Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos and the Idea of Perfection: Lessons I’ve learned with Jack
Disclaimer: any mention or thoughts I have of Jack are completely my own. As a writer, I pride myself in being able to tell my story the way that I am living it. I will influence Jack’s life and how he views his life but it will not be manipulated by me. And I hope if he ever reads what I have wrote of him, he will not feel like I painted a picture of him that was not the correct one or that I stole any moment for him to have his own opinion.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
Perfection.
I used to love that word.
Seriously, I did.
One of my favorite things to talk about when it comes to myself is the fact that I was valedictorian of my high school, got a full scholarship and graduated from USC. Because that’s what perfect meant to me. Even now, it still validates me to have these accomplishments.
Which explains why when people invalidate my intelligence by saying something snarky like, “You would think with all your degrees…” it tends to get my blood boiling.
It still does sometimes but things have changed. Three years ago they changed; actually three years, 6 months and 20 days ago when Jack was born.
To best sum up how Jack makes me feel, I’ll use an excerpt from a book, Expecting Adam:
“I was so afraid that Adam would always be different from ‘normal’ people. He is. If you’ll cast your mind back to high school biology, you may remember that a species is defined, in part, by the number of chromosomes in every individual. Adam’s extra chromosome makes him as dissimilar from me as a mule is from a donkey. He is, in ways both obvious and subtle, a different beast. I have learned that this does not mean his is simply disabled. Adam doesn’t do LESS than a “normal” child his age might; he does DIFFERENT THINGS. He has different priorities, different tastes, and different insights. Adding him to our family was like going to the pet store to buy a puppy, wanting exactly the kind of puppy all your friends are getting, and winding up with a kitten instead. You can spend a lot of time trying to get the kitten to fetch and back and wag its tail, but you may also find that there is much to enjoy, to emulate, to love, about the way kitten naturally behave.
It didn’t take me that long — two or three years, I think — to stop measuring Adam’s value on the barking/fetching/tail-wagging scale and notice that his ‘differentness’ is as wonderful as I once found it frightening. His view of the world is quirky and funny and, in its own way, highly sophisticated. He is unimpressed by pretense and unmoved by convention. Don’t make the mistake of thinking Adam doesn’t see or understand these things. He does. He’s just not interested in making them the foundation of his life. Power, wealth, prestige and influence are not his primary concerns. I always coveted these things because I was under the illusion that they would bring me happiness; Adam goes for the happiness itself and damn the detours.”
Jack’s a kitten. He is a beautiful, amazing and unique kitten. And right now, it seems as though society is trying really hard to get rid of all the kittens.
Back in my freshmen year of college, I took a class entitled Holocaust. The women who taught the class is truly amazing and even let me take my final three hours after the scheduled time (another story for another time). I have been thinking about this class a lot since the recent election especially since so many incidents have taken place recently that are being paralleled to what took place during Hitler’s rise to power that led to the Holocaust.
Of all the things I learned in that class, two things have always stuck with me:
1) Hitler’s obsession with the Jews stemmed from a very personal issue that has never had a definite answer
2) As horrible and devastating as it was to see the genocide of millions of Jews, Hitler also wanted to get rid of a few more people in society: gypsies, homosexuals, the elderly…. And people with disabilities.
His goal was not to exterminate just the Jews. He sought to create a German utopia where certain people who fit his specific criteria of perfection would be the majority or only race. He wanted to get rid of people. He wanted to “make Germany great.”
My last post explained my very-annoying habit of not really caring about things or researching them until they personally affect me and unfortunately, this post follows the same pattern.
Because when I became pregnant my sophomore year of college, I had no idea what the term “disability” would come to mean to me. When I became pregnant during my sophomore year at the University of Southern California, I was troubled by a few thoughts in my head. Trying to juggle being a college student while also dealing with a child would not be easy and the thought of having to work in order to maintain financial stability also alarmed me.
But never, not once in my thought process, did I think about the chances of having a child with a “developmental disorder.”
I cannot ever bring myself to write that phrase without putting the quotations. It seems to hinder the children that are categorized that way. Fails to realize the beautiful light that inhabits them and what they bring to the world.
Because that’s what Jack is. He’s light in a dark world. He’s also my first-born child that happens to be diagnosed with Medium-Functioning Autism.
I did not know much about autism but I felt I knew more than most people. Being the daughter of a preschool teacher, I discussed with my mother on numerous occasions about the work she did and the kind of children she educated. As years went on, eventually she got around to discussing with me this new word that was going around. This trendy phrase that children were beginning to get diagnosed with. Autism, she told me, were people who could not detect feelings. That was as much as I knew. Well that, and what the book “The Curious Case of the Dog In The Nighttime” told me. They could not detect complex feelings, they were very focused on certain subjects and they disliked people touching them.
I also knew some terms. Asperger’s. Spectrums. I had the idea. But like all people that only “know of someone who” in those type of situations, it becomes a much different scenario when it happens to your child. Jack was quiet when he was a baby. He did not bother much. Just his bottle or my boobs were enough for him. He ate and he slept. But, he didn’t roll when he was suppose to, he crawled until he was eight months and he did not walk until he was 13 months old. He was delayed and I kept convincing myself that soon he would talk, soon he would know his colors and soon he would identify people.
It has not happened yet: his talking or identifying shapes and colors. But something else has happened. The books and hearsay were partially right but they do not convey everything an Autistic child is.
There is no where in the books about how Jack’s face lights up when he listens to his favorite songs, about how he squeals with joy whenever his father pushes him just a little bit higher on the swings or how much he loves books. How he babbles in disagreement when I change the radio station from a song he likes. How he loves to give hugs to people that he cares so much about.
I’m not denying that Jack has very apparent Autistic tendencies. He flaps his arms when he is happy. He screams when people he does not like or know try to touch or play with him. Sometimes he rocks back and forth or will stay focused on one particular piece of item for a long duration of time. But he is so much more than that.
Humans are so much more than the labels they are forced to have. And let me make note of this: there are labels and there is self-identity. Being proud of your identity is one thing and a label that others give you is another. And when particular people put labels or begin to make policies particularly targeted at people, this becomes a problem; because, humans are so much more than that.
Which brings me back to Betsy DeVos. Devos’ nomination absolutely shakes me to my core. Her policies, her ideas, and her comments during the nomination hearing were without a doubt unacceptable, especially considering if it were another election with another president residing in the White House. Her proclamation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) praising her stance that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” continues this narrative that some people do not deserve help. That some people are “others” that are undeserving of whatever their idea of utopia seeks to offer.
This idea of perfection is what causes pandemonium. Ironically enough, it is the very thing that makes disaster spread and hate erupt.
But as I dig more into their policies and their rhetoric and the White House’s current move to block major news outlets from Press Briefings, I realize how unfortunately crippling the goal of perfection is.
So I have one message to Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump and those who support him: your idea of perfection is stupid. And I can see right through it. Your insecurities are exposed with every policy, every answer and every move you make. The shrill attempt you guys make at smiling does not even compare to the intoxicating laughter my child gets in just being who he is. Perfection is stupid. It’s never achieved and no one has ever attempted to achieve it has ended up happy. The fear you’ve struck into people will only be reciprocated with endless strength and determination to fight against everything you hate.
You’ve touched every aspect of my identity as a woman, a mother, my son and now, with this latest news, with my dreams to be a journalist. But you will not silence me or those like me. Our stories matter and what we have to say matters. And we’re going to say it.
Whether you like it or not. Because my child is imperfectly beautiful.
