A moment of sharing a childhood memory with her daughter became a cautionary tale. I was so afraid I’d cross to the other side of the street to avoid him,” she would say. “He couldn’t walk and would drag himself from door to door, begging. When I was a kid, my mother often retold the story of a disabled man in the neighborhood in Hanoi, Vietnam where she was born in 1960. But it has become increasingly impossible to do either when my life as a disabled Asian-American woman is anything but tidy and quiet. Instead, I have realized that wherever or however I’m confronted by stigmas of disability-and, being disabled since birth, I’ve experienced them often-the expectation is that my reaction should be muffled, and then tucked away. That nephew recently celebrated his first birthday, and in the flashing by of this year there was never an opportunity to excavate my mother’s comment. All except my mother, who hesitated to reach for her first grandchild, and looked at me instead of at him: “It’s because of you that I am so nervous to hold him.” The rest of my family, in wide-eyed adoration of the swaddled bundle, remained oblivious. He’d arrived a little earlier than expected, but once he rejoined his parents on the maternity ward after a few hours in the NICU, we couldn’t wait to hold him. The day my nephew arrived, my family and I circled around in hushed excitement to take turns holding our brand-new family member. This story was originally published on August 1, 2018. Photo credit: Courtesy of Sandy Ho, illustration by neonhoney
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