{"id":352,"date":"2010-09-01T13:30:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-01T13:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/perfectly-human-all-people-are-messy-by-libby-germer.html"},"modified":"2010-09-01T13:30:23","modified_gmt":"2010-09-01T13:30:23","slug":"perfectly-human-all-people-are-messy-by-libby-germer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/perfectly-human-all-people-are-messy-by-libby-germer.html","title":{"rendered":"Perfectly Human**: All People Are Messy, by Libby Germer"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"libby.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

My brother Daniel was the kid who pooped in the public pool.
\nHe also was the cute Korean kid with spiky hair who made parents nervous
\nbecause he was still screaming and splashing like a drowning person in the
\nshallow end, even though he knew how to swim. You never would have known that
\nit was Daniel who pooped though, even if you had been there, because my other
\nsiblings and I had an elaborate scheme of creating a distraction and then
\nevacuating the premises before the lifeguard had a chance to blow his whistle
\nand yell, “Everybody out!”<\/p>\n

There were three summers when I had a driver’s license,
\nthree younger siblings, and three months in which my working parents needed me
\nto hold down the fort. After that, I went to college and childcare got trickier
\nfor my parents. But when I was home, we spent mornings in front of the TV or
\nmaking prank calls, and afternoons driving around town with an eye for cheap
\nentertainment. The public pool was a no-brainer. There, I could suntan on the
\ndeck with my friends, give my sister the task of keeping an eye on Daniel, let
\nour youngest brother play on the stairs, and everybody got some space. The only
\nreal problem, of course, was that Daniel wasn’t truly potty-trained until he
\nwas fourteen, and even then he never wanted to get out of the pool to go to the
\nbathroom.<\/p>\n

Now I am able to be objective enough about my childhood to
\nadmit that it was difficult for my parents to manage three kids plus an adopted
\nson who has developmental disabilities. I can even admit that it was difficult
\nfor all of us, and that we each have some regrets about the way we handled
\nDaniel’s slowness, clumsiness, and general disabled-ness. But at the same time,
\nI was proud to claim Daniel as my brother. I attended Tae Kwon Do and Korean
\nculture classes. I learned to explain his behavior with the term
\n“Developmentally Delayed.” I stuck up for him when other kids made fun of him.
\nI never imagined that life would be “normal” or “easier” without him in our
\nfamily. <\/span><\/p>\n

Looking back, I’m unable to separate my childhood from Daniel’s,
\ndespite our differences. We are brother and sister; we shared jackets, relatives,
\nvacations, and memories. It’s not so much his contributions to society that
\nmatter (though they are significant in my opinion), but his very being, his
\npresence on the earth that makes him valuable. I’m frightened by the voices in
\nour culture that seem more and more to say that one’s right to exist is
\ndependent on one’s ability, or lack of disability. I think we just don’t want
\nto have to clean up after other people, and that we are trying to ignore the
\nfact that people are messy. All people are messy.   <\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t think I did a very good job of taking care of Daniel
\nduring those long summers at home. I could have been much more engaged,
\nproactive, and responsible, especially at the public pool. I have some regrets.
\nBut I don’t regret spending years of my life in a house with someone who taught
\nme that people make messes, that loving people is an untidy business, and that
\na lot of maturity and insight comes with caring for someone less able than you.
\nI am proud to have been raised in a family that valued all kinds of life, not
\njust the kind that can clean up after itself.<\/p>\n

Libby Germer is a high school history teacher who lives in Richmond, VA
\nwith her husband and two year old son.<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}