When I was still in primary school (grade school for my American friends) my father had resigned from his job. They were promoting younger men above him and he’d finally had enough. He was without work for, I think, about a year and in those days without the dole  we did it tough. It must have been incredibly stressful for my parents with four young daughters to provide for. I know they sold most of their “treasures” and we ate a lot of spinach and rhubarb because they were the most successful plants in the garden. I can also remember trips into the hills to find mushrooms and blackberries. I thought of those trips as a fun outing but now I realise they were a bit more significant.

Eventually Dad was given a job by an old friend (now long deceased, as is Dad). His friend was a freelance journalist who worked for a number of trade magazines; particularly in the areas of wine, shoes, toys and sporting goods. Dad did all the research, escorted overseas visitors around the vineyards, ran the wine tastings, attended the trade fairs, interviewed the manufacturers and wrote up the copy. He was paid a basic salary but there was no long-service leave, no sick leave, no holiday loading, no bonuses and no superannuation. We all thought it wasn’t completely fair but Dad wouldn’t hear a bad word about his friend. What I didn’t know was that he’d been told, some time in his working life, that he was lucky to get a job at all because of his handicap. Dad was deaf.

First of all, I was shocked that anyone would think like that. I know that people with physical and mental challenges still struggle to gain employment but, these days, there are also a number of groups that support them and help them find work. Also, I think – I hope – that society’s attitude has changed, or is changing.

But, what shocked me even more was that people thought my Dad was “handicapped”. I never thought of him in that way. He was just Dad. He did the same sorts of things that my friends’ fathers did. Okay, before he got his really good hearing aids, you could say stuff behind his back and get away with it. And, if you wanted to complain to one of your sisters, you kept your head down so that he couldn’t read your lips. You also had to be quiet when the radio or television was on because he couldn’t process a lot of different sounds at the same time. But, when I was young it never occurred to me that Dad’s touchiness was about noise levels spiking through his hearing aid. I just thought it was Dad being bossy. He never said it was because of his hearing problems.

Dad lived as though he wasn’t disabled and, therefore, he wasn’t. His attitude was that, if you have trouble doing anything, either find a new way of tackling the issue (he played the violin beautifully) or find something else to do instead that you enjoy just as much. He didn’t believe in throwing a pity party and watching life from the sidelines.

You know, I think whoever told Dad he should be grateful to have any kind of job because he was “handicapped”, and all the other people who looked down at him and were mean-spirited towards him, were far more “handicapped” than he ever was.