I first read this story some twenty-five years ago, as part of a survey course on fairy tales in college. I admit that I've not given it much thought since then, until a reader of this blog brought it back to my attention. Therefore, I'm not as deeply familiar with this story as I'd like to be in order to attempt my own full retelling.
But I still want to address some of the themes and ideas expressed in this story. So I will give an outline of the story, and point you to this translation by D. L. Ashliman: Mary's Child.
The story tells of a poor woodcutter with a three year-old daughter. He and his wife can no longer afford to feed the child, so the Virgin Mary appears to him in the forest and offers to take the child up to heaven to care for her there. For eleven years, the girl grows up in heaven, with plenty of food, fine clothes, and angels for playmates. But when she is fourteen, Mary has to go away on a trip, and she gives the keys to Heaven's mansion to the girl for safe-keeping -- thirteen in all -- and tells her she is free to open twelve of the doors, but the thirteenth is forbidden.
Naturally, as is the way with these stories, the girl disobeys, and when Mary returns and questions her about her behavior, denies her sin three times. For that thrice-repeated lie, Mary casts her out of Heaven into a forest prison. When the girl tries to call out for help, she discovers that the Virgin has also taken away her voice, and made her mute. She lives like an animal for many years, eating roots and berries, with only a hollow tree lined with dried leaves for shelter. The fine clothing she was given to wear in Heaven gradually falls apart, until she is naked, except for the long hair.
Then, one day, a young king is riding through the forest and finds her, and asks if she wants to marry him, she nods, and he takes her back to his palace and marries her.
The queen, then, over the course of three years, gives birth to three children, but each night after the births, the Virgin Mary gives her a chance to confess her sin and repent; each time, the queen continues to lie, and the Virgin takes her newborn baby.
After the third child disappears, the king can no longer defend her, and she goes on trial for infanticide and cannibalism. Because she cannot speak in her own defense, she is convicted and ordered burned alive at the stake. It is only when the flames start rising around her that the queen repents, and wishes that she could have confessed while she had the chance.
Then, the Virgin sends a torrential rain to douse the fire, and descends to Earth bringing back the queen's three children. She also gives back the queen's ability to speak, and blesses her with happiness for as long as she lives, declaring that all who repent of their sins and confess shall be forgiven.
Here's a bit of context for my analysis of this story: I have cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a broad term for several brain differences that affects control of voluntary muscles, ranging in severity from "you can only tell it's there if you squint," to "Can barely move without assistance;" most people with C.P. fall somewhere in the middle. While not the most common cause of mobility impairment in the overall population, it is the most common cause beginning in childhood. Because it has an impact on how a child grows up, it is grouped together with Down Syndrome and Autism as a "Developmental Disorder." In many people with C.P. (but not all), the muscles involved in speech are affected.
When I was between the ages of ten and thirteen, I attended a special "Sleep-away" camp for kids with disabilities. Along with segregating cabins by gender (boys' cabins and girls' cabins), we were segregated according to which sort of disability we had: mobility impairment, blindness, deafness, etc.. And the cabins were set up so that a boys' cabin and a girls' cabin shared one wall, and a communal "front porch" (So sleeping and bathing facilities were unisex, but socializing was co-ed). Each cabin housed a dozen or so campers. So for two weeks every year, for four years, I lived in close communion with dozens of other wheelchair-using kids "like me." Most of those other kids also had C.P..
Some of those other kids were fluent speakers, like I am. But several kids had difficulty speaking and were labeled "Non-verbal." They communicated by other means-- such as a picture board, where they would point at simple pictures representing things they might want; they would have to wait for an able-bodied counselor to bring the picture board within reach before they could "say" anything, and then, of course, they were limited by which pictures were available to them.
To a one, all the "non-verbal" kids with C.P. had also been labeled as "retarded" (Which was still the standard medical term used, back in the 1970s). But none of the fluently speaking kids were.
What made this especially appalling was the way in which the so-called "retarded" kids were treated. I witnessed counselors, who, while helping a camper to eat, laugh with each other about how that camper chewed, or comment, in public and out loud (and at the dinner table): "Oh, look, you can tell she's having a bowel movement." After all, they don't really understand what's being said. So what does it matter? And when these same campers expressed an outburst of rage or frustration, that was counted as further evidence that they were, in fact, retarded, and unable to "modulate their behavior."
In the stories we tell ourselves, whether they are fairy tales or abstracts in medical journals, fluent speech is the brightest, hardest, line dividing humanity from other animals. In Mary's Child, the heroine's loss of speech is the first step in her descent to an animal-like life: sheltering in a hollow tree, and with only her own hair to cover her nakedness. The king's advisers, witnessing her lack of speech, attributed bestial qualities to her nature, and jumped to the conclusion that she had eaten her own children. And without the ability to speak, the queen could not affirm her humanity.
Modern-day doctors, psychologists, and educators still rely, for the most part, on a child's fluent speech as the first means to assess their intelligence. Without it, mental retardation is often assumed; a search of the Web for information on cerebral palsy is likely to bring up this statistic: "Between 30% and 50% of all children with cerebral palsy have some level of retardation." Even if that range is absolutely accurate, imagine the shift in bias if that equation were given the other way around: "Between 50% and 70% of all children with cerebral palsy have normal (or above normal) intelligence."
And from the moment "retardation" or "cognitive impairment" is mentioned, the person is often treated more like an animal than a human-- not accused of violence, these days, but cooed at and petted as if they were a puppy or a rag doll. And without the ability to speak, they cannot affirm their humanity.
But the thing is: these stories (Whether fairy tales or medical abstracts) are just stories. And they can always be rewritten.
