The Orange
by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange-
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave -
They got quarters and I got a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

I love this poem. It is a beautiful snapshot of a life at peace, in balance with oneself and the world. It reminds me that while raising my daughter with Down Syndrome and autism is often challenging, the goal is not to bring the world to her, rather to create a world that she inhabits seamlessly.

There are many misconceptions about intellectual disability. One of the most pervasive is the idea that a person with an intellectual disability is frozen in time at a young age. People ask me what “intellectual age” Claire is, as if her reading level informs her abilities globally. At 17, Claire watches her classmates and knows her life is more restricted than theirs. She dreams about kissing her future boyfriend and who that might be. She talks about going to college and how much she would like to drive a car. Claire is a teenager in every way imaginable.

When prom season came around a group of special education teachers banded together to make a dance just for students in special education classes in the Spokane area. They bussed students in from other schools along with their teachers and staff and danced the day away. Claire had a wonderful time, but she still wrestled with the frustration of knowing that it was not her school’s prom.

I used to imagine that people with disabilities don’t notice or care that they are kept apart. That exclusively spending their time with other people with disabilities didn’t bother them because those are “their people.” It was a rude awakening when I started seeing this form of segregation and the way it effects my family.

I was told by churches to find a congregation where disability was their “calling.” Neighbors invited Claire’s siblings but excluded her from birthday parties and outings without a second thought because they thought she “has her own friends.”

There is not a separate world for people with disabilities and their families. There are spaces that have been created for us which help a lot, but at the end of the day access to generic recreation activities, community events, even general public education is often presented as a privilege that needs to be earned by people who do not fit the expectations of each group.

Imagine yourself at 17 being put in classes with only students who have disabilities. Would you be happy about it? Most likely not. You might be faced with the uncomfortable realization that you yourself have internalized that these people were separated for a reason and that must mean there is something wrong with them. And if you were in this group, would you worry others will think you are undesirable as well?

Claire is perceptive. She sees that people with disabilities are separated and often looked down on by others. It is important to teach everyone that people with disabilities are just people and not to be feared.

The fact that she notices that people with disabilities are viewed negatively doesn’t make her (or anyone else) a bad person. It’s a symptom of the larger problem. People fear the unknown, what is not familiar, and avoid people and experiences that make them uncomfortable. How different would Claire’s life and her perception of herself be if she had been welcomed instead of segregated or sent home from nearly every sport, school, church, and activity we have attempted? How would her life be different if the people in it had grown up amongst a diverse group that included people with disabilities who were welcomed and included?

What if her life could be like the poem “The Orange,” where Claire was not separated, where she could celebrate the joy and beauty in life with a diverse group of people, and experience the happiness that lies in the little things, feeling safe, loved, and at peace.