Your body must be heard.
-----Helene Cixous[1]
Often it happens in the early mornings while I'm studying. Or after a busy day of kids' activities, preschool, grad school, therapy. I'll notice it start with a quiver, a tiny movement that stops my eyes mid-sentence. Or I'll detect tiredness in my back that seeps through my arms making them keep time to some unseen conductor.
I try to stop it. I think, "I'm just over-tired" or "I'm too young" or "Please, no." Sometimes I pretend it's not there, I shift positions or dismiss it. Is it slight? Yes. Is it undetectable to my husband, my children? Yes. Could it be nothing? Yes. But it's terrifyingly real to me.
You see, my dad has Parkinson's disease. And so does my thirty-six year old brother.
This legacy that I carry, an integral part of my inheritance, often possesses my consciousness. Which one of my boys might inherit? Both? Neither? And as is often the case with a chronic disease, I'm not especially interested in knowing how to die, but more accurately, how to live with this wound.
[1] Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” Trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen. Signs 1 (1976): 875-94.
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