Smiling Completely

Rebekah’s eyes closed when she smiled. Her whole being lifted in the purest expression of joy I’ve ever seen, until her eyes squinted into dark blue slits and disappeared.

There was never any pretence in Rebekah’s smiles. She didn’t smile just to make you happy, she didn’t smile out of nervousness or civility. Rebekah smiled completely.

So much of my free time was spent trying to get one of Rebekah’s smiles to brighten up my face. It was easy enough to coax one out of her. She would laugh hysterically if you rattled the pans in the cupboard, or if a particularly loud motorcycle roared by, or if you blew her a raspberry.

Rebekah didn’t giggle. If she laughed, she didn’t do it halfway. She’d practically convulse with delight, her spirit abandoned to the bliss of the moment. At parades, when the fire trucks would go by and blow their deafening horns, setting the small children squealing in their mother’s arms, and the babies crying in their strollers, Rebekah would be laughing, in her wheelchair.

I used to be embarrassed to go places with her. I was so acutely aware of the stares, the questions, or, worse, the un-asked questions and the conscious attempts at not staring. See, Rebekah was noticeable. She looked different. She sounded different. When she was bored, she’d make little noises to herself, or if she was excited, she’d shriek loudly, oblivious to my intense, pre-teen humiliation at choir and band concerts.

Oblivious, yes—of course she was oblivious. I wasn’t mad at her. I just wished she wouldn’t do it. I was always silently disappointed and…apprehensive…as we loaded her wheelchair into our van lift on the way to church or other such activities where quiet was expected and Rebekah was sure to make a spectacle of us. My brothers, I knew, felt the same way.

But none of us ever said anything. We all felt a little guilty, resenting—yes, resenting—a creature who was so innocently joyous, who smiled with her eyes closed.