocalist take a break.
I advised Alex to exaggerate her mouth movements to make the lyrics more articulate. The vocal lesson continued until Alex bade me goodbye; at that moment, Andrew came with a cane and leg braces in tow while contemplating Alex's song. Somehow, Alex sang the song I needed to hear without asking me what I needed. With her song, she taught me more in a moment than I could ever do in a lifetime. While contemplating the vocal lesson, he handed them to me to try on. I loathed this moment, yet I tried my hand at moving with the cane. My steps were markedly stronger, more regular, and less deliberate. The AFOs stabilized my ever-sliding feet. I looked down at the purple and white plastic that seemed to glow against the black leggings under my dark green skirt and at the matching lavender-colored cane. If only they were concert black so that they would blend into the shadows.
Steve tramped into the house in more or less good spirits. He showed me the forty-eight iron ingots, twenty gold ingots, and twelve diamonds he mined from the cave and went on to boast of his victories over armies of skeletons, zombies, and creepers. It sounded as though the sun king had arrived during his speech, but after plucking an arrow from his backside, he sat down with a penitent air.
"I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I only said that because I envy how strong you are."
"You're probably only saying that out of pity."
"Anyone who helps a student out of hours has the courage to slay the Ender Dragon a thousand times over." I found myself smiling and blushing at this comment.
"It was merely one of the many basic obligations of being a teacher. As for the AFOs and the cane, I'll most likely think of them as armor." With that, I assembled my bow, which was resting on the coffee table, and set out with Steve to fight the battles of my life.
(A/N: This post was written to conclude World Cerebral Palsy Day.)
