(This blog tells my family's story. To see more, click "blog" at the top of this webpage.) When I drove to the Seattle pool for the second day, we loved how Mount Rainier seemed to float in a pillow of clouds on the eastern horizon. At the meet, a friendly official introduced herself and two others from her Toledo club team. They extended a warm invitation to join their team. We also heard about the next Paralympics in Greece, held shortly after the summer Olympics in the same venues. “I was hooked," Beth said. "I knew it wasn’t going to be my last national meet." I borrowed a page from Laraine’s book and took on the role of a foil, reflecting and questioning, not encouraging or discouraging. Should we pause and contact a Tiffin swim coach instead of driving an hour each way to swim in Toledo? Were swim coaches like medical specialists in the sense that they tended to be better in big cities compared to small towns? We had no clue. I worried about Beth taking on too much, especially learning new strokes, which seemed like an exercise in futility. Wouldn’t life be easier (better?) if she settled for a leisurely backstroke? Waiting for a race, Beth adjusted her ear buds and turned up her music. One 50-meter length with no turn felt less intimidating, but her time did not qualify for finals, again. That afternoon, we saw Seattle in a different way from a boat in the harbor. We treated ourselves to a fancy ice cream dessert with chocolate shavings and extra whipped cream, the first connection of ice cream to swim meets. The third morning, we tried to sort out a jumble of criteria on the papers posted on the walls of the pool. Unreasonably fast times to make the U.S. National Team. Ludicrous times for World Records—only slightly less ludicrous for American Records. All broken down into strokes, distances, classifications, and genders. For almost every American Record for S3 women, there were blank lines where a name should be, along with a fast, arbitrary time that no one had achieved before. The last evening of the meet, we watched the finals races. Beth also officially enlisted the help of the Toledo coach to find out what she could do in the water. She told him that one year ahead, at the next national championship, her swim times would be fast enough to qualify as an S3 and make the cut for finals. Not stopping there, she also planned to swim all the strokes. Beth had the gift of perpetually underestimating challenges. The World Rankings of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) compared individual swimmers. Beth’s three very slow races in Seattle placed her on the list at 15th, 17th, and 21st in the world, confirming the rarity of S3 swimmers. I arrived back home in Ohio with a missing push handle on the wheelchair, Maria’s unbroken Snow White mirror, and a 16 year old intent on learning how to swim. Occasionally floating across the pool had been a pleasant pastime before Seattle. After the national meet, Beth raised the bar to the sky for her first swimming summer.
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(This blog tells my family's story. To see more, click "blog" at the top of this webpage.)
The Seattle meet officially opened with the beeps and buzzes of back-to-back events. Most swimmers dove off the blocks from a standing or sitting position with no assistance. Those with impaired hands usually started races in the water. One coach reached over the edge to hold a swimmer’s feet to the wall. Another coach held an arm before the buzzer sounded. A man with no arms floated on his back, with his feet touching the wall and a cord in his teeth. The coach at the other end of the taut cord dropped it at the start. The only people we recognized had been at the Michigan Games: Shawn and his wife, as well as another teenager and her mom. There were a few more wheelchairs in use compared to the night before; a girl minus a prosthetic leg pushed a manual wheelchair with strong arms, instead of using crutches on the wet deck. We clapped for the first American Record of the meet, a neck and neck race. It quickly became evident that I had misunderstood Shawn from the start. Beth had no innate swimming talent. His invitation had been based on the fact that a tiny percentage of quads around the world could be alone in a pool without drowning. Even more rare: quads who could swim. Beth had the dubious honor of being the only S3 female from the United States at the meet, a distinction that would reoccur again and again. The fastest athletes during prelims would return to race in the early evening, if they beat the cut times for the finals races. The humidity of the chlorine air saturated my skin, but Beth couldn’t sweat if she wanted to because of her spinal cord injury. I rushed back and forth to the concession stand for cold drinks. For Beth’s first race at her first nationals, swimmers on both sides entered the water without a mother’s help and surged ahead at the start. My daughter merely sought to prevail over the seemingly endless distance of the 50-meter pool—twice. The only one weaving down the lane in the last stretch, she did not make the cut for finals, as expected. In the women’s locker room, swimmers showered and changed on their own. Beth chose an out of the way spot by the back lockers because she needed my help. Our hotel had no accessible rooms available, so instead of being lifted in and out of a bathtub, she decided to shower at the pool in her wheelchair for the first time. I took off the cushion ahead of time, adjusted the tight water handle, and picked up the soap when it slipped from her lap. I squeezed out the shampoo and her arms trembled slightly as she moved it around in her hair. The wheelchair left drips of water on the concrete on the way to the rental car. After a quick lunch and a nap at the hotel, it was time to explore. I had a stack of printed Google map directions that Beth read while I drove to the fisherman’s wharf and the Space Needle. After riding the elevator to see the panoramic vista, we found an unusual store. I bought Maria a small but elaborate Snow White mirror for her upcoming birthday, hoping I could get it home in one piece. My girls would always be Snow White and Cinderella, princesses who believed in happy endings. At five, Maria decreed that we would live together forever in our Tiffin home, in our tiny corner of a big world. “The trip was truly amazing,” Beth said. “Seattle was beautiful. My mom and I were able to tour the city in the afternoons and evenings after I swam.” We didn’t know that the Seattle swim meet would be the first and the only one where she would not qualify for finals. (This blog tells my family's story. To see more, click "blog" at the top of this webpage.) John and I rearranged the first floor of our home at Beth’s request. We moved her hospital bed out of the living room and into the small first floor bedroom where I had been sleeping. The full size bed and nightstand filled the bedroom, but left enough space for the wheelchair. I added length to the pull cord on the ceiling light so Beth could reach it. We restored our living and dining rooms as they were before the accident. With the new arrangement, I slept in the basement bedroom with John since Beth rarely needed me through the night. When she did, we both had cell phones within reach. She often stayed up later than I did to finish homework or to read, the lamp with the big switch within reach. She continued to check books off her list of the top 100 classics and highlighted ones to pick up at the library next. At a follow-up visit to the Shriners Hospital, we met more patients and parents. One discussion touched on college, but Beth was only fifteen, so college still felt far off to us. She assumed she would attend, the result of deliberate indoctrination. Since her preschool years, “When you go to college...” started random conversations at our house. Another teenager we talked to planned to attend Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, a top choice for wheelchair users in the Midwest because of underground walkways that avoid winter weather. At Wright State, when pressure sores required a student to stay in bed, an able-bodied friend pushed his hospital bed down the street to class. Was that a good thing? Beth’s asthma symptoms had subsided since her bout with pneumonia, leading to less medicine and longer intervals between visits to the lung doctors. A Shriners doctor reviewed a new x-ray and explained that the angles of her scoliosis and kyphosis (bowing) progressed as expected, making the metal rod fusion surgery more likely in the future. We learned that the unyielding rod would hinder every possible kind of movement and add to her limitations. Despite all the odds stacked against her, Beth’s general goal shifted from more independence to complete independence, an extremely rare feat for quads. In a world where wishes came true, I wanted all of that and more for her, but the brass ring looked too high. Laraine, her extraordinary physical therapist, said, “Beth made up her mind that she would be independent from a wheelchair so she could take care of herself in a college setting.” |
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