GIVE AND TAKE

CR: I remember a psychologist in rehab said to me, 'If you possibly can, don't turn your wife into your nurse or your mother.' Now, some families can't avoid that but we can. The nurses are around for medical issues. But we go out to dinner, we go to the movies and we read together and we talk and we do things that are not about my disability, and that really is very, very important.

Reeve with his wife, Dana.

AA: You've said that you're learning to give to other people even though you might want to be taking.

CR: Yeah, actually I'm neediest but I have to give more. On an ordinary day I try to make my youngest son know that I'm okay and he's free to play baseball and do his thing. When I was on my feet, I was so busy with movies, with stage, with riding, sailing, flying, diving you name it, that often, as a family we did things together but sometimes the activity took the place of communication. We'd go on a ski vacation but I'd realize that I've had fun doing things but haven't really been taking time to really sit down and spend three hours with my children listening to what's going on with them.

AA: Your book is called Still Me, but you seem as though you're a you now that's bigger and better than the one you were before.

CR: Well, again, it's the water having to find a way around the obstacle that's been placed in front of it. I have to admit, there's many days I'd trade the whole thing just to go take a walk down to the mailbox. But I do realize the profound opportunities that there are to learn from something like this and I try my best to help other people who don't see that opportunity to try to find it.

AA: You've seen so much progress already.

CR: Absolutely. FDR said, I think in about 1941, "Go cure polio." And with that mandate, they came up with a vaccine. You have to harness the John Wayne in the American psyche, or the Lewis and Clark, or the drive to go to the moon. We are people who like challenges and so when you present people who are holding the purse strings, when you present them with an opportunity and make it clear how important it is, they respond.
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Photo:Regan Pictures, Inc.