I. CHILDHOOD

As much as I'd like to open by telling you some pleasant memory or anecdote from my childhood, it wouldn't be right. To skip over what is essential is to lie. Besides, how can I ignore the muted whispers of another time that reached forward to claim me? "Crippled…'flicted…Illy-formed." These voices sneaked down long corridors that separate my past from the present. Hollow, disembodied…just as they must have sounded nearly half a century ago, echoing off the shiny waxed floors of the segregated county hospital where I was born.

From the day of my first appearance, I have been creating a mild commotion of one sort or another. But then, the commotion has given birth to a lot of what's worth remembering in human history. If it had been an ordinary birth, perhaps my family, especially my mother, would have been spared a lot of anguish and bone-crushing work. On the other hand, I couldn't invite you to share in the uniqueness of it--to see the things that I have learned from the particular details of my existence. All things work together for good, even an event that is on every mother's list of nightmares.

I was born at Grady, the county hospital, in Atlanta on March 30, 1948. I was premature and so the doctors kept me in the hospital after my mother went home. At some time during one of her visits to me in the intensive care unit, they told her that I had a crippling physical condition that will be with me for the rest of my life. I have cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy or CP stems from a lack of oxygen getting to the brain at birth. This throws off the whole nervous system. I can't walk. My muscles are constantly going through involuntary spasms. Normally, CP has an impact on a person's speech, slurring it. Often, there is brain damage that affects one's ability to think and reason. I staunchly maintain that this is not the case with me! If my grandmother were still living, she'd give a snort of disagreement right about now."