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Showing posts with label growing up disabled. Show all posts
Showing posts with label growing up disabled. Show all posts
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Tiny Tim and the Role of Disabled as Object Lessons
A Brief Excerpt from
A Christmas Carol
IN PROSE
BEING
a Ghost Story of Christmas
By Charles Dickens (first published 1843)
[Quote]
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas Day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
[Unquote]
Let me just begin by saying that A Christmas Carol is one of my all time favorite stories. If you are not yet familiar with Dickens' original, I will be so bold as to recommend it; no movie adaptation, no matter how well done, can capture the skill of Dickens' wit and word-craft.
Part of the reason I love the book is, also, the story of its own creation. Dickens started out, in February of 1843, trying to write a political pamphlet describing the hardships of poor children working in the tin mines of Cornwall. But he came to realize that what he really needed, in order to motivate people to change their society for the better was art, and a well-told, emotional story, rather than logical arguments, facts, figures, and political slogans. Charles Dickens had such faith in his story that he paid for its publication himself, and while it didn't earn him the monetary income he was hoping for at the time, his story did work at least some magic on the culture, and has been credited with making people fall in love with the idea of Christmas all over again, when the traditions had been all but forgotten, except by a few cultural historians and "folklore geeks." What writer wouldn't dream of having such a legacy?
However, it is the story's very power and popularity that makes Tiny Tim such a problematic character. It's an odd thing about human beings, that, no matter how much true life experience we may have, we are unlikely to give it much credit, until we see it reflected back to us in the form of a story. Tiny Tim, having such a central, symbolic presence in a story that has been told over and over, for almost 170 years, is, arguably, the most consistent image of "What Disability Looks Like," how the Disabled should behave, and how Society, as a whole, should respond to the presence of Disability.
In many ways, Tiny Tim reflects the early origins of the word monster: as an omen or warning from the Divine to the citizens of the city. His frailty and disability, made visible by his crutch and iron brace, served as a "warning" that the industrial capitalism of England, at the time, was leading the society into social sin. And the vision of Tiny Tim's empty stool and abandoned crutch, as revealed by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be, was a personal warning to Scrooge himself about his own death.
Inside that broad allegorical framework, Tiny Tim displays nearly all the beliefs about disability that are held by the able-bodied privileged, and are reiterated in nearly every 'human interest story' on the news. The message is, that as Disabled People, we need to be as "Good as gold, and better," and to do that, we should welcome the stares and pity of strangers, and accept that our primary role in life is to Inspire Others (especially the able-bodied), by being sweet and spiritual at all times, and, especially, in the end, to Overcome our Disability, in the end, by being cured, and leaving our crutches and our braces behind. I also note that, except for his one line: "God bless us-- every one!" we never actually hear Tiny Tim speak in his own voice, but that everything we know about him we learn through his parents' (primarily his father's) emotional response to his existence, and that, within his own family, Tiny Tim is depicted as a Beloved Burden.
This last facet of the Tiny Tim trope is reflected in our modern, public discussions of "Disability Policy" when the family members of the disabled are treated as the Ultimate authorities, but the experiences of the disabled, themselves, are ignored or discounted.
As wonderful a story as A Christmas Carol is, it's important to remember that it is fiction, and that Tiny Tim is an allegorical figure-- and does not reflect the actual lived experiences of people with disabilities.
Links:
Wikipedia article: A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens at Project Gutenberg.org
A Christmas Carol
IN PROSE
BEING
a Ghost Story of Christmas
By Charles Dickens (first published 1843)
[Quote]
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas Day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
[Unquote]
Let me just begin by saying that A Christmas Carol is one of my all time favorite stories. If you are not yet familiar with Dickens' original, I will be so bold as to recommend it; no movie adaptation, no matter how well done, can capture the skill of Dickens' wit and word-craft.
Part of the reason I love the book is, also, the story of its own creation. Dickens started out, in February of 1843, trying to write a political pamphlet describing the hardships of poor children working in the tin mines of Cornwall. But he came to realize that what he really needed, in order to motivate people to change their society for the better was art, and a well-told, emotional story, rather than logical arguments, facts, figures, and political slogans. Charles Dickens had such faith in his story that he paid for its publication himself, and while it didn't earn him the monetary income he was hoping for at the time, his story did work at least some magic on the culture, and has been credited with making people fall in love with the idea of Christmas all over again, when the traditions had been all but forgotten, except by a few cultural historians and "folklore geeks." What writer wouldn't dream of having such a legacy?
However, it is the story's very power and popularity that makes Tiny Tim such a problematic character. It's an odd thing about human beings, that, no matter how much true life experience we may have, we are unlikely to give it much credit, until we see it reflected back to us in the form of a story. Tiny Tim, having such a central, symbolic presence in a story that has been told over and over, for almost 170 years, is, arguably, the most consistent image of "What Disability Looks Like," how the Disabled should behave, and how Society, as a whole, should respond to the presence of Disability.
In many ways, Tiny Tim reflects the early origins of the word monster: as an omen or warning from the Divine to the citizens of the city. His frailty and disability, made visible by his crutch and iron brace, served as a "warning" that the industrial capitalism of England, at the time, was leading the society into social sin. And the vision of Tiny Tim's empty stool and abandoned crutch, as revealed by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be, was a personal warning to Scrooge himself about his own death.
Inside that broad allegorical framework, Tiny Tim displays nearly all the beliefs about disability that are held by the able-bodied privileged, and are reiterated in nearly every 'human interest story' on the news. The message is, that as Disabled People, we need to be as "Good as gold, and better," and to do that, we should welcome the stares and pity of strangers, and accept that our primary role in life is to Inspire Others (especially the able-bodied), by being sweet and spiritual at all times, and, especially, in the end, to Overcome our Disability, in the end, by being cured, and leaving our crutches and our braces behind. I also note that, except for his one line: "God bless us-- every one!" we never actually hear Tiny Tim speak in his own voice, but that everything we know about him we learn through his parents' (primarily his father's) emotional response to his existence, and that, within his own family, Tiny Tim is depicted as a Beloved Burden.
