There is no discernible justice, nothing really fair in the way life distributes advantages and disadvantages so randomly among us, without regard to who deserves what.
I grew up in unusually fortunate circumstances of time, place, gender and so-called "race" which I didn't fully realize or appreciate until later.
After the second world war, as the British Empire was waning and American dominance was taking hold, a blue-eyed Caucasian male familiar with "western" culture, whose first language was English had major advantages over most other people in the world. Doors would open to someone with these characteristics, doors that might remain firmly closed to others.
Few would dispute the fact that males in virtually every society are awarded freedoms, privileges and opportunities from which women are largely excluded. Perhaps the one disadvantage that men encounter is the cultural role of "warrior".
My father had to go off to fight in WWII and his father, my grandfather, had to fight in WWI. If I had been born just 150 km. to the south, on the U.S. side of the border I would have been drafted to fight in Vietnam. As a Canadian, though I didn't have that to worry about.
Life was easy, Canada was a peaceful and prosperous nation with relatively high standards of education, democratic justice and health care. It was a good place to begin life.
It was also advantageous for me that I was fairly tall, healthy, able to walk and run, work and play freely. At the time, it didn't really sink in that this is not the case for everyone.
I remember in the early to mid 1950's there was a terrible scare about the polio virus. At that time, I was a little boy of five or six. I heard my mother anxiously discussing this threat with other moms in the neighborhood. Vaguely, I can recall that public swimming pools were considered especially hazardous in spreading infection.
Grim reports in the newspaper showed kids encased in "iron lungs"; large mechanical cylinders that helped them to breathe and kept them alive. It was frightening. When I started school I did see a few kids with leg-braces and crutches or in wheelchairs due to polio.
I remember lining up nervously with my first-grade classmates to receive the newly developed Salk vaccine. I was lucky enough to escape the polio virus but many others were not.
Thailand, in 1963, didn't have a fully developed public health care system in place. Ael was nearly a year old when a health care worker arrived at her village to inoculate the children against polio. For some reason several of the children became ill immediately
after receiving these injections. Ael was one of those kids.
When the initial sickness and fever subsided, she couldn't move her legs. Suddenly, through no fault of her own, Ael faced a lifetime of major disability. Needless to say, this was a severe disadvantage for a small Asian woman living in an essentially third-world environment.
Ael's father used traditional herbal medicine and massage to help her and eventually she learned to walk in a very limited way. All her life she has had to struggle just to get around. Rough ground and stairs are especially challenging for her but she had never used even a cane, let alone crutches or a wheelchair until I came along.
As a child she had difficulty keeping up physically with the other kids but mentally she was usually far ahead of them. She has the kind of warm, lively personality that makes her a valuable friend.
In traditional societies the world over, there are strong cultural expectations on young women to marry and to bear children. Thailand is no exception to this and Ael would have made a fine wife and mother but it was just not to be. Because of her disability she was not considered marriageable.
So she put her intelligence and formidable perseverance to work at university and was able to get a degree.
Eventually she got an office job with a small engineering firm. When the office acquired a computer nobody there knew how to use it. Ael was assigned the task of learning about it. She tackled that with her usual determination and became an essential member of the staff.
Unfortunately, the Asian economic crash in 1997 put an end to that job.
When Ael and I first met, she was making a sparse but independent living as a fortune-teller and counselor.
Her technique, she says, was a blend of intuition, psychology and Buddhist wisdom.
No kids, but our amazing cat keeps us busy enough.
Ael with a friend's baby and the baby's great-grandmother.
Until recently we were teaching conversational English in our home.
Although English is officially the second language in Thailand and it is taught in school from the early grades on, few Thai people speak English well.
The two languages are very different and few teachers have mastered enough English to teach it well. Ael managed to improve her English on her own, practicing with anyone who would talk with her until she became comfortably conversant in this useful second language.
Ael with her grandfather shortly before he died.
Nearly everyone who knows Ael is surprised by what she has been able to accomplish in her life so far. In a society where disabled people generally stay housebound, doing what they can to help out around the home and shop, she has exceeded everyone's expectations by going out and striving to develop her potential abilities and succeeding against all odds.
She has become a highly respected person to whom people turn for good advice.
And the best is yet to come.
