My standard answer to this phrase is that doing it isn’t the problem, it’s the crap that goes hand and hand with anything disability related.

Like, whoever is responsible for the parking mess at the big city hospital should lower their head in shame. Better yet, you need to get into a wheelchair and check out the mess that you have created. Not only is their stairs everywhere to provide easy access, the ramp takes you down a hill. I don’t know if you have tried recently to push a 80kg wheelchair down a hill lately without it gaining speed and a mind of it’s own straight into the traffic at the foot of the hill. NOT EASY.

Not to mention pushing the bloody thing up the hill.

It’s summer here. The days are reaching 30ish. By the time I got Moo to the hospital, I was ready to collapse and was wondering if I really had put deodorant on that morning.

On the way back to the Coast, we had to buy some juice for Moo’s school party. I stopped in at the huge service station to do a quick bolt in and buy. In Queensland, you can no longer leave a child under 12 on their own. Being on their own is you (as the parent) being more than 2 or 3 metres away. Both the disabled parking spaces were taken so I chose to park in an ordinary space and carry Moo in (there was no way it was safe to get the electric wheelchair out and traverse the driveway with huge trucks around).

Leaving him in air conditioned comfort of the car was not an option. Carry him I must or otherwise turn up with no juice (which I did consider).

Moo is an awkward lift since surgery. His legs don’t go around my hips. He is 14.5kg but heavy despite his small frame. It’s the tone and the awkwardness that makes it a difficult lift. So I had Moo, who of course, couldn’t leave an ice cream behind, and the juice and my purse. And I was stuck behind this guy who wanted to have a long conversation with the guy behind the counter. So I changed lanes and got served a lot faster by a guy who wouldn’t then give me a bag.

WHAT IS WITH THAT?

I thought it was obvious to just about everyone that I had my arms full and was really struggling just to stay upright. Would giving me a bag so that I could put the juice and ice cream in it and over my wrist so that I could walk back to the car a little bit easier, too much to ask?

The other day I was taking Moo with Master C to physio. I had put him in a stroller because again, I couldn’t get a disabled car space and the space I got was on a slope. Slope and getting the electric wheelchair out of the car doesn’t work. At all. Nope. The crane collects me as it flies out of the car and pushing it back in, just isn’t that easy.

Anyway. In the lift, two older ladies started chatting to Master C who loves to have a good chat with . . . just about anybody. They then made a comment about how Moo was hitching a lift in the stroller. Words to the effect of “had a long day dear” and “your poor legs are tired?”. And I swallowed my tongue and fortunately my request of the higher being was answered when the lift doors opened and we hopped out.

At school this afternoon following the party, I was approached by one of Moo’s classmates.

“How old is Moo?” she asked me.

I asked Moo and he proudly answered “five”.

“No,” she said shaking her head. “He can’t be five. He has to be one as he isn’t standing yet.”

I was thinking that he was the smartest one year old I know – at school already. But in her head that made entire sense. I wonder sometimes whether I shouldn’t tackle this head on and explain to everyone that he has cerebral palsy and can’t walk. I don’t because I have never told Moo that he can’t walk. I don’t want to restrict him by putting limits on him and his abilities. It’s the same reason why I don’t tell him that he can’t be a police man when he grows up. Plus, Moo’s already told me that he doesn’t want to walk. His choice.

So, to summarise, it is the additional stuff that keeps me up each night wondering why things can’t be easier. Why we can’t live in a perfectly accessible world where people give bags over to people making purchases, where people don’t make comments on children sitting in strollers or the age of kids that can’t walk. Where saying he has cerebral palsy is just enough for someone to go, say no more, you don’t need to explain anything – no judgements here.

Whine over.

***

My kids are still incredibly cute and keeping me laughing. For my Grandmother who may be the only person on this planet still reading, I thought I would share some of their latest funny things.

Scrappy was confronted by hubby earlier this week who asked him who had opened the car door.

“The cat,” Scrappy answered.

“Really?” hubby replied. “The cat jumped up and opened the car door?”

“Yep,” Scrappy answered as if there was nothing wrong with what he was saying.

***

I listened to Master C ask Moo on the same day what he wanted to drink?

“I did a wee,” Moo announced.

“Moo,” Master C started. ” I did not ask you if you had done a wee. I asked you what you wanted to drink. If I had have wanted to know whether you had done a wee, I would have asked. But instead, I asked you what you wanted to drink because that is what I wanted to know.”

“I want Daddy,” Moo answered.

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