Fleeing Polio on Wings: Like the Eagle

By Barbara Ker-Mann

Life has thrown some hard balls at Barbara Ker-Mann. At age three, she was smitten with infantile paralysis, causing inflammation of her central nervous system resulting in the lifelong loss of leg function. It was a terrible time in her development to be separated from family and encased in stiff white sheets and robes, no color and no window out into the world. This was just the first in the series of difficulties Barbara has faced throughout her amazing life. But she couldnt be held back.
Only four years old, Barbara found the wisdom of Isaiah 40:3132 and learned that she could fly like an eagle. There had to be a way; her life depended on it. Who knew that the four strings of a violin could compensate for her clipped wings?
From being inspired to take up the violin, to her time as an American Association of University Women fellow in Japan, to becoming a novelist, poet, and artist, Barbara Ker-Mann has lead a remarkable life. Now in her eighty-first year, Barbara reflects on the remarkable interplay between the positive and negative events of her personal journey and the extraordinary mix between polio and music that has characterized her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Apr 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781452525822

Barbara Ker-Mann

Barbara Ker-Mann was afflicted with polio at the tender age of three, resulting in a lifelong disability. But that didn’t keep her from chasing down her dreams on eagle’s wings. She resides in New Zealand.

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Copyright © 2015 Barbara Ker-Mann.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-2581-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2582-2 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 4/9/2015

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Epilogue

My memoir is for Alastair and Christiane, Christine and Peter, Dorothy and Jeroen, James and Josephine, and the ever-inspiring and loving next generation, Anna, Helen, Alex, Juanita, Danielle, Reuben and Jinsu.

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge: my sister Kath, who has always taken my hand; my brother John, who looked after my pony and me always; my late husband, John, who supported my writing and walked my pace; James and Jo, who nudged me to write this story; my Japanese friends who loved me as is, especially my sensei, Akiko Otani, who taught me the gentle art of chigirie and gave me hospitality, and friends Hideyo and Kyoko Kondo for their kindness; my numerous violin students and their parents, who responded so diligently to my teaching; supportive colleagues in Suzuki teaching, and the late Dr Shinichi Suzuki, who showed me respect and taught me about education of the whole person; the late Neil Cherry, Geoff Henderson, and John LeHarivel, for strengthening my understanding of alternative energy-use for the sake of the Planet; Hazard Press, Horizon Press, and John Denny for careful publication of my novels and poetry; the late Dr Alan Hubbard for sponsorship of my second novel; and Dr Donald Evans who spoke positively of my story about human cloning; old friends, Viti and Kim Taylor, Judy and Graeme Keall, Helen and Alan Tristram, Beverley and Peter Cresswell, Libby and Peter Fry, of Kapiti; new friends at Waitakere Gardens, especially neighbours for accepting my hermit-like approach to living, and Raoul and Ruth Ketko for their support of my projects; and fellow polio survivors—Karen Petterson Butterworth, Ann Pelc, and Edith Morris (who also introduced me to chigirie); Niels Frandsen of Finland, who shared the story of his life and furthered my understanding of post-polio syndrome; James and Dorothy who did a final edit of my manuscript, and last but not least, the staff of Balboa Press, whom I commend for the expedient and encouraging handling of the production of this memoir. Oh, and my darling black cat Taylor who daily sees to it that I get out of bed and eat breakfast, keeps my feet warm at night come what may—and appreciates the sound of my violin.

Even those who are young grow weak;

young men can fall exhausted.

But those who trust in the Lord for help

will find their strength renewed.

They will rise on wings like eagles;

they will run and not get weary;

they will walk and not grow weak.

Isaiah 40:30-31, Good News Bible

Preface

I have lived with the effects of polio for seventy-nine years, having contracted it at the age of three. My inner journey has been pretty much hidden but very affecting and I have written intimately in order to make some sense of my life for my own understanding as much as sharing it with others. As well as the general reader, I have in mind parents of unwell children and the children themselves. We now live in a society which is far more inclusive than it ever was and that is healthy.

