A Quick Story
Years ago, when Mikelle and I were living together in our high-rise condo in Denver, an older gentleman moved into the unit across the hall.
He had lived a big life. He was a retired deputy director of the FAA, had owned his own home, traveled, worked, and built a career filled with responsibility. Now he was retired, living alone, and adjusting to condo life after leaving the house that had been his home. His world had become so much smaller, yet he seemed adrift in an unknown future.
One day, he knocked on our door and told me he was going to the grocery store.
“Do you need anything?”
It was a nice thing for a neighbor to do.
Before long, though, the question changed.
“Does Missy want to go with me?”
Missy was his name for Mikelle.
Then he would knock on the door and ask if Missy had her grocery list ready. The two of them would head downstairs, out of the building, through the park and over to the nearby grocery store, Mikelle zipping along in her wheelchair and laughing as they went.
At first, I suppose I thought he was helping us.
He was giving me a break and giving Mikelle another person in her life who wasn’t Mom or a paid caregiver. She had somewhere to go, something to do, and someone who expected her to have her grocery list ready and not overspend her budget.
But relationships have a funny way of refusing to stay in the little boxes we create for them.
He and I became friends, too. He was gay, and we would sit around talking about men and dating and life. My mother adored him. Somewhere along the way, the retired deputy director of the FAA who happened to move across the hall became an adopted grandfather who joined us for holiday dinners.
It took me a while to understand that we had given him something, too.
Retirement had changed his life. Moving from his house into a condo had changed it again. His health was beginning to decline, and eventually the altitude in Colorado would become too much for him, and he would move to California.
His life had downsized. But, just maybe, for a time, we helped right-size it.
Mikelle, especially, reminded him that he still had a lot of living to do. Here was this young woman with significant disabilities zipping through the park in her wheelchair, laughing on her way to the grocery store and expecting him to keep up.
So who was helping whom?
I have been thinking about that question a lot lately.
Summer is winding down here in Colorado. The crickets are chirping, which, according to my Great-Aunt Bernice, means the first frost is about six weeks away. I’m still hoping to squeeze in a few more mountain mornings on my paddleboard, and Mikelle continues with her art, bracelets, podcast and the wonderfully ordinary business of living her life.
But this Labor Day finds us in another season of change.
We had built a really good team around Mikelle. Then, within just a few months, new opportunities came along for two of our longtime team members. Mikelle and I are thrilled for them. We want the people who come into Mikelle’s life to grow, discover their own possibilities, and move toward opportunities when they appear.
Back in the Saddle Again
Unfortunately, their opportunities created two rather large holes in our schedule. And so, at seventy-four, I find myself back in the caregiving saddle again. It is a well worn saddle and I am all too familiar with the trail.
We will recruit. We will interview. We will train. We will rebuild the team because that is what families like ours do.
But this time I am wondering if we need to do something else as well.
For much of my professional and personal life in disability, we have been taught to look toward systems when we need support. What service is available? What program pays for it? Who is the provider? What does Medicaid cover?
Those are important questions, and government-funded services have made Mikelle’s life in the community possible. I am certainly not suggesting that churches, neighbors or Rotary Clubs should somehow replace a strong public commitment to people with disabilities.
Increasingly, I find myself wondering whether we have become so accustomed to looking to systems for solutions that we sometimes forget to look across the hall.
What else is out there?
Not simply “natural supports,” as we have traditionally called them in disability services, and certainly not a search for people willing to provide free caregiving.
I am thinking about intersections.
Places where two people’s interests, needs, gifts or circumstances cross and something becomes possible that neither could have created alone.
A person who loves movies may enjoy going to the movies with someone who needs a companion. A church may have a giving program looking for meaningful ways to make a difference in its community. A retired person may have more time than purpose. A Rotary or Kiwanis Club may be searching for a project that connects its members to their neighbors. A coffee shop owner knows people. An artist knows other artists. One person knows another person who knows someone else.
And sometimes a retired FAA administrator lives across the hall.
We see the same thing in employment.
For years, job coaches have been approaching businesses seeking opportunities for a job seeker with disabilities. Sometimes this is seen as a “give this person a chance,” leaving the business believing it is doing something good for the person it hires. And perhaps they are.
But that is only half of the equation.
A person with a disability can help a business understand customers it has never understood, notice barriers it has never seen, communicate differently, solve problems differently and connect with a market it may barely know exists.
Again, who is helping whom?
That is the intersection.
It happens when what I have to offer meets something you need, and what you have to offer meets something I need.
That isn’t charity. It is an exchange.
And I think this matters enormously for families like mine who are growing older alongside sons and daughters with disabilities. We spend a great deal of time asking one enormous and frightening question: Who will be there when I am not? Maybe we need to make that question smaller. Where are the intersections we can begin creating now?
Because no single person is going to replace me. Nor should they. Government cannot do everything. Neither can a sibling, caregiver, church, neighbor, employer, service organization, or group of friends. But many intersections begin to create a web. And a web is much harder to lose than a single service.
So perhaps this Labor Day, while we celebrate work and workers, we can also think about all the ways human beings contribute to one another’s lives that never appear on a timesheet.
And perhaps we can become a little more intentional about creating the conditions where those intersections happen.
- Start with interests rather than needs. What does the person you love enjoy? Movies? Coffee? Art? Dogs? Football? Gardening? Music? Start there, because interests naturally lead us toward other people.
- Look around the places you already go. Who is at the coffee shop, library, recreation center, church, neighborhood gathering, art gallery or favorite restaurant whom you see regularly but don’t really know?
- Listen for what other people need, too. Maybe the retired neighbor needs purpose. The college student needs connection. The business needs customers. The church needs a meaningful way to use its giving fund. The club needs a community project. An intersection is much easier to recognize when we stop looking only at our own needs.
Then make a small invitation. Not, “Would you help support my daughter?” Maybe simply, “We’re going to the movies Saturday. Would you like to come?” Let the relationship become whatever it becomes. Some will go nowhere. Some will last a season. Some may lead to another person or another possibility. And every once in a while, the neighbor across the hall becomes Grandpa.
As summer begins to slip toward fall, I don’t know who will fill those two open positions on Mikelle’s team. I don’t know what government services will look like a year from now, much less five or ten years from now, and at seventy-four, I certainly didn’t expect to find myself quite so firmly back in the caregiving saddle.
But maybe uncertainty is asking something more of me than another round of job postings and interviews.
Maybe it is asking me to look up.
To look across the hall, around the coffee shop, down the street, into the businesses, churches, clubs and ordinary gathering places that make up a community, and wonder where our lives might intersect with someone else’s.
Years ago, one of those intersections began when an older man knocked on our door because he was headed to the grocery store.
He thought he was helping Missy.
I thought he was helping me.
It took us a little longer to understand that Mikelle was helping him right-size a life that had grown smaller with retirement, age, and declining health.
Somewhere between our condo and that grocery store, through the park with Mikelle zipping along in her wheelchair and laughing, they found something neither of them had known to ask for.
I believe more of those intersections are waiting for all of us.
The work may be learning how to notice them, creating the space for them to happen, and being brave enough to say hello when they do.