My Opa and the ADA@30

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, because there are no hidden motives.  It's all there in the name.  There's no manual, no fine print, no telemarketers.  Observe it religiously, secularly or with a simple nap in front of the football game: you can't mess it up.

What a cool holiday, where you appreciate what's in front of you now, instead of focusing on what you still want.  Where do the Black Fridayers fit into that? I like watching cartoons.

As thankful as I feel on that day, it doesn't compare to my parents, both of whom are immigrants and refugees.  They know Thanksgiving, and their parents did too.

Maybe it's age, but I tend to think about my grandfather on that day and this day too.  Opa died over 40 years ago.  He still teaches me stuff.

Already before he came over, he was in a chair. In his early twenties they slapped a polio diagnosis on him after the fact, but they never knew what hit him; they certainly didn't know MS back then, if that's what it was. (I doubt it: his arms would have destroyed mine in arm-wrestling.)  After Ellis Island, he came to Chicago.  In 1955, there was no such thing as accessible housing.  I wonder how many times he got to feel the sun and breeze on his skin in the final 20 years of his life.

They cast away their wheelchairs and wouldn't be stopped...

ADA activists' famous crawl up the Capitol steps, 1990.
 

Opa was a big man, and to me the smartest in the world. I would lug over his huge atlas and sit on his lap, and he would tell me about a new country.  I was fascinated to learn that China was thousands of years older than the U.S.  So I assumed then that every country had its own calendar; later, on a visit to Canada I silenced an entire room when I asked, "What year is it up here, anyway?"  Way to represent.

He was good-natured and strong.  It break my heart seeing him struggle across the carpet to the apartment bathroom when my grandmother was at the factory. I think back with amazement after writing that sentence: that I actually see that? I did. He hissed with effort, but I never heard him complain.  Saturdays he filled a bucket with suds and scrubbed down floors.  He didn't post it on Insta. That was what he did.

A generation later, my life, next to his, is boundless.  We each are blessed with a strong, hard-working wife and loving family.  But I live in an accessible home in an increasingly accessible nation.  I own a power wheelchair.  I order accessibility devices delivered off the Internet that to him would all be science fiction. In my garage is a van with a powered lift.  I write books, plays, columns on an affordable computer that operates by the sound of my voice.  Also operate my lights, fan, radio stations from around the world and everything else through the Echo Dot, all easy as Open Sesame.

Opa had none of this, but he sang.  He smiled.  He laughed at Granny clunking Jethro Bodine with an umbrella on an old sitcom: I loved that crazy hiccuping laugh.  He gave thanks simply for being in America.

This life of opportunities is an accident of time and place.  Opa and I were born on opposite sides of the Americans With Disabilities Act, that 30 years ago today began opening doors for millions like me. Thirty years ago I was hospitalized for the first time with MS. A nurse said, This is a big deal. It's going to change the world. 

So today I remember the people who fought to create the ADA. I remember my Opa, and wish he had even a little of this.  He tried so hard, without his courage my family wouldn't be in the US, and he should have had this. I remember, and give a lot of thanks.