Toes

The day my life changed was when I woke up from surgery totally different. Paralyzed from the neck down, only able to move my left foot, a different me. I lie in the hospital bed wondering if I would ever be able to paint again. From a very young age, I was fascinated by artistry, and I took up art classes from the age of four.

My mother stood next to my hospital bed in tears. “Everything will be okay,” she said. I clearly remember the words she used even though I was being medicated heavily: “It will all be okay in the end and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” Unable to answer, I gave her a smile even though it felt like the end.

After the accident, I was bullied at school for the way I looked, going to an all boys public school wasn’t easy for a kid who didn’t care for all the sports that required me using my legs, like soccer or running. I couldn’t write and had to take tests orally. I could never bring myself to tell my parents how unhappy this school made me. How do you explain feeling like the center of a merry-go-round, the stagnant centerpiece to outside life.

My mother and father were happily married up until my accident. I blamed myself for the fighting over who would bathe me, dress me, and drive me. I blamed myself when my dad packed his bags and left my mom to pay the rent. I blamed myself when my mom locked herself in the bathroom and sobbed every night when she thought I couldn’t hear. I blamed myself when she got arrested for stealing from our neighbors to feed her gambling addiction. And when I sat on the sidewalk, covering myself with some cardboard and newspapers, shuddering and squirming from the cold, aching from the hunger, I didn’t even cry because I was at fault for being this way. I was alone, and it was all because of me.

Many years went by where I was begging on the streets of Barcelona, counting my last penny. I had no escape. One day, lost in my thoughts as the air was cold and hard on my small fingers and nose, I thought all hope had been lost. The world is a weird place, fleeting in its petty for things that don’t affect it. One day, however, a small girl stopped and stared at me long and hard. After standing at a distance for a minute or two, she approached me, “Hello,” she smiled. She was a British girl, I recognized the accent from the big screens across the road that always aired advertisements about British chocolates. “Hola,” I said sheepishly. People didn’t usually talk to me. Without further warning she tore off a piece of one of my newspapers and pulled a pen out of her pink dress pocket, and began to draw a picture of what seemed to be a man. She took one last look at me and nodded. Then she was off. I smiled at the encounter. It was the first time someone had really acknowledged me. I looked carefully at the picture and laughed. It was a stick picture of a man drawing with his feet. The idea seemed totally ridiculous to me. No one can hold a pen with their toes. I noticed the girl had left the pen beside the drawing. I thought for a moment. No one was around, so I attempted to pick up the pen with my toes. I dropped it at first and laughed it off. After a breath, I tried again. What did I have to lose? I managed to draw a letter, and then another and then another, and for the first time in 10 years, I saw my name in writing, and cried. I cried for my mom, for my dad, for my hands, for the all boys school I hated, for the cruel world that had placed me here, but mostly for myself, I cried for me.

This single word turned into sentences, which turned into full letters. And finally drawings, my art, my art had come back to me. I found some old paintbrushes and a tiny bit of paint in a trash bag near and started painting. Passers started buying my art, talking to me, donating paint brushes and paints and blankets. I was finally part human again.
On a sunny Monday afternoon, the busy streets had given me a generous amount of viewers and buyers for my art. People were amazed by me. They would watch and admire and compliment my works. A young man approached me. He kneeled beside me carefully, steadying himself, “Hello, what’s your name?”

“Jason,” I responded.

“You draw these yourself Jason?”

“Yes sir,” I replied.

“Wow, they’re incredible.”

Thank you very much.”

“You seem happy,” he said to me,

“How could I not be sir? I have art, I have sunshine, I have park benches with lovers, I have fresh air and clicks of heels. There are people with nothing.” The man looked speechless. He thought for a moment, and then smiled a vivacious smile at me.

“Thank you Jason,” he said, and as he made to walk away, I handed him a paper with a saying I wrote, the first day I learned how to write with my feet. He read it, tilted his hat at me, and with a grin, lifted his pants on his left leg and tapped on his prosthetic.

***

“Wow Jason, a moving story. Well I guess everyone wants to know  what was written on the piece of paper you gave to me?” “Well,” Tom, reaches into his pocket and pulls out an old piece of paper and unfolds it, he smiles, “when your will is big, the obstacles are small.” “I don’t think I can follow that one folks, so that’s all for tonight’s show. Thank you again Jason for sharing your story. I’m Tom Whittaker, Goodnight everybody.”

Photograph by Dylan Ephron