Having a disability can be difficult. Having a disability when you live in a part of the world that doesn’t have the medical care you need can be devastating. 

Fortunately, for children like 13-year-old Jesus Villa, a double-amputee from the Dominican Republic, there are organizations like Healing the Children and host families like the Badowskis.

I met Jim and Marge Badowski as I stood along the sidelines of the skateboard park where Jesus, thanks to the free clinics offered by the Extremity Games, was learning to skateboard.  They were cheering for him in the way a supportive parent cheers for a child, so I assumed (since they are white) that they were his adoptive parents. Turns out the relationship is more complicated than that.

Healing the Children
The Badowskis met Jesus through Healing the Children, a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to healing children around the world. The organization brings children in need of medical care to the U.S and finds them medical professionals who will donate their services and volunteer host families who will provide for them during their stay.

Most of these children have surgery, then return to their home country never to return.   Jesus’s case is a little different.

Jesus was born without tibias and, at the age of two, required amputation of both his legs above the knee. Because of his continual need for new prosthetics  (“Jesus is quite talented at breaking what others cannot!” his host mother told me), Jesus regularly makes trips back and forth to the U.S.

Two Lives: Two Disability Perspectives
In fact, Jesus lives two very different lives. In the Dominican Republic he lives with his mother and sisters in a 900 square-foot house where the electricity and water don’t work most days and his step-dad lives next door.

In the U.S. he lives with his host family, attends school, and plays on sports teams from sled hockey to wheelchair basketball.  The Badowskis didn’t realize at first how much of