This last facet of the Tiny Tim trope is reflected in our modern, public discussions of "Disability Policy" when the family members of the disabled are treated as the Ultimate authorities, but the experiences of the disabled, themselves, are ignored or discounted.
As wonderful a story as A Christmas Carol is, it's important to remember that it is fiction, and that Tiny Tim is an allegorical figure-- and does not reflect the actual lived experiences of people with disabilities.
Links:
Wikipedia article: A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens at Project Gutenberg.org
Monday, October 31, 2011
"Sammle's Ghost" -- a Tale for Halloween
This is a retelling I composed something like thirteen or fourteen years ago, as best as I can recollect; I've not been able to find an etext version on line, yet.
Source: Briggs, Katherine. "Sammle's Ghost" British Folktales. Pantheon Books, New York. 1977. Pages 191-192.
"Sammle's Ghost"
Once, a young man named Sammle was killed in a fire which blazed until his body was nothing but ashes scattered on the wind. When everything was calm again, he woke as a spirit and rose up. The new Sammle was very disoriented, because now he could see all the other spirits and bogles the he never saw when he was alive. It was as if he were lost in a strange and crowded city, and he didn't know where to go.
Finally, another soul noticed his confusion and said to him: "You must go to the graveyard, and see the Great Worm. Tell him you're dead, and ask him to have your body eaten up, because until then, you won't be able to rest in the Earth."
So Sammle wondered about looking for the Worm, asking all the ghosts and spirits how to get there. Finally, he came to a great underground cavern, with passages leading off in all direction, like a maze, and he followed them down and down until he got close to what he was sure was the center point. The air was hot and damp, and smelled of mold, moss and sulfur. Strange, glowing, creatures clung to the walls, illuminating everything with a strange, blue-green light. Snails and slugs and other slimy things that Sammle could not name crawled over and under his feet. Fluttery things, like bats and giant moths, flew about his head.
After what seemed to be an eternity, Sammle came to the great central chamber, where the Great Worm himself lay coiled on a flat stone, as though he were king on a throne.
He raised his head as Sammle entered, and swung it from side to side, sniffing the air, for he was completely blind. "Sammle!" he called out, thrusting his giant head into the lad's face. "Sammle, you are dead and buried, is that it? Dead and food for worms?"
"I-I suppose so, Your Honor," Sammle answered, surprised that this creature knew him by name.
"Well, then, where are you?"
"I, um, I'm right here, Your Worship," he answered, not wanting to offend, but unsure of the proper form of address.
The Great Worm scoffed. "You don't think we can eat spirit, do you?" he asked. "We need your body before you can rest in the Earth. Where is your body buried?"
It's not buried, that's just it. It was burned to ashes, and scattered by the wind."
"Phew! You'll not be very tasty, then. But that's not important. Just gather your ashes and bring them back to me."
So Sammle wandered high and low, picking up every ash and bit of bone one by one, and putting them all in a sack. He then returned and gave them to the Great Worm, who crawled down inside and sniffed around."
"Sammle," the Worm said, from inside the sack, "You're not all here."
"Well, I've gathered all my ashes, of that, I'm certain."
"There's an arm missing."
"Oh, that's right," Sammle said. "It was amputated when I was young."
"If you want to rest, Sammle," the Worm said, "you must find it and bring it back here."
"Well, I've not idea where the doctor put it. But I'm willing to look." And so he journeyed over the wide world, and eventually found his arm, and brought it back to the Worm. ...Where it had been kept, and whether anyone noticed it was missing, I don't know. But Sammle couldn't worry about that, now.
The Great Worm turned it over and over, sniffing it carefully. "No...." he said, slowly, "there's still something missing. Are you sure you never lost any other part of you?" he asked.
Sammle wracked his brains. "I lost a pinky nail," he said at last, "and it never grew back."
"That must be it, then. You'll have to find it, too."
"I'm afraid that's impossible," said Sammle. "But I'm willing to try." And try he did. He searched high and low, in places only a ghost could go. But years passed, and he couldn't find it. So at last he returned to the Worm to report his failure.
"I've looked high, and I've looked low," he said, "and I'm afraid I couldn't find it even if I searched a thousand years more. Are you sure you can't make do with what you've got? A nail is such a small thing, after all."
"I am sure," the Worm said. "If you want to take rest in the Earth, the Earth must have all of you. If you're certain you can't find it . . ."
"Certain, unfortunately."
"Then you must walk for all eternity. I'm very sorry for you. But try to make the best of it -- you'll have lots of good company."
Then all the creeping things and fluttering things turned Sammle out of the Great Worm's chamber for the last time. And, unless he has found it, his is still searching for his pinky nail.
Earlier this month, when I was trying to figure out which story to retell here, in honor of Halloween, I thought first of all the stories with witches in them, where the old women are identified as witches because they walked hunched over, with a crutch, or had a shaking palsy in their hands and/or head. And then, "Sammle" floated to the surface, and I remembered the detail about his amputated arm.
I've loved this story from the time I first read it, back in my teens, especially for the way the world of ghosts and spirits is depicted as a parallel society -- dark and eerie, perhaps, but neither particularly evil nor mournful... just different (and even having its own sort of humor).
The loss of Sammle's arm is treated the same way; until he'd died in the fire, it's implied, he'd lived most of his life with one arm. And yet, that difference was so incidental to his sense of Self that he had to be reminded of it by someone else. This is also a reminder of how common amputation was, "back in the day," before doctors had such things as antibiotics to stop infection from spreading from a wounded limb to the rest of the body.
