Abstract
This year, in February, I learned how to walk. Usually, when I tell people this, they say, ‘You had to re-learn how to walk?’ I explain that no, I did not realise until the beginning of this year that other people bend their knees when they walk and push off with their toes. I was born at 29 weeks. My name is ‘Katy’, not some longer variant, because they asked Dad to think of a name quickly for the death certificate. I lived, and I was bright and alert, and highly verbal (nothing has changed). However, I struggled with walking. They were not sure why, and I was tested for all kinds of conditions.
I know now that I have a mild form of cerebral palsy, spastic diplegia. My brain constantly signals my leg muscles to contract, so my leg muscles are stiff and inflexible. If you want to walk like I did as a child, stand up on your toes. Then walk with your legs straight, without bending your knees, like a pair of walking scissors, with your arms out for balance. It’s possible to walk and run like this (as long as you are not concerned by falling or the need to appear graceful). Those who have met me will say, ‘But you’re not a pair of walking scissors now!’ When I was 13, they cut and lengthened my Achilles’ tendons, so that they are over an inch longer than normal. The operation allowed me to tap my feet, to learn to drive a car, and to walk more normally, albeit a little like I was still wearing invisible plaster boots.
A year after the operation, I ‘passed’ as a clumsy person with a slightly odd walk. I’ve been told that there are three responses to trauma: denial, throwing yourself into work, and emotional outbursts. I chose the first two. From the age of 14, I did not often talk about my disability. I excelled at school and got into Arts/Law at Melbourne University.
It still had an impact. I got anxious in job interviews and scholarship applications. The last thing I want is pity. In one law firm interview, the senior associate said, ‘You’ve played no sport. You’re not a team player.’ I did not want to explain that no-one wanted me on their team. I had been badly teased as a child. I blurted out something random. At least it was better than the interview where I was asked, ‘If you were a piece of fruit, what fruit would you be?’ Another interviewer said to me, with a clear intention of trying to help disadvantaged students, ‘What disadvantage have you suffered?’ If anything, that was worse. I am blessed, because I am alive. It did not occur to me to mention my disability, a tender spot I was not inclined to expose to a stranger.
In the end, I became a court researcher, a solicitor, a judge’s associate, and then an academic. I married and had children. I wonder if I specialise in the area of remedies because I like to think about how to fix broken things, even when they cannot be entirely fixed: what is the next best thing?
I have always found walking painful, but it got worse, and I fell badly in the road in 2017. I had to come to terms with the fact I was disabled, and to seek treatment. At the beginning of this year, my calves were injected with Botox, which has eased the tension and allowed me to learn to walk. It has not been easy. Sometimes I progress, and then regress again.
My first published work of legal academic scholarship, a case note on a native title decision written in 2000, had the title ‘One Step Forward and Two Steps Back’. Twenty years later, as I learn to walk properly for the first time in my life, I wonder if the title – albeit with a little positive tweak – should perhaps have been reserved for my own journey.