Pt.1 Preschool-one of the pack

Life as a disabled queer Jewish person

An evolution from insider to outsider and back.

Preschool was by far my favorite year of school and possibly my entire childhood. I went to Juana Briones which was a preschool for disabled children,it was a school combined with a therapy center #allinone. All the children in my class had some sort of disability. Some had Cerebral Palsy like me; Hannah and her twin sister Rebekkah both had cerebral palsy but Hannah was partially blind and used a wheelchair while Rebekkah and I walked with leg braces. This wasn’t a Jewish school, while my parents were part of the Chabad shul, two blocks from my house they were somewhat more orthodox at that point my father was working in high tech and we read books from the library but we had a fully kosher and shomer Shabbat home. I was one of the two Jewish students in the class but that never really bothered me, we were all unique and different in many ways, the most annoying part of it was being told I couldn’t eat my friend’s snacks. I could share with them but I couldn’t eat any of their snacks. Noah was the other Jewish student, I dont remember if he had Cerebral Palsy but I remember he used quite an intense wheelchair to help hold his body up. The three years I was there on Chanukah he and I (rather his parents and mine threw a Chanukah party) the pictures are some of my favorite. All the classic blue and white paper wear and boxed latkes with apple sauce and sour cream and Noah would put his hand on mine and I would light a Menorah. In those moments I enjoyed feeling special and helping give out food but I never felt isolated in being Jewish, I was different but it was in a celebration and it didn't impact my day-to-day relationships with my classmates. We all had classes and therapy sessions we did together while working on our own individual levels, and then we also had individual sessions where we left the classroom for occupational, physical, and sometimes speech therapy. Because all of us had some concoction of these therapies we were used to each of us coming and going in the classroom during specific hours there was never any feeling of being “the only one”, we all knew we had different struggles and we would help other kids out but not from a place of pity instead just seeing what he needed help and that I was capable of helping the child out with. I kind of wish to this day I still had this environment where everyone knew they had struggles and they had strengths and we came together as a group of unique individuals. There was no pity or thinking I was better because I had “more physical abilities” than others rather we helped each other because we were friends and wanted to make life better for each other.