In the universe of this story, then, it can be inferred that most ghosts (like pirates) are missing body parts. And thus, as in life, the disabled are living in a separate, parallel, almost inivisable community from the world of the "Wholes" and the "Normals."
But still, that doesn't make it especially tragic or mournful. Just different. And we often do have our own sense of humor about it all.
Source: Briggs, Katherine. "Sammle's Ghost" British Folktales. Pantheon Books, New York. 1977. Pages 191-192.
"Sammle's Ghost"
Once, a young man named Sammle was killed in a fire which blazed until his body was nothing but ashes scattered on the wind. When everything was calm again, he woke as a spirit and rose up. The new Sammle was very disoriented, because now he could see all the other spirits and bogles the he never saw when he was alive. It was as if he were lost in a strange and crowded city, and he didn't know where to go.
Finally, another soul noticed his confusion and said to him: "You must go to the graveyard, and see the Great Worm. Tell him you're dead, and ask him to have your body eaten up, because until then, you won't be able to rest in the Earth."
So Sammle wondered about looking for the Worm, asking all the ghosts and spirits how to get there. Finally, he came to a great underground cavern, with passages leading off in all direction, like a maze, and he followed them down and down until he got close to what he was sure was the center point. The air was hot and damp, and smelled of mold, moss and sulfur. Strange, glowing, creatures clung to the walls, illuminating everything with a strange, blue-green light. Snails and slugs and other slimy things that Sammle could not name crawled over and under his feet. Fluttery things, like bats and giant moths, flew about his head.
After what seemed to be an eternity, Sammle came to the great central chamber, where the Great Worm himself lay coiled on a flat stone, as though he were king on a throne.
He raised his head as Sammle entered, and swung it from side to side, sniffing the air, for he was completely blind. "Sammle!" he called out, thrusting his giant head into the lad's face. "Sammle, you are dead and buried, is that it? Dead and food for worms?"
"I-I suppose so, Your Honor," Sammle answered, surprised that this creature knew him by name.
"Well, then, where are you?"
"I, um, I'm right here, Your Worship," he answered, not wanting to offend, but unsure of the proper form of address.
The Great Worm scoffed. "You don't think we can eat spirit, do you?" he asked. "We need your body before you can rest in the Earth. Where is your body buried?"
It's not buried, that's just it. It was burned to ashes, and scattered by the wind."
"Phew! You'll not be very tasty, then. But that's not important. Just gather your ashes and bring them back to me."
So Sammle wandered high and low, picking up every ash and bit of bone one by one, and putting them all in a sack. He then returned and gave them to the Great Worm, who crawled down inside and sniffed around."
"Sammle," the Worm said, from inside the sack, "You're not all here."
"Well, I've gathered all my ashes, of that, I'm certain."
"There's an arm missing."
"Oh, that's right," Sammle said. "It was amputated when I was young."
"If you want to rest, Sammle," the Worm said, "you must find it and bring it back here."
"Well, I've not idea where the doctor put it. But I'm willing to look." And so he journeyed over the wide world, and eventually found his arm, and brought it back to the Worm. ...Where it had been kept, and whether anyone noticed it was missing, I don't know. But Sammle couldn't worry about that, now.
The Great Worm turned it over and over, sniffing it carefully. "No...." he said, slowly, "there's still something missing. Are you sure you never lost any other part of you?" he asked.
Sammle wracked his brains. "I lost a pinky nail," he said at last, "and it never grew back."
"That must be it, then. You'll have to find it, too."
"I'm afraid that's impossible," said Sammle. "But I'm willing to try." And try he did. He searched high and low, in places only a ghost could go. But years passed, and he couldn't find it. So at last he returned to the Worm to report his failure.
"I've looked high, and I've looked low," he said, "and I'm afraid I couldn't find it even if I searched a thousand years more. Are you sure you can't make do with what you've got? A nail is such a small thing, after all."
"I am sure," the Worm said. "If you want to take rest in the Earth, the Earth must have all of you. If you're certain you can't find it . . ."
"Certain, unfortunately."
"Then you must walk for all eternity. I'm very sorry for you. But try to make the best of it -- you'll have lots of good company."
Then all the creeping things and fluttering things turned Sammle out of the Great Worm's chamber for the last time. And, unless he has found it, his is still searching for his pinky nail.
Earlier this month, when I was trying to figure out which story to retell here, in honor of Halloween, I thought first of all the stories with witches in them, where the old women are identified as witches because they walked hunched over, with a crutch, or had a shaking palsy in their hands and/or head. And then, "Sammle" floated to the surface, and I remembered the detail about his amputated arm.
I've loved this story from the time I first read it, back in my teens, especially for the way the world of ghosts and spirits is depicted as a parallel society -- dark and eerie, perhaps, but neither particularly evil nor mournful... just different (and even having its own sort of humor).
The loss of Sammle's arm is treated the same way; until he'd died in the fire, it's implied, he'd lived most of his life with one arm. And yet, that difference was so incidental to his sense of Self that he had to be reminded of it by someone else. This is also a reminder of how common amputation was, "back in the day," before doctors had such things as antibiotics to stop infection from spreading from a wounded limb to the rest of the body.
In the universe of this story, then, it can be inferred that most ghosts (like pirates) are missing body parts. And thus, as in life, the disabled are living in a separate, parallel, almost inivisable community from the world of the "Wholes" and the "Normals."
