Fun, Games, Trivia, Hobbies, things to keep your brain busy while your plaster hardens.
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Living without Bubblewrap
Mary Encinias
I will be the first to admit that I do my best to support projects setup and generated by folks in our community. Whether your weaving crochet plant hangers or writing books, I try to help in anyway I can. So when Mary Encinias placed one small post, in our FB group I immediately said to myself, “I need to get that and read it.” I then put it in my Amazon cart and within a week was pulling iot from its package.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I love to read, I strongly believe that my OI contributed to this as when I was in middle school and everyone else was playing football, I was on the bench reading the Hardy Boys, or Tom Swift, in High School I gravitated towards the “harder stuff” consuming authors works such as Isaac Asimov, Stephen King, David Gerrold and the like. This led me to wonder about the people ‘behind’ the books and started my love for Biographies, Autobiographies and Memoirs. It is not uncommon for me to read 4 – 6 books a month, split between fiction and non fiction. In the non fiction areas I tend to move between Bios and Leadership oriented books, Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar etc.
When Mary’s book arrived I dove right in, starting at page 1 and reading probably the first 3 chapters in my first sitting. Within the story I could definitely relate to many of her experiences, she is probably the same age as my brother, and yet in her style I could also recognize certain elements, that I just couldn’t put my finger on, but I read on.
Mary, and I come from what I call the ‘primitive era’ of OI Healthcare, the condition was known, but there wasn't a lot to be done, I think the most often heard advice by folks in this group was, “Try not to fall down.” This from well educated physicians, not really inspiring I might add. But this was also a period when we knew enough about the condition to be cautious, but not so much that it paralyzed our parents with fear. I heard a story from someone, somewhat younger than I am, who said his mom kept him in a wheelchair for the first half of his life, only when he met his wife to be was he challenged to “walk down the aisle.” He still does by the way, walking and ‘running’ and doing many of the things he thought were out of reach, because well meaning folks wanted to keep him safe.
Mary doesn't seem to have grown up in that kind of environment. Point in fact as I was reading her story there were several times when I thought to myself, “That’s nuts, there’s no way I would do that.” For Mary this all seemed to be part of her life, just another adventure. Did she have fractures? Of course, hard to claim you have OI and not have at least a few, but in Mary’s story what you find is that in most cases OI was not her first thought, the adventure ahead, that's where her thinking and planning seemed to lie, once all that was laid out, then she may go back and think ‘OK, if something happens, where is healthcare?’ But that didn’t seem to be the prevailing thought of her or her mother or siblings.
Another part of her story that I missed out on in my life, was that of being raised by a single mom, no I wont say why, read the book. But when I look at my life, and raising my son, I can not imagine doing that with as little ‘chaos’ as she seems to present. Mary is well educated, well spoken, and very well written, yet I kept sensing that something was very familiar about her story, as I read on. The book ends slowly, with a full life of work and career fulfillment behind her, married and ready to ride off into the sunset with her very own ‘white knight’ that I realized why Mary’s story kept resonating as so familiar. Again I read a lot of Bios.
If you have never heard of or read about Corrie Ten Boom, I strongly encourage you to do so, regardless of your spiritual beliefs. Corrie was a young girl in the Netherlands who along with her family helped get the fleeing Jewish families to safety, there and in other countries. After the war she went straight into traveling the globe and telling her story, and that's when it hit me. If you're buying this book and expecting page after page of detailed, x-ray riddled injury stories, you are probably going to be a tad disappointed. Mary doesn’t cover up anything, but that is not the focus of her story. The focus is “I was born with this issue, what else can I get done?” Looking through the book again to write this review I never found anyone whining over lost opportunities, or wailing and gnashing of teeth when a particular break radically inconvenienced her life. Instead you find the story of a young girl, growing into a fully grown woman who seems to be saying, “Whats NEXT?”
Thanks for sharing your story Mary.
