Physical Limitations

This blog entry is part of a short series dealing with my gripes. You can read the introduction here.

My wife is beautiful. Her body is a feast for the eyes.

My wife also has a physical disability. Before I write anymore about it, I want to state clearly here that I am well aware that no matter how inconvenient it is for me, my wife's disability is something she deals with day and day out, and has for a long time now – long before I came along, and that I should count my blessings that I don't have a similar disability. I did know she had the disability before we married, but I didn't expect it would impact our life the way it has. That could be my fault for not being more observant or engaging my wife in activities that would have revealed more. Or, perhaps in putting her best foot forward, she wasn’t as forthcoming as she should have been.

With that being said...

It didn't prevent her from working long hours on her feet, often with children. It didn't prevent her from walking hand in hand with me on our dates when we did a lot of walking. She doesn't collect disability payments from the government.

The disability is bad enough, though, that she insisted on having a house with no stairs, and it is also why she doesn't take the kids to the park (they may outrun her, or someone else may take them and outrun her), why she saves errands for my days off, and why she usually has me pushing her in a wheelchair as I walk around the very places she and I used to walk hand in hand - before we got married. When you throw in a kid or two in a stroller, we're limited in what we can do without another responsible person along to help.

The thing is - she never used the wheelchair before we married (she doesn't use it around the house, shopping, or most places). She didn’t even own one.

She seemed capable of doing just about anything before we got married. I imagined that one of the benefits of having her be a SAHM was that she could take care of more of the errands and getting the kids out and about while I was at work. I didn't understand how things would actually turn out, and perhaps there is a way I could have gotten a better idea ahead of time, so I could have planned better; like taking a kid somewhere with us for the better part of a day. Unfortunately, we didn’t have nieces or nephews that fit that age range at the time. If I understood more about her disability or how she thinks about it before we married (and her family situation), I would have insisted more forcefully that we live closer to my family, so that they could assist us.

There have been some get-togethers with other mothers and their kids, and sometimes she'll take the kids over to her parents' during the day, so it isn't like they never get out while I'm at work. Just not often enough.

In this aspect of the marriage, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into. Sure, you can marry an Olympic athlete and an accident or disease can leave them disabled... but that's not what happened here.

Since there was a little time between when some of her physical limitations started to change things (immediately after marrying) and when we started to actively try to have children, I did raise some concerns with her about taking care of the children. She insisted that she could handle taking care of them, and perhaps she finds everything hunky dory the way it is now. Whenever I bring up that the older kid needs to get out more, she gets defensive and doubts her ability to offer proper physical supervision. So that's why I try to take the kid out when I get home. On the one hand, I think I may have gotten a better understanding of the limitations if we had waited longer to marry. However, the year following our wedding, due to external factors, was very difficult, and going through that without being married to each other would have been so much harder. I can't do anything about that now anyway. I need to look for solutions.

I do try to be sensitive to her limitations. I probably overdo it in being protective of her, with her usually assuring me, "It's okay, I can do it." Getting the children out and about more is the one area where she is the one quicker to say she can't do it. The difference, probably, is that she is willing to take risks with her own comfort, but is overly cautious about the safety of her children.

A few members of my family could help. They'd love to either go along on errands to help keep an eye on the kids, or babysit the kids while she gets out. Ah, but we don’t live close to them. We live close to her family members, most of whom are eliminated from consideration as babysitters due to substance abuse. That's for next time.

At least we get to use handicapped parking.

By the way, I'm not demanding when it comes to things like how the house looks, or what we have for dinner. It's not like I expect her to keep the kids entertained AND keep the house spotless AND make a gourmet dinner AND run all of the errands – all with a disability. A "messy" house does not bother me, as long as it is sanitary. Laundry piles here, toys there... that doesn't bother me. And I'd be fine with peanut butter and jelly for dinner, though my wife often cooks up a nice dinner, and yes, she does the laundry - bless her.