“I’m not sure if Taos and I are going to give you Wilson back.”
“I am a retired psychologist. This is my dog Taos. He is blind in one eye and is a rescue dog. I’m deaf but I have only been deaf for a few years. I am learning to be deaf. It is my new normal. I have a cochlea implant which I have had for four years. The implant also failed so I was deaf again.
I have had many things happen to me since I was twenty six. I survived spiral meningitis, brain injury, several car accidents, including one in a Pinto which should have burst into flames. The car folded in half and I walked away from it,
My great aunt inspired me. I lost my parents when I was fifteen and I went to live with her. She was 85 at the time and she had converted from Catholicism to Judaism to married the man that she loved and they moved to Idaho from the mid west in a covered wagon to potato farm. Later when I was living with her, she was back in Chicago, this was in the 60’s, she would get out there and protest with me. She was the little old lady who picked up her stuff and went out to boycott grapes while I went to pick them so I would know what it was like. I supported Cesar Chavez who I got to meet. My parents were active in the civil rights movement in the Midwest. I guess I have been around some inspiring people. My mother had polio as a child. She was a polio survivor. She went on to get a Ph.D. and have 6 kids and teach at the university, I had a lot of people around to inspire me. I learned resilience from them. I learned that there is nothing that happens to you that isn’t suppose to and if it is suppose to happen to you it can’t be bad so you have to find a way to deal with it.”