But still, that doesn't make it especially tragic or mournful. Just different. And we often do have our own sense of humor about it all.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
The tale of Thumbling: Making your way through a world that doesn't fit
This is my own retelling of the story, based on Google's Auto-Translate from the German, here: Daumesdick (warning: if you hover your mouse too long over a passage, a bubble pops up with the original language, and asks if you can provide a better translation).
Thumbling (Also Known As: "Tom Thumb")
Once upon a time, an old woodsman and his wife sat by the fire one evening; he puffed on his pipe, and poked at the fire while she sat at her spinning wheel and spun.
The old man sighed. "How quiet and lonely it is here! We sit alone in the evenings while our neighbors' houses have children running around, playing and bringing laughter to their families."
"It's true," his wife said, turning her wheel. "I wish for nothing more than a child of my own. Even if it were tiny and no bigger than my thumb, I would love it dearly, and cherish it."
And what do you know -- isn't it odd? Seven months later, the woman fell ill, and gave birth to a tiny baby boy. And the child was no bigger than her thumb.
"Well," the parents said, "it is just exactly what we wished for." They named him Thumbling, and loved him and cared for him as they had promised in their wish.
And though they fed him well, and he thrived, he never grew any bigger than he was the moment he was born. Still, his eyes were bright and his mind was nimble, and he was healthy and as strong as you could wish.
One day, when his father was about to go out into the forest to cut wood for the day, he said: "How I wish I had someone to meet me out there with the horse and cart, to help me bring the wood back."
"I can do it, Father," Thumbling piped up.
His father chuckled. "But you can't even reach the halter," he said. "How could you drive the cart?"
"Well, Mother can hitch up the horse for me, and I can ride in its ear, and tell it just how to go, just as well as you can."
His parents thought that was a very clever plan, and agreed they could try it. His father started out ahead, and then, a little while later, his mother hitched the horse to the cart, and helped Thumbling up into the horse's ear.
And so there he sat -- calling "Gee!" and "Haw!" and "Move up!" and "Whoa!" And the horse moved along and followed direction just as well as if someone had been pulling on the reins.
It just so happened that as they came 'round the corner of the town road, they met two strangers walking the other way, and they happened to pass each other just as Thumbling was calling out: "Gently! "Gently!"
The two men looked at each other. They could clearly see the horse; they could clearly hear someone. But it seemed as if the driver were invisible.
"What strangeness is this?" one man asked the other. "Let's follow along behind, and see what is going on. I'm sure we'll find something remarkable." And so the two turned around and followed behind the horse and cart.
Soon, Thumbling came up to his father in the woods. "Here I am, Father," he called out, "safe and sound! I told you I could do it."
And his father reached up and took his son from the horse's ear, and sat him down on a straw, which for Thumbling, was quite comfortable.
The two strangers stared at all of this in wonder. Then one whispered to the other. "We could make a fortune, if we had an imp like that -- we could put on a traveling show, and sell tickets; we'd make a fortune."
So they went up to the father and offered to buy Thumbling. "He'd be better off," they said to him. "We could give him a better life than you could."
But his father refused. "I love Thumbling as I love my own eyes," he said. "He's not for sale -- not for all the gold in the world."
But Thumbling climbed up the folds of his father's coat and whispered in his ear: "Go ahead and sell me. But charge a high price. I'll get away from these two and come back home again. I know I can."
So at last, his father agreed, and he traded Thumbling for a purse heavy with gold. And Thumbling went away with the two men.
"What shall I do with you?" the leader of the two asked him.
"Put me on the brim of your hat," Thumbling said. "I can walk around up there, and get a good view of the countryside as we go along."
So that's what the man did. And they walked the whole day until sunset.
"Let me down," Thumbling said. "I have to relieve myself."
"Oh, just do your business up there," the man said. "Birds poop on my hat all the time, and I never even notice. So just go ahead."
"No," Thumbling insisted. "I'm not an animal. "I know what's right. Put me down."
So, finally, the man let Thumbling off the brim the brim of his hat, and put him on the ground. As soon as he was free, Thumbling darted off, and dove into a mouse hole.
The two men, furious, grabbed sticks and tried to force him out, but Thumbling just scampered deeper where the sticks couldn't reach. By then, it was growing dark, and the men had to give up. They had no choice but to return home without their gold, and without their main attraction.
Thumbling crawled out from the hole. "The ground here is treacherous going," he said to himself. "I could fall off a clod of earth and break my neck in the dark. I'd better find someplace to sleep until light."
Luckily, not too far off, he spotted an abandoned snail shell, gleaming palely in the moonlight, and he curled up inside it, and settled down to sleep.
Just then, two thieves came walking along, discussing how they might rob the rich parson's house, just down the road.
"I know how you could do it!"
"Who said that?" one of the thieves asked.
"Down here, at your feet!" Thumbling called out.
The thief squatted down, to get a closer look. When he saw how small Thumbling was, he burst out laughing. "How could you help us?" he asked.
"Well," Thumbling said, "I could fit through the iron bars over the parson's windows, and just hand the goods out to you."
After a moment's thought, the thieves realized that was a pretty good plan, so they scooped him up and took him along.
When they got to the parson's house, they held Thumbling up to the parlor window, and he slipped in between the bars. Once inside, he called out to them, as loud as he could: "What do you want me to give you?"
The thieves tried to shush him. "Be quiet!" they said, "or you'll wake the people up -- just hand us whatever you can reach."
But Thumbling continued, as if he hadn't heard them correctly. "What do you want?"
The thieves were starting to panic. "Be quiet, please!" they begged him.
Sure enough, the housemaid was sleeping in the next room, and woke up, thinking she'd heard something.
"Okay, okay," Thumbling said, "Just hold your hands up to the window."
And so the thieves did.
"My!" Thumbling said, in his full voice again, "this house is full of nice things! I will steal all of them!"
