Monday, November 22, 1998
It's corny, but give heartfelt thanks
BY DEBORAH KENDRICK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
''Don't get your neck in a knot over it,'' my old college friend said to me on the phone last night, making me laugh at the end of a very bad day.
The expression was her mother's, and hearing it made me thankful for many things. I was thankful for my friend, and for having known her mother. And thankful just to be alive.
Corny, maybe, but some measure of corniness might well be our best remaining detector of feeling - and the capacity for gratitude.
When it comes to corny, Thanksgiving is somewhere in the lead among our holidays. Yet there's perhaps none other on which we scramble so fervently to play by the rules. Everyone has something to be thankful for, and most of us have much.
From the perspective of people with disabilities, the business of thankfulness is pretty much like the perspective on all things: We have the same basic deal as everybody else, and perhaps a few extras.
All of us, for example, are thankful if we have food, shelter, and friends or family members who love us. We are thankful for our jobs, our pets, our computers.
For those of us with disabilities, though, each of the above has possible gratitude-grabbing frills.
We are thankful, for instance, if we get transportation to the store to buy our food and if our ''shelter'' is one we can enter and navigate without assistance.
We are thankful for jobs, if we have them, but also thankful for the traveler at the bus stop who isn't afraid to say ''Good morning'' and the co-workers who invite us to lunch.
We are thankful for technology and the World Wide Web, but particularly thankful to Web designers who incorporate text alternatives to their graphically pleasing sites.
We are thankful for pets who love us unconditionally. Some of us are particularly thankful for the working animals that guide us through busy streets or open doors for us or turn on lights or block our falls from wheelchairs.
We cherish our friends under any circumstances, and are especially thankful when they remember to speak up if we have difficulty hearing, or to read the small print to us when we have difficulty seeing.
We are thankful when children are curious about our physical differences or special equipment and their parents smile encouragingly for them to approach us with their questions.
We are thankful when sales staff speak to us in normal voices - rather than shriek loudly or speak extra slowly.
We are thankful to individuals who know that it's OK to offer to help and equally OK to learn that help is or is not necessary this time.
My friend who made me laugh with her old-fashioned phrases does not cherish me because of my disability or in spite of it. I am not my brother's ''sister with a disability'' or my children's ''differently able'' mom.
Being thankful for one another is another way of being thankful for love, laughter and life itself.
That will be my prayer of thanks this week - and every week I can remind myself to think of it.
Deborah Kendrick, a Cincinnati free-lance writer, is a nationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities. Write: Deborah Kendrick, Cincinnati Enquirer, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; e-mail: 71340.473@compuserve.com.
KENDRICK ARCHIVE
