I Was Born This Way

                    I’ll Be Your Arms and Legs
“Don’t worry, Allison. I’ll be your arms and legs for you.”
I read those words for the fi rst time as a teenager. My sister Dana had spoken them to me when I was an infant. When my mother decided to write a book in the late 1980s, she included Dana’s words in the chapter about my birth. In an attempt to protect me from the grief that surrounded my entry into this world, no one told me of the despair my disability had caused for my family. My heart pounded as I read and learned about the first days and weeks of my life.
Dana was waiting at home with our mother’s parents. My sister was only six years old when I was born, and she was still adjusting to major life changes. About a year and a half earlier, our mother met my father in the summer of 1969. Th ey were married six months later, and just days before Dana was to start first grade, Mom and Dad made the decision to move to the town that would become our home, Camden, Alabama. I
was born almost eleven months to the day after my parents were married. Dana was at home expecting a gift in the form of a new baby that would bring happiness and stability to her new family and surroundings.
My mother was still heavily medicated when the doctor came to my father in the waiting room. No other family members had arrived at the hospital yet. My father stood alone as he saw the troubled look on the doctor’s face and heard the words, “You have a beautiful little girl, but I am so sorry to tell you that something went wrong. She has no arms or legs.”
My mother had been under anesthesia when I was delivered; she
didn’t know anything was wrong until my father came to her room. Nine months of anticipation and dreams were shattered in that one unimaginable moment.
My parents had considered the name Susan for a baby girl. However, on the way to the hospital, my mother asked my father, “What do you think about the name Allison?” After I was born, my father had the foresight to realize that I might someday use my mouth to write. In an attempt to reduce the amount of effort that a longer name would require, he made the decision to give me no middle name.
I was an otherwise healthy infant. All of my internal organs functioned properly, and I responded to stimuli as any other baby would. The doctor said my cry was very strong. In the hospital nursery, my father saw me before my mother did. What he said when he came back to my mother’s room became an amusing part of my birth story. He looked at my mother and excitedly exclaimed, “She’s so beautiful! She looks just
like me!”
When my parents saw me for the first time together, they laid me on my mother’s hospital bed, unwrapped my blanket, and looked at every inch of my tiny body with awe. I weighed less than four pounds and measured around ten inches long. Where arms would have been, my shoulders were smooth. On the right side of my bottom, there was a small indentation similar to a belly button.