Eating like the Disabled

(Part 2 on my trip up to JB)

The food did not look good. A mass of yellow noodles swimming in a milky wash with limp fishcakes, smelling of egg starch and nothing else. For days later we would remember that smell.

Yellow noodles, and a spoon to feed with. All across the canteen, "inmates" fed themselves breakfast, or fed the less able. Workers stood, talking to each other, feeding the least able. When they told us to come "serve breakfast", I had imagined a buffet lineup, and us dishing out porridge and eggs from steel trays. The breakfast we arrived at, we were not prepared to stomach.

One of the workers held up a bowl and spoon and motioned towards a young woman sunken into a round cushioned chair. "Somebody feed her," she said. I was nearest; I approached. And the young woman smiled the widest, most frantically happy smile I had ever seen on a stranger.

Her name was Annie.

I clumsily piled up a spoon with noodle strands and Annie offered me a wide-open mouth. I was to just pour the spoon's contents into the back of her throat. Her arms were long but they flailed by her side. What does it mean, to have arms but be unable to feed yourself? My first try left noodle ends dangling out of her mouth, sauce dribbling down to her neck where a towel waited to catch it. I was horrible at this. But with every new spoonful I gave her, she would offer me the same wide mouth.

"Do you like it?" I kept asking, highly doubting the taste of her breakfast.

Always, that frantically happy smile, a nod. She understands four languages. She cannot talk. But boy, can she smile.

I thought about this a long time after. Every time I fed myself. Every time I ate something delicious. That food was horrible. The feeding was unpleasant. Their disabilities were great. But she, like all the others, would crane their necks forward for feedings until the plate was finished. And they seemed to relish it, more than for survival. Was there something I was missing?

--

I found my answer last week.

I removed four wisdom teeth, three through surgery.

Post-surgery, I was remarkably fine.

Miraculously fine, in relation to many other wisdom teeth surgery horror stories I heard.

But on day 2 my cheeks swelled both inside and out, to the point where my teeth could not touch at any point along my jaw. All day and night I would be chewing on pockets of cheek flesh. I was unable to eat anything I couldn't mush up with my tongue.

Three days of that. Then one evening I felt it. With some wiggling, my left front tooth could finally barely touch the lower tooth. Just a centimetre or so of tooth surface, but it was enough for me. With two teeth back in action, I could nibble noodle strands loose. I could nip off a bit of prawn. I was free! For the first time I felt liberating joy in my physical ability. Frantic joy. The less I had, the happier I was with the little I'd been given.

--

Babies with cerebral palsy can grow to be seventeen years old and still writhe in cots all day. Their limbs grow long but without much muscle. Their teeth mature like adults, but their bodies can remain an armspan's length.

They go for physiotherapy, and learn to straighten, learn to sit. Some make progress, some may not.

Was Annie once cot-ridden? Had she worked her way out from complete disability, come an awful long journey, to be able to sit in her large chair?

Or has she always been this way? Unable to walk, talk, or use her hands. But she can use her teeth. So using her teeth--eating, smiling--this is her great joy.

For all our privileges and abilities, we find less to be frantically happy about every day than Annie does.

It's time to learn to eat like the disabled do.

My church youth (left), Annie, and me.

Thank you, Annie, for your smiles.