It was the morning after the first snowfall of the year. Much more fell that we expected and, as we were up early getting ready for me to go to work, the plows had not yet been through. We took a second to turn on the television to get the Toronto, where my office is, weather report. We found the station and then listened as a poor reporter stood out in the freezing cold talking about the snow and ice.
The reporter was down somewhere near Union station and you could see pedestrians quickly scooting by. Then a man entered the screen to her right and walked off screen to her left. He never looked at her, or the camera, he was solely focused on moving forward.
He had Down Syndrome.
He was alone.
He was going somewhere.
I’ve always thought that disabled people by the very nature of disability, ableism and disphobia live our lives as an act of open revolt. The very fact that we are shopping, and going to movies, and going to work, and going about our business instead of plummeting from bridges and over-passes gives the lie to the idea that disability is a life unworth living.
So there he was.
Walking across the screen like an advertisement for ‘Not Dead Yet‘ he simply was.
When I write things like this, people often comment that his triumph is really our own, as parents and teachers and support workers. We so want the taste of victory to be our own. But no one can understand what it is to be him there, except, of course, him there. No one can know the stares he faces, the names he’s called, the spaces closed to him.
We do what we do.
But it’s his walk.
And he made it, in the very early morning of the first day of ice and snow.
He will arrive at his destination with freedom in his wake.
