I’m a resident of Chesapeake, Va., but I thought perhaps the town that gave us the lovely Sarah Palin would be interested in this story.

I’m a 22-year-old amputee and have had a lot of health and mobility problems over the past couple of years. I just got a new leg and am finally getting back on my feet. (Pun intended!) Even a few weeks ago, standing for fairly short periods of time was impossible without a lot of pain. At the McCain/Palin rally in Virginia Beach Oct.13, my family stood for around eight hours straight, and I wasn’t any more sore than anyone else. But that wasn’t what made the day one of the happiest of my life.

We arrived at four in the morning and were the first in line, out of an estimated 25,000. Since we were in front, we were able to rush like mad when they opened up the area around the stage, so we were only about six or eight feet from it. I had a special request for Governor Palin, if I was lucky enough to meet her.

Courtesy photo Gov. Sarah Palin signing a prosthetic leg belonging to Rebekah Curtis of Chesapeake, Va.

After the speeches, when Sarah walked down the stairs, my mom’s was the first hand she shook. People were already crowding in and shoving things at her to sign, and she started to move away. I was so disappointed, but Mom grabbed her hand and asked her if she would grant my request — to sign my leg. She kept moving, and Mom said, “Sarah!” one last time, and this time asked her to sign my artificial leg. Ha.

Sarah’s face lit up and she said, “Oh, yeah, okay!” She told us she’d never been asked to do that yet. There were several Secret Service men (and one incredibly dour woman) on every side, scowling the way they do, so I jokingly asked her if her guys would pounce on me if I took my leg off and tried to hand it to her, and she threw her head back and laughed. I gave it to her, and she asked how I lost my leg. I told her it was due to a congenital defect, and she said, “Bless your heart.” She pronounced my leg “beautiful,” and asked me where she should sign.

(By the way, there is also a video on Youtube of Gov. Palin signing my leg. It’s at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imkBID_YOFw , or search for “Governor Palin Autographs My Prosthetic Leg.” We were in such close quarters that the visual is all over the place at times, but you can see most of what’s going on and hear everything.)

I thought she’d hurriedly autograph one ankle, but she signed “Sarah” on one side, then turned it around and signed “Palin” on the other. It was all I could do to keep from turning into a weepy mess — and I would have if I’d looked to either side and realized Mom and one of my sisters were crying.

She said, “I am so honored that you would let me do that!” then gave me a hug and asked my name. I stepped back into my leg, and she leaned over the barricade to check it out, and said I looked beautiful and was inspiring.

I just barely managed, “So are you!” before I started crying, and she said, “Thank you!” and then hugged Mom, too.

When I initially shared the story with some friends who are politically to the left of myself, I said I couldn’t explain why I see a totally different person than a lot of them see when they look at Governor Palin, and I didn’t particularly care to try as I didn’t want to argue. What I see is someone who radiates love and compassion, someone who reminds me of my mother and other wonderful women in my life, someone who makes me want to do great things.

What I wish I’d been able to tell her is that the major reason I consider her a hero is the way she stands in stark contrast to the false compassion of our day, in which otherwise good people believe love means trying to eliminate suffering by doling out death like it’s the ultimate gift.

Modern humanitarians think, “I wouldn’t want to live like that,” and they never have a chance to see that (as Gov. Palin said in her RNC speech) with a special challenge comes a special joy. Even when we can’t see those special joys right away, our faith lets us trust we will see suffering turned right-side-out someday.

I would still be here if my parents had known about my leg before I was born, because my mother is a lot like Sarah Palin, and they both have a heart like Our Lady, Mary: wise and brave; one that “ponders all these things,” when “all these things” includes the promise “a sword shall pierce your own heart, too.”

But thousands of babies with my condition and others — cleft palate, club foot, Down syndrome, etc. — never get the chance to live.

In response to people who said it would have been better if a certain disabled little girl had never been born, the great Southern author Flannery O’Conner wrote, “In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness. And tenderness leads to the gas chamber.”

If Flannery had lived to see Roe vs. Wade and its effects, I think she would have added “abortion clinic.”

Flannery knew about pain, suffering, and disability — she died of lupus when she was only 39 years old. She lived her adult life dying, and knowing it, and you know how she wrote about it? “I have never been anywhere but sick. In a sense sickness is a place ... and it’s always a place where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don’t have it miss one of God’s mercies.”

Sickness and disability aren’t one and the same, but they share that quality of being a place apart — and a mercy, if only we let them.

 

Rebekah Curtis lives in Chesapeake, Va.