On Christmas trees and representation
Yesterday, after watching the Strictly final won by Chris McCausland, I said to my husband, “Hey, it turns out blind people can do whatever they want if they put their minds to it. Here are the car keys. Can you pop out and get us a Christmas tree?”
Luckily he shares my sense of humour.
Later, the four of us in our family went out together to choose the tree. And as usual we dithered and argued and held up competing wonky, gappy trees, while other families zoomed in and found gorgeous specimens from some secret supply invisible to us.
But as we hauled our chosen imperfect tree to the check-out I felt different. As we paid, and my eldest joked with the woman in the kiosk about my husband accidentally stepping to the left and going through the tree bagger, I wasn’t imagining pity. I wasn’t thinking about someone looking at me with our 50% disabled family and thinking, “Oh gosh, she’s got a lot on her plate.”
Maybe like me, she’d been watching Strictly and sobbing along with the competitors, presenters, judges (even Craig!). Maybe she had a different idea of what a blind person can achieve. Maybe she had a new understanding of people with disabilities as just people. People who can be funny, talented, insecure and struggle like all of us.
I understood all over again how representation matters. And Chris McCausland wasn’t the only group represented in Strictly this weekend: all the finalists were amazing examples of their own communities, including (for me) Sarah Hadland as a woman in her 50s. It’s not actually that anyone can achieve anything. Iain probably couldn’t dance like Chris. I definitely couldn’t do what Sarah did! But it’s about teaching understanding to others, and for yourself, feeling like you have the right to take up space in this world.
Watching Chris in particular, even for someone who lives with a partner dealing with sight loss, I learned something. When we’re at home I don’t think much about Iain’s disability. We get along pretty much as most couples do: sharing jobs, coping, laughing, bickering. OK yes I have to try to be a bit tidier than is my inclination, but we divide tasks according to our skills, as I hope most married people do.
But when I actually think about it, I am in awe at what people with sight impairment manage day to day. I watched the show on catch up, because last night we were at a party. We moved to a new community two years ago and we are still getting to know people. The party was great. Every time I looked around Iain was talking and laughing and people were refilling his glass. It hasn’t always been like that. We’ve been to parties where whenever I step away to get a drink or speak to someone I’ve come back to find Iain standing on his own, or worse trying to talk to someone who’s walked away without telling him. Iain is a friendly guy who will chat to anyone. But when you are blind, you can’t make those judgments about when to step into a group conversation. You can’t just catch someone’s eye, or pick out that person you particularly wanted to talk to.
Iain approaches all social situations with openness and humour. He will set out alone for a group meet-up in a new city, arriving in an Uber without knowing where to go or if anyone will speak to him, and come away having had a great time. Partly it’s his nature, but it helps if people just take the time to consider. To do that tiny bit of extra work, and make that small leap of imagination needed to include him. Disabled people can achieve amazing things, but it does take effort. The people around them – all of us – can make such a difference.
When we were dithering over the trees, my eldest said, “You know what, we always do this. But we’ve never regretted our choice.” Absolutely right. We brought the tree home, decorated it, and had our traditional lights switch on (complete with music from The TV show The Box of Delights). The tree, like all trees, is great. It has some gaps, some broken branches, and is a bit lopsided. But it looks fab-u-lous.
You work with what you’ve got, and you make it beautiful.
A Christmas tree decorated with coloured lights and a mixture of decorations