Wednesday, December 31, 2003

O' Wad Some Pow'r the Giftie Gie Us, Tae see Oorsel's as Ithers See Us (From: To a Louse: On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church. Robert Burns) Or Observing How People React to My Having Cerebral Palsy It's not obvious to most, at first glance, that I cannot use my right hand and that I walk with a limp, because my right leg is shorter than my left and my ankle doesn't bend. So, one of my biggest challenges is explaining to people why I cannot do certain things and require assistance, at times. But, I have so much practice at doing tasks with one-hand, that some friends who have known me for a long time, no longer notice. But the fact that my disability is not immediately obvious has created some "interesting" situations. An early memory is of the days when corporal punishment was permissible and used frequently, in school. Until 1975, in Scotland, teachers were permitted to administer punishment by hitting pupils on the hand with a leather strap. This link will explain more: http://home.freeuk.com/mkb/instruments/scotsbelt.htm For the most part, the teachers used the strap to discipline recalcitrant boys, but on some occasions a few teachers administered it as punishment for bad work. I have a clear memory of one such occasion, when I was about 9 years old, in primary school. The teacher had given the class a set of math problems to solve: probably concerning trains going at a certain speed over a certain distance, or baths filling up at a certain rate and overflowing. I never had any aptitude for math and came up with an incorrect answer for most of the problems. But, I was not the only one with incorrect answers and the teacher called about 12 of us to the front of the class. I took my place in the line and waited my turn for the strap. Thwack! Thwack! The teacher struck each child on the left hand with the strap and they returned to their seats, rubbing their palms. I moved up to stand in front of the teacher and I held out my left hand as the others had done. She did not raise the strap over her shoulder in preparation to hit my offered palm, but she stared at me with horrified eyes and jerked her head to indicate that I was to return to my seat. She gave no explanation, but obviously she could not bring herself to hit a child with a disability. If that were the case, Why did she choose to hit any child? But, even if the teacher let my mistakes go unpunished, my classmates made sure I did not get off so lightly and they taunted me, as only classmates know how. When I think about that incident, I wonder why the teacher didn't use it as an opportunity to educate the class about disability. But, instead, her silence served to help make me "other." 2:54:18 PM    comment []

	Monday, November 10, 2003

On Being Told I was Adopted At some point (usually) in their life, adoptees are told they are adopted. I've seen much debate on many adoption related websites and in chat rooms, about the best time for the telling. I don't know when Mam and Dad had planned to tell me, but I'm sure the timing of the telling was due to the fact that I was born with cerebral palsy. I was 6 days old when I was brought home to the Catbow, Buckie, from the place where I was born, Cuparstone Nursing Home in Aberdeen. Mam said I was covered in bruises and my left eye was swollen shut, hardly a bonnie baby. My right shoulder had been torn from its socket during the birth process, perhaps by the cruel forceps, which had also been applied to my head to drag me out of my mother, who was unconscious and hemorrhaging. But none of my injuries were noticed in the flurry to remove me as quickly as possible from my biological mother, so that I could be made legitimate by adoption. In time, my bruises healed and I was thriving on bottles and the breezes from the Moray Firth, but Mam thought there was something not quite right about me. I flopped like a rag doll when she bathed me and my right hand jerked constantly. So, I was taken to the Family Doctor, Dr. Cameron. Much later in my life, I learned that Dr. Cameron, besides practicing medicine, also played God. He was also the family Doctor of Agnes, my biological mother, who had gone to him when she found herself to be pregnant with an "out-of-wedlock" child. At the same time, Mam was consulting Dr. Cameron about her infertility and he decided that he a solution for them both. Although I was obviously not aware of my first visit to Dr. Cameron, that was the first of many visits to a variety of doctors and specialists. They often asked Mam if my birth was difficult and that was a question she was unable to answer. As I grew older I became aware of what was happening. I remember Mam blushing and twisting a nervous hankie as she tried to explain that she had not given birth to me, all the while looking at me sideways to see how much I understood. She knew I was a precocious child. Growing up in a fishing community, I spent many hours in the company of adults. While the men were at sea, the women in the neighbourhood gathered in someone's house, in the evenings, for company and gossip. I sat on my creepie stool by the fire, in the midst of the group of women whose tongues clicked as fast as their knitting needles. They assumed I was busy with my book or game and talked freely about anyone who was not present. Their gossip was not deliberately malicious, but it was full of the intimate details of the lives of their neighbours. I soaked it all up and could recognize a particularly juicy piece by the way it was told in hushed tones and the wise nodding of collective heads. I learned the gruesome intimacies of female ailments, which often resulted in a woman having it "a' ta'en awa." ("All taken away," or "total hysterectomy.") I stopped turning the pages of my book when they whispered. Whispers meant they were talking about "some man" and "some woman" and "not being married." I sat in their midst, a spy. So Mam knew that I would quickly catch on to her hesitant, stammered explanation to the doctors that I was adopted, and when I was 4 years old, she told me. She told me as a bedtime story, in a way that I understood immediately that I had been born to another mother who chose to give me to Mam and Dad. When I was much older, I learned the reasons why this choice was made. An illegitimate child was a disgrace to a respectable family and had to given away and never mentioned. I grew up in a community, which could be both, supportive of its fishing families and at the same time, harshly judgmental. It was a community that did not lock its doors and where neighbours entered without knocking and were made welcome. But, I also remember the twitching lace curtains that hung at the windows and the nods and winks of disapproval reflected in the brass plant pots, which stood on the window ledges. If Mam hadn't told me, I might have learned about my adoption from my overhearing careless gossip. Soon afterwards, I had another appointment with a specialist and he asked Mam about the circumstances of my birth. I remember sitting on the examination table, swinging my legs and before Mam could say a word, I cheerily said, "Och Doctor! She disna ken! She wisna there!" 4:13:51 PM    comment []