Disability apart, I like to think that my story may encourage parents to keep on with their passions and interests while raising children. As a violin teacher I very often heard a parent say, Yes, I used to play the piano but am waiting until my daughter is off my hands before I play again. A very big opportunity to live—and to demonstrate how to live—is lost. In writing this memoir I have let you into my life by the back door, sharing what it has been like to be different, and something of my efforts to overcome that difference.

Symbolism

The pre-publication title of this book was Four Strings to Tune, a phrase that encapsulates my four quests for knowledge and understanding of those big issues and art forms which grabbed my interest early in my life and helped me get along with living, no matter what my affliction did to me: Education in general, but especially in the teaching of violin to young children; Solar Energy and all that the topic implies; Painting, and, most recently, the Japanese art of torn paper called chigirie; Writing and the making of books. Some of my memoir, then, tells about my writing and my motivation to write. I had written stories and poems all my life but there came a time when my permission to write was boosted by a personality profile exercise I undertook. And in the 1980’s when I had all this knowledge of the future swilling around in my brain, and could see a New Zealand dangerously affected by climate change unless we changed our ways, I knew I had to write my first novel, Death of a Sparrow. I was sure of myself on this topic though climate change was largely ridiculed, if mentioned at all. As each year passes, I am increasingly nervous when I see life imitating my story.

My second novel, Violated, published by Horizon Press in Wellington in 2002, also came uninvited. I was sitting watching a TV news story about an avalanche accident in Galtür, Austria, and was captivated by the tragic event. Very surprisingly, I had the sensation of a cane picnic basket landing on my lap, and knew that in this basket was a manuscript wanting me to write it. I went to my computer not knowing what I was going to write, and five weeks later had 90,000 words largely about human cloning. What I had written was an interwoven story based on Talent Education as I knew it from my Japanese experience, and human cloning about which I depended on my imagination plus the very limited amount of research material available. The main characters were a young violinist and his twin brother, a gifted pianist.

My imagination had taken me to many countries, two of which I had no intimate knowledge. I then travelled to all the countries that formed the global setting of my story to find that my memory and imagination had served me well. Once home again, I added ten thousand more words to enrich local colour and fill out the novel for publication. Recently, I revised it a little, changed the title to Clone Child.

Why ‘Fly like the Eagle’?

It was 1936 and I was three years old when I became ill with Infantile paralysis in the Wairarapa—the first of many cases. In the Masterton Hospital the doctors gave me inappropriate treatment, out of ignorance, for six weeks. This included confining me in plaster and shutting me away from everyone, even my parents and siblings. At the end of the six weeks my parents were advised that I was paralysed from the hips down and would never walk again. My wings had been thoroughly clipped. My parents’ response was to say I must come home.

As in my story, the eagle written about in Isaiah 40:31, became significant to me when I returned home from hospital. I took on the symbol of a bird in flight for the rest of my life in a spiritual sense, and it occurs in my oil, acrylic, and washi paintings, and in my poetry, too.

Other poetic symbols

The black cat has kept cropping up in my creative work. The picture, Who’s There?, was painted long before I gave Tinker and Taylor, two beautiful black kittens, a home. I created my personal motif, Leafgreen, when I published my first novel, Death of a Sparrow. At the same time I called my violin school, Leafgreen Music School, and currently call my school of chigirie, Leafgreen Chigirie NZ. The green leaf represents my strong belief in eco building and care for the Planet Earth; the violin, my love of the instrument and its importance in my life.

Who.jpg

Chapter 1

He said, Yes. With smiling pride, I flicked my plait from my shoulder. I held open my new autograph book so he could write flat, leaning over the desk. He wrote in bright blue ink on a pink page. I would show this to everyone because all the kids wanted an autograph by the Headmaster, specially one written with a fountain pen. It’ll take a moment to dry, he said as he stood straight again. So I took care not to smudge it as I read what he’d written: The truth is hard to face, especially when it’s yourself.

Wham! I read it twice, to make sure I got the words right. Why did I suddenly feel hot and horrid?