The housemaid definitely heard that, and hurried from her room into the parlor.
The two thieves ran off into the night, as the Wild Hunt were after them.
The housemaid looked around the parlor, but couldn't see where the voice had been coming from. "I must have been sleepwalking again," she said to herself, "and dreamed the whole thing."
Meanwhile, Thumbling slipped out the parlor door, and headed to the barn. There, he crawled into the hay bale, where it was warm and dry, and went to sleep. He was still sound asleep when the housemaid went out to feed the cow, and took up a great load of hay (with Thumbling in the middle of it), and put it in the manger.
And the cow took him up in her first mouthful.
"Oh, my!" Thumbling said, "how did I get caught in the mill?" Then, he realized where he was, and, dodging the teeth to avoid getting ground to bits, he dove down her throat, and into her stomach.
"This is a very dark room," he said. "They forgot to put in any windows. I could do with a candle."
The cow kept eating, and the hay kept coming down, and Thumbling was feeling rather crowded.
"No more hay!" he called out to the cow, "No more hay!"
(If the cow heard him, she paid no attention)
The maid, meanwhile, was milking the cow. And she heard Thumbling calling out: "No more hay! Please -- No more hay!"
The maid was so astonished that she jumped off her stool, and knocked over the milk bucket, too. She ran to the parson and exclaimed: "The cow's talking! "
At first, the parson didn't believe her, and said she must be crazy. But in the end, the maid convinced him to come to the barn and see for himself. When he did, he declared that the cow must be possessed by demons, and should be killed on the spot. And so the cow was slaughtered, and the entrails (with Thumbling still inside) were thrown on the dung heap.
Thumbling then started to crawl his way out. And he'd almost made it when a lone wolf came along and swallowed the cow's stomach whole, Thumbling and all.
So now, he was in the wolf's stomach. "Perhaps I could talk reason with this wolf," Thumbling thought to himself, and so he spoke up: "That cow's stomach made a poor breakfast, I venture," he said.
And the wolf agreed that it had.
"If you're still hungry," Thumbling suggested, "I know where you can get a fine meal." And he described the way to his own house. "Its cellar is full of ham and mutton, and jellies, and cakes; you could have a great feast, there!"
The wolf scoffed. "And how am I to get in?" he asked. "It's not like they'll open the front door to me."
"Oh, you don't need the front door," Thumbling said. "There's a window right at ground level, where there's a gutter alongside the house. You could slip in there, and no one inside would be the wiser."
So, the wolf hurried off to the house Thumbling described. He found little window, slipped inside, and found all the food Thumbling had described, too. And he began to eat, and eat, and eat, until he was full.
That's when Thumbling started to jump, and dance, and shout inside the wolf's belly.
"Oh, be quiet, please!" the wolf said, "or you'll wake the people!"
"No," said Thumbling. "You've had your chance to feast and party -- now, it's my turn!" And he jumped and shouted even more.
The wolf panicked, and tried to climb back out the window. But he'd eaten too much, and was now too fat.
The sound of the wolf thrashing around in the cellar alerted the woodsman and his wife. And when he peeked through the door and saw that a wolf had gotten in, he grabbed the ax, and handed his wife the scythe. "I'll go for its head," he said to her, and if I don't kill it, you use the scythe, just to be sure."
But as they were coming down the stairs, Thumbling called out: "I'm here! I'm inside the wolf!"
So the woodsman waved his wife aside. He'd have to make sure to kill the wolf in one blow, so as not to harm his son inside. And with one blow he cut off the wolf's head.
Then they very carefully cut open its stomach, and let Thumbling out.
"See, Father?" the boy said. "I told you I'd come home safe again."
"Where have you been?" his parents asked him. "You have no idea how sick we were with worry for you, all night long."
"I've been all around the world," he said: "I've been down a mouse hole, and in snail shell, and a cow's stomach, and then a wolf's stomach. But I'm done with traveling, and I'll stay home."
Then, he had a big breakfast, and a bath. And his mother made him a new set of clothes, because the ones he'd been wearing were spoiled beyond repair.
The End
Looked at from a somewhat literal perspective, this story can be seen (if you'll pardon the idiom) as a tall tale about living life with dwarfism. But as an allegory, it can speak to the lived experience of children growing up with all sorts of physical impairments, including cerebral palsy (and the detail that he was born two months premature is certainly suggestive of CP).
It starts with the negotiation around chores, and figuring out ways to fully participate in family life. At first, Thumbling's parents see him only as someone to be doted on and protected, but with just a little bit of help with the things he absolutely cannot do, and an unconventional approach to the rest, Thumbling is able to be a full partner in his father's work.
At first glance, it may seem that the triggering event of the plot -- Thumbling's negotiation of his own sale into slavery -- is a barbaric practice of olden times. But these are issues families of the disabled have to face on a regular basis even today: whether or not to sign the release form allowing your child to be on a poster for a charity event (which you know will end up being pity-porn, but help raise money for adaptive equipment you can't afford, otherwise), just for one example.
The "running joke" of Thumbling's supposed invisibility is also part of the lived experience of disabled people. I have often been right beside some people, talking to them in full voice, only to have them talk over my head to the able-bodied person who happened to be standing near me. Or I've been dressed in a skirt and blouse, and still referred to as "he," because of a person's squeamishness at the possibility of actually looking at me.
Thumbling uses this "invisibility" to escape those who would abuse him. And, at first, he fains "simplicity" in not understanding (and thus, ignoring) others' demands for him to be quiet. And such so-called 'trickery' is still needed, sometimes, when people with disabilities are in an abusive or threatening situation, and can't fight back or run away. But his moment of freedom comes when Thumbling refuses to be quiet, and says: "It's my turn, now!" And so it is for those of us in the real world: Our time of being invisible is coming to an end.