	Sunday, September 7, 2003

On Being a Scot in California, Blogging with One Hand Why did I decide to blog? On Wednesday, August 13 2003, I read Amanda Hesser's article on Julie Powell in the 'Dining Out' section of the New York Times and, like so many others, was fascinated by the Julia/Julie Project. I accessed Julie's blog straight away. Amanda had warned that "some of Julie's language, in person and on her web log is very rough." I actually found it refreshing and agree with Amanda that "Some of it is very funny." That was my introduction to blogging. Now I will introduce myself. On Being a Scot I grew up in a herring fishing family in Buckie, a fishing port on the Moray Firth coast of North East Scotland. There is more on Buckie and the fishing industry at www.buckieheritage.org, the website of the Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Museum. I am often asked if I miss Scotland. My answer is always "No! Scotland is a portable country and I've taken it with me." Often, Americans tell me they are from 'ScAtland' too, and are 'ScAts,' but when I ask where in ScOtland they were born, they admit that they were born in USA, of 'ScAttish' ancestry. It is surprising that they often have no idea where in 'ScAtland' their 'ScAttish' ancestors came from. But their pride in their heritage is never in question. I speak, and write, 'The Doric,' the dialect/language of North East Scotland and I'll nae doot (no doubt) blog in dialect, with translation. In California I have lived near Berkeley, California, with Richard, my Sassenach husband, for 25 years. We've been married 30 years. Richard had a 2-year NATO fellowship to do research in fuzzy logic at UC Berkeley. We had been living happily in Cambridge, UK, where Richard received a Ph.D. and we had a house there, but the second I got off the plane at SFO, I felt I had come home an have had the same feeling ever since. Blogging with One Hand I'm a one-handed, left hand only, typist. I was born with cerebral palsy, which affects my right side. My right hand has life of its own and refuses to be controlled. The first memory I have of my life is the moment I became aware that I could not use my right hand. I am 3 years old and I am kneeling in front of a little stool, in the living room, where a low fire is burning in the open grate, even though it is summer. The summers in North East Scotland can be cool and our house, an old fisherman's cottage, has small, curtained windows, which does not let in much sunlight to warm the room. (There is a picture of the house at the BDFHM website, mentioned above, on the 'Oor Margit' page there.) A drawing book with blank pages lies open on the stool. My right hand has a tight grip on a fat, red, over-sized pencil and I was straining to 'draw' on the paper. The pencil is a gift, brought back from someone's annual seaside holiday and had the words, "A Present From Great Yarmouth." I knew that's what the words were only because I had heard Mam say that Auntie Joyce had gone to Great Yarmouth for her summer holiday and it must have been she who brought the pencil back, oversized, to 'help' me grip it. A generic adult stands over me, giving stern instructions. "Hold the pencil in your BAD hand and draw a picture!" She frowns when the pencil flies out of my hand for the umpteenth time and I reach for it with my left hand. "No! Don't pick it up with you GOOD hand! You have to use your BAD hand, otherwise it will never be a GOOD hand!" So, as children learn to distinguish between good and bad, right from wrong, and left from right, I learned that left was good, right was bad, but it was wrong that it should be so. Kneeling there, I tried very hard to make my bad hand a good one and concentrated hard on holding the pencil, but once more it flew out of my hand in a palsied uncontrollable spasm, which was no doubt exacerbated by my distress. I tried to show the adult the controlled scribbles I had created with my left hand, but my left-handed accomplishments were of no interest and her emphasis was only on what I was failing to do. I screamed in a tantrum of frustration at my futile exertions and inability to explain to adult sternness and disapproval that there should be no anger involved in my disability. I was proud of what my left hand could do. What was so important about being perfect? At 3 years old, I could accept myself as is, why couldn't they? Perhaps they thought I was disobedient for being disabled. 6:17:37 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Margaret Tong. Last update: 12/31/03; 2:57:54 PM.