Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to describe the porch at his "little White House" in Warm Springs, Georgia as being as "high as the prow of a ship." He established Warm Springs not only to bring him a place to rest and rehabilitate in the face of a depression and wartime presidency coupled with the ravages of a twenty-five year detente with polio, but to provide the same for other polio victims. He described it, however, not in terms of a fixed place on earth, but in terms of motion, of vast strength, and of unlimited space. Not the usual frame of reference we expect from someone living with a handicap.
There is a lesson here, and it grows from two aspects.
The first is pretty obvious - FDR was crippled. He had no use of his legs for half of his adult life but before the affliction, he grew up in New York, close to the ocean, and before he became President, served as Secretary of the Navy. He knew well the feel of being on the water - not just a lake or river, but a watery expanse of biblical porportions, with no end in sight from any angle. No landmarks, no obvious road ahead, and no guideposts. Just water in every direction. That boundless view, along with his natural optimism, kept him from focusing on a world collapsing in on itself because of physical disability. Rather than looking inward and seeing his world shrink, he looked out and saw it without restriction. He saw is spreading out on all sides before him, split by the prow of a great ocean liner, steaming ahead into a future he not only welcomed, but helped engineer.
The second is seeing, if only in retrospect, that FDR's disability could have been the single qualification that made him most uniquely able to guide a floundering country through the 30's and 40's. As a nation, we were faced with a brokenness we'd not known since the Civil War and had no idea what to do next. FDR did, every time he remembered his useless legs. He knew what it took to go on when the future looked hopeless. He knew that handicap and death were not the same thing. He knew that, even the boundless ocean has a shore somewhere, and had already developed the grit needed to hold firm in search of it.
Those of us who are aging have the same choice to make. We may not have polio, but we have other maladies and restrictions to endure. We can let the horizons close in, or we can board our own ship, raise our eyes to the horizon, and welcome each broad sunrise, engaged to the full limits of our ability, aware that storms will come, but so will the rainbow.
We are exactly where we're supposed to be. Every time we are given is intentional - a trust, a gift. Like FDR, we have something to do and the only way to begin is to take whatever step we are able, with or without legs that work.
Death is not the worse that can happen. Missing the life we're given is.
Photo 1: View from QM2 via Facebook group Queen Mary 2 Experiences and Advice
Photo 2: FDR sailing a yacht in 1933, photo courtesy of ebay