Thumbling (Also Known As: "Tom Thumb")
Once upon a time, an old woodsman and his wife sat by the fire one evening; he puffed on his pipe, and poked at the fire while she sat at her spinning wheel and spun.
The old man sighed. "How quiet and lonely it is here! We sit alone in the evenings while our neighbors' houses have children running around, playing and bringing laughter to their families."
"It's true," his wife said, turning her wheel. "I wish for nothing more than a child of my own. Even if it were tiny and no bigger than my thumb, I would love it dearly, and cherish it."
And what do you know -- isn't it odd? Seven months later, the woman fell ill, and gave birth to a tiny baby boy. And the child was no bigger than her thumb.
"Well," the parents said, "it is just exactly what we wished for." They named him Thumbling, and loved him and cared for him as they had promised in their wish.
And though they fed him well, and he thrived, he never grew any bigger than he was the moment he was born. Still, his eyes were bright and his mind was nimble, and he was healthy and as strong as you could wish.
One day, when his father was about to go out into the forest to cut wood for the day, he said: "How I wish I had someone to meet me out there with the horse and cart, to help me bring the wood back."
"I can do it, Father," Thumbling piped up.
His father chuckled. "But you can't even reach the halter," he said. "How could you drive the cart?"
"Well, Mother can hitch up the horse for me, and I can ride in its ear, and tell it just how to go, just as well as you can."
His parents thought that was a very clever plan, and agreed they could try it. His father started out ahead, and then, a little while later, his mother hitched the horse to the cart, and helped Thumbling up into the horse's ear.
And so there he sat -- calling "Gee!" and "Haw!" and "Move up!" and "Whoa!" And the horse moved along and followed direction just as well as if someone had been pulling on the reins.
It just so happened that as they came 'round the corner of the town road, they met two strangers walking the other way, and they happened to pass each other just as Thumbling was calling out: "Gently! "Gently!"
The two men looked at each other. They could clearly see the horse; they could clearly hear someone. But it seemed as if the driver were invisible.
"What strangeness is this?" one man asked the other. "Let's follow along behind, and see what is going on. I'm sure we'll find something remarkable." And so the two turned around and followed behind the horse and cart.
Soon, Thumbling came up to his father in the woods. "Here I am, Father," he called out, "safe and sound! I told you I could do it."
And his father reached up and took his son from the horse's ear, and sat him down on a straw, which for Thumbling, was quite comfortable.
The two strangers stared at all of this in wonder. Then one whispered to the other. "We could make a fortune, if we had an imp like that -- we could put on a traveling show, and sell tickets; we'd make a fortune."
So they went up to the father and offered to buy Thumbling. "He'd be better off," they said to him. "We could give him a better life than you could."
But his father refused. "I love Thumbling as I love my own eyes," he said. "He's not for sale -- not for all the gold in the world."
But Thumbling climbed up the folds of his father's coat and whispered in his ear: "Go ahead and sell me. But charge a high price. I'll get away from these two and come back home again. I know I can."
So at last, his father agreed, and he traded Thumbling for a purse heavy with gold. And Thumbling went away with the two men.
"What shall I do with you?" the leader of the two asked him.
"Put me on the brim of your hat," Thumbling said. "I can walk around up there, and get a good view of the countryside as we go along."
So that's what the man did. And they walked the whole day until sunset.
"Let me down," Thumbling said. "I have to relieve myself."
"Oh, just do your business up there," the man said. "Birds poop on my hat all the time, and I never even notice. So just go ahead."
"No," Thumbling insisted. "I'm not an animal. "I know what's right. Put me down."
So, finally, the man let Thumbling off the brim the brim of his hat, and put him on the ground. As soon as he was free, Thumbling darted off, and dove into a mouse hole.
The two men, furious, grabbed sticks and tried to force him out, but Thumbling just scampered deeper where the sticks couldn't reach. By then, it was growing dark, and the men had to give up. They had no choice but to return home without their gold, and without their main attraction.
Thumbling crawled out from the hole. "The ground here is treacherous going," he said to himself. "I could fall off a clod of earth and break my neck in the dark. I'd better find someplace to sleep until light."
Luckily, not too far off, he spotted an abandoned snail shell, gleaming palely in the moonlight, and he curled up inside it, and settled down to sleep.
Just then, two thieves came walking along, discussing how they might rob the rich parson's house, just down the road.
"I know how you could do it!"
"Who said that?" one of the thieves asked.
"Down here, at your feet!" Thumbling called out.
The thief squatted down, to get a closer look. When he saw how small Thumbling was, he burst out laughing. "How could you help us?" he asked.
"Well," Thumbling said, "I could fit through the iron bars over the parson's windows, and just hand the goods out to you."
After a moment's thought, the thieves realized that was a pretty good plan, so they scooped him up and took him along.
When they got to the parson's house, they held Thumbling up to the parlor window, and he slipped in between the bars. Once inside, he called out to them, as loud as he could: "What do you want me to give you?"
The thieves tried to shush him. "Be quiet!" they said, "or you'll wake the people up -- just hand us whatever you can reach."
But Thumbling continued, as if he hadn't heard them correctly. "What do you want?"
The thieves were starting to panic. "Be quiet, please!" they begged him.
Sure enough, the housemaid was sleeping in the next room, and woke up, thinking she'd heard something.
"Okay, okay," Thumbling said, "Just hold your hands up to the window."
And so the thieves did.
"My!" Thumbling said, in his full voice again, "this house is full of nice things! I will steal all of them!"
The housemaid definitely heard that, and hurried from her room into the parlor.
