At the pool today, I noticed two women with their respective PT/trainers. The first was younger and pregnant; the second older. They were both doing the same exercise. They passed each other time and time again. I wondered if they were actually seeing what I was seeing; were they noticing each other?
I watched them fascinated as each checked in with her body, listening intently for its messages. The first woman was ecstatic; she was smiling and laughing. Her voice was bubbly; her eyes wide and face happy. My reading? She was filled with wonder and joy at her body -- its mysteries, its responses, potential, and possibilities. The second woman was just as focused, but I read her differently. Her face was filled with fear and vulnerability. Her voice quavered as she spoke; her body was not as she once knew it; I saw her alternate between sadness and hope: she was fighting for every last bit.
On a daily basis, I flip flop between these two things myself. All that I am and all that I have outside that pool and the other PT offices seems not to matter. The way I live, the material facts of my life -- my educational background, jobs I have held, places I have lived, accolades, triumphs, travesties, wrongdoings? They don't change the simple basics over which I have not an awful lot of influence: I am in a pool of water. I can make some muscles work. I have not yet been able to make others work. The water is a great leveller: we are all there to either forget or work on our bodies' fragilities.
True, I can work hard -- and, believe me, I do. I do think it is correct that work, dedication and focus will eventually bring back more than not. But on a daily, nay hourly, basis, I don't see the rewards, and the emotional cycles run faster than the physical progress. So, for my time in the pool, at the office, on the table at home, I can and do choose to apply myself; I hope that my work will pay off. I strive not to let the feeling sink me faster than my belt can keep me afloat.
I don't want to overstate the equality produced by the water, though. As I listen to the conversations that happen, I note differences and tensions that are products of race and class; I overhear a conversation in which the white disabled speaker depicts to the societally racially marked listener a team of racial/ethnic minority carers first as helpless foreigners needing the speaker's tutelage in the English language and in American ways and then as a professional staff with whom the speaker maintains only the most distant connection. Both could be true, I suppose; my point is only about the context: the listener nods with that practiced POC expression of neutrality I know from my own face.
I note, weirdly given the place, tensions that are a function of physical impairment. It is always hard to gauge another's pain or level of function, but my sense of proportion is tweaked as I listen to two people whose levels of impairment are vastly different. For every comment or story, the less impaired speaker has to present herself as worse off than the more significantly impaired speaker (if you see what I mean). I soon realize that we are not talking about level of function at all, but about ease and comfort with whatever kind of function.
There are tensions between those with age-related impairments and those with other kinds of disabilities. We may all be at the pool, but only some of us are disabled -- despite the fact that almost everyone has a placard (except those who take the bus or paratrans or roll in). I hear it in conversations, and I see it in awareness of each other. It's the little things -- awareness of where people leave their assistive devices, who uses the one (jeez!! ONE) accessible toilet in the changing room. Who uses the wide stall to change in. The mother-baby community always adds a mess here -- strollers! strollers! need I say more? It's the small things; a hand on a straying shower/pool chair, a tip about which chair to use, a button pressed in passing.
I will get up tomorrow, go to the pool, and start again.
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