The Merchant Who Would be King

Marian's Dream Come True

Marian, like a great many of us, was born into an unfortunate life.

While apparently healthy at birth, within a couple of years, it became obvious that something was wrong when her parents saw that the little baby girl couldn't seem to learn to walk properly. Parents being parents, worry and excuses and hope mingled but nothing was done other than to believe that little Marian would get stronger as time passed. But when she turned three with no change, the toddler still only able to walk with help, they finally sought medical expertise.

Cerebral palsy, or CP, is still a somewhat mysterious condition. All that's known, so far, is that some kind of brain injury or abnormality leads to various physical disabilities. Often, it affects one's ability to move and maintain balance and posture due to a weakness or oddity in how muscles are formed and used.

Marian had spastic diplegia, where muscle stiffness in the legs and hip muscles caused her to have some difficulty. This was especially so for her at this age. As a toddler, her muscles had yet to grow much.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for cerebral palsy. There might have been, if humans had more intelligent priorities instead of wasting so much of our resources and effort on things like war, mass consumerism, tobacco and alcohol, and other wasteful pursuits. Sadly, people pour a lot more money into silly things rather than sound medical and scientific advancement or curing all the ailments we face. And so Marian was doomed to suffer.

She was lucky in that the CP was not more serious than it was. As she grew older, she grew strong enough to walk with only the help of a walker or cane. But her condition kept her out of sports and a great many 'normal' activities. This resulted in a great deal of loneliness and brought on tears and resentment for a body that wouldn't do what other kids could do.

She sought refuge in stories; books and games became places where she could explore freely and do things that she could not do in her world. She fell in love with the adventures and exploits of countless fictional characters and longed to visit their more interesting worlds.

Her parents were definitely not the imaginative type, nor were they people of means. Her father was an unskilled plumber all-too-often out of work and her mother a freelance janitor always trying to pick up more jobs.

They were very much down-to-Earth folk who focused entirely on the here and now and were of practical natures. They didn't share Marian's love of fantasy. They, like too many adults, didn't even read. It was only thanks to the local library that Marian was able to indulge her passion and imagination. It was only in other worlds that Marian was able to live freely.

While elementary school wasn't so bad, in junior high and high school, the bullying began in earnest. When it wasn't about her disability, it was about her geeky interests. The girls were the worst, actively finding ways to humiliate her and to undermine her self-esteem. Boys, well, they mostly just ignored her. Even after she'd begun to develop in ways that some of the other girls envied, the boys never took much interest in the 'cripple' at school.

As she aged into her late teens, her parents, always hard up for money, encouraged her to put aside her fantasy games and books and find part-time work, even with her condition. Or perhaps it was especially because of that.

Her relationship with her parents had long been rocky. They carried their own resentments, she was sure: embarrassment at having a disabled daughter; frustration that their daughter was a poor reflection of them; guilt and anger that they were somehow responsible, somehow inherent failures because they had produced a flawed child; resentment at having to pay for so many expensive medical bills and having to spend so much of their time caring for her special needs.