Of course I now know what he meant—or think I do—but at the time I didn’t. With pigtails tied in sky-blue bows to pretty me up in my plain navy gym dress, about to confront my secondary schooling with unabashed enthusiasm, I was blissfully unaware of my failings, other than that I was bossy and talked too much. At nine years of age, I had produced the play, The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, and taken the leading role of Alice. That was bossy for sure. And what else?

The fact that I was too talkative I had to believe because my mother said so. I had been made to feel bad about those reprehensible traits, but now I felt shocked to be told I could not face the truth about myself. I didn’t understand. Had no idea why he chose to write about truth. I read the inky blue letters again and again—hard to face; the truth … hard to face … about myself?

I pondered and puzzled, unable to work out why he chose those harsh words and not the autograph with which I was familiar: Roses are red, violets are blue, honey is sweet, and so are you. I could appreciate that sentiment because each summer day, as I walked to school, I buried my nose in fence-sitting roses.

Or he might have written, With the kiss of the sun for pardon, and the song of the birds for mirth, one is nearer God’s heart in the garden than anywhere else on earth. I reckoned that was a bit disloyal to the church, but I liked the thought because it seemed to describe my grandma’s heavenly smelling garden of lavender, cornflowers, Daphne bushes, and violets.

My friends wrote those autographs. The red roses one was written four times in my book, and only once was it neatly written. None at all with a fountain pen. I would like it to have been written in ink from a fountain pen.

The truth? Did he really think I cheated—or, worse, told lies? I knew that I had once cheated in school. Once. There had been this history book I’d taken with me to the play shed, where I was to do the exam alone because I had been away sick. The interrogation afterwards to see if I really could spell all those words gave me an inkling of what it is to be under suspicion. I wanted never to be under suspicion again. Ever.

So why did he choose those hard-hitting words? Is it because a bespectacled headmaster couldn’t be anything but wise? Or was it because he knew that I had a struggle ahead of me? Maybe he wanted to give me advice for the future. Perhaps that would be the way of any adult who saw a child with a weak leg—a child that would never get totally strong because of that dreaded disease, Infantile paralysis. That had to do as a reason, in the meantime.

My conception, my mother told me, was more my father’s idea than hers. She had already been tired out. There were just two years between her first two children, and it was only nine months before she had conceived again, giving her little time to recover from one birth to the next. As if to reassure me that it wasn’t all bad, she said that as she held me, a strong and healthy baby, declared by the nurse to have pretty ears, it was easier for her to accept me. You were a sweet baby and grew to be a happy child, she said.

And I was, until that terrible day in March 1936 when nature perpetrated the devastating assault.

Epidemic

Heel and toe gently alternating, my mother, Isabel, ran the treadle sewing machine back a stitch or two to make sure that the seam would hold. I was at her elbow, pestering her—tired of being indoors and envious of my siblings who were out with our dad while he made a house call to an elderly parishioner. I kept asking Mum to take my rocking horse outside now that it had stopped raining.

Just a minute, she said, rather exasperated, as she pecked at the threads until they cut on the wire hook. Then we can both go out into the sunshine. She hadn’t looked around; hadn’t noticed anything unusual in my walking, though she was aware that I had a touch of the flu. That was the reason she had chosen to begin the new party dresses for my sister and me. It was a way she had of using the time profitably while looking after a not-so-well child.

She put the cotton pieces decorated with summer roses on the table, picked up the rocking horse from the middle of the carpet, grabbed her book from the couch, and said, Come on, then. I’m ready now. I was happy and couldn’t wait to take my horse for a long ride.

I rode over the hills and far away that day. Friction held my hair as straight back as the pony’s tail, and I maintained a steady rock, which my mother liked because, she told me, it was as if she were riding her darling horse at Livingstone again. She always did this, sat on the veranda and shielded each new page of her book from the direct sun, and when my pony stopped she looked up to see what I was going to do. This time, when she looked up and saw me lift my right leg over my now quiet horse, she screamed, Barbara. Why did you do that? What’s happened to your leg? Her novel fell to the veranda. She jumped down and