The two thieves ran off into the night, as the Wild Hunt were after them.
The housemaid looked around the parlor, but couldn't see where the voice had been coming from. "I must have been sleepwalking again," she said to herself, "and dreamed the whole thing."
Meanwhile, Thumbling slipped out the parlor door, and headed to the barn. There, he crawled into the hay bale, where it was warm and dry, and went to sleep. He was still sound asleep when the housemaid went out to feed the cow, and took up a great load of hay (with Thumbling in the middle of it), and put it in the manger.
And the cow took him up in her first mouthful.
"Oh, my!" Thumbling said, "how did I get caught in the mill?" Then, he realized where he was, and, dodging the teeth to avoid getting ground to bits, he dove down her throat, and into her stomach.
"This is a very dark room," he said. "They forgot to put in any windows. I could do with a candle."
The cow kept eating, and the hay kept coming down, and Thumbling was feeling rather crowded.
"No more hay!" he called out to the cow, "No more hay!"
(If the cow heard him, she paid no attention)
The maid, meanwhile, was milking the cow. And she heard Thumbling calling out: "No more hay! Please -- No more hay!"
The maid was so astonished that she jumped off her stool, and knocked over the milk bucket, too. She ran to the parson and exclaimed: "The cow's talking! "
At first, the parson didn't believe her, and said she must be crazy. But in the end, the maid convinced him to come to the barn and see for himself. When he did, he declared that the cow must be possessed by demons, and should be killed on the spot. And so the cow was slaughtered, and the entrails (with Thumbling still inside) were thrown on the dung heap.
Thumbling then started to crawl his way out. And he'd almost made it when a lone wolf came along and swallowed the cow's stomach whole, Thumbling and all.
So now, he was in the wolf's stomach. "Perhaps I could talk reason with this wolf," Thumbling thought to himself, and so he spoke up: "That cow's stomach made a poor breakfast, I venture," he said.
And the wolf agreed that it had.
"If you're still hungry," Thumbling suggested, "I know where you can get a fine meal." And he described the way to his own house. "Its cellar is full of ham and mutton, and jellies, and cakes; you could have a great feast, there!"
The wolf scoffed. "And how am I to get in?" he asked. "It's not like they'll open the front door to me."
"Oh, you don't need the front door," Thumbling said. "There's a window right at ground level, where there's a gutter alongside the house. You could slip in there, and no one inside would be the wiser."
So, the wolf hurried off to the house Thumbling described. He found little window, slipped inside, and found all the food Thumbling had described, too. And he began to eat, and eat, and eat, until he was full.
That's when Thumbling started to jump, and dance, and shout inside the wolf's belly.
"Oh, be quiet, please!" the wolf said, "or you'll wake the people!"
"No," said Thumbling. "You've had your chance to feast and party -- now, it's my turn!" And he jumped and shouted even more.
The wolf panicked, and tried to climb back out the window. But he'd eaten too much, and was now too fat.
The sound of the wolf thrashing around in the cellar alerted the woodsman and his wife. And when he peeked through the door and saw that a wolf had gotten in, he grabbed the ax, and handed his wife the scythe. "I'll go for its head," he said to her, and if I don't kill it, you use the scythe, just to be sure."
But as they were coming down the stairs, Thumbling called out: "I'm here! I'm inside the wolf!"
So the woodsman waved his wife aside. He'd have to make sure to kill the wolf in one blow, so as not to harm his son inside. And with one blow he cut off the wolf's head.
Then they very carefully cut open its stomach, and let Thumbling out.
"See, Father?" the boy said. "I told you I'd come home safe again."
"Where have you been?" his parents asked him. "You have no idea how sick we were with worry for you, all night long."
"I've been all around the world," he said: "I've been down a mouse hole, and in snail shell, and a cow's stomach, and then a wolf's stomach. But I'm done with traveling, and I'll stay home."
Then, he had a big breakfast, and a bath. And his mother made him a new set of clothes, because the ones he'd been wearing were spoiled beyond repair.
Looked at from a somewhat literal perspective, this story can be seen (if you'll pardon the idiom) as a tall tale about living life with dwarfism. But as an allegory, it can speak to the lived experience of children growing up with all sorts of physical impairments, including cerebral palsy (and the detail that he was born two months premature is certainly suggestive of CP).
It starts with the negotiation around chores, and figuring out ways to fully participate in family life. At first, Thumbling's parents see him only as someone to be doted on and protected, but with just a little bit of help with the things he absolutely cannot do, and an unconventional approach to the rest, Thumbling is able to be a full partner in his father's work.
At first glance, it may seem that the triggering event of the plot -- Thumbling's negotiation of his own sale into slavery -- is a barbaric practice of olden times. But these are issues families of the disabled have to face on a regular basis even today: whether or not to sign the release form allowing your child to be on a poster for a charity event (which you know will end up being pity-porn, but help raise money for adaptive equipment you can't afford, otherwise), just for one example.
The "running joke" of Thumbling's supposed invisibility is also part of the lived experience of disabled people. I have often been right beside some people, talking to them in full voice, only to have them talk over my head to the able-bodied person who happened to be standing near me. Or I've been dressed in a skirt and blouse, and still referred to as "he," because of a person's squeamishness at the possibility of actually looking at me.
Thumbling uses this "invisibility" to escape those who would abuse him. And, at first, he fains "simplicity" in not understanding (and thus, ignoring) others' demands for him to be quiet. And such so-called 'trickery' is still needed, sometimes, when people with disabilities are in an abusive or threatening situation, and can't fight back or run away. But his moment of freedom comes when Thumbling refuses to be quiet, and says: "It's my turn, now!" And so it is for those of us in the real world: Our time of being invisible is coming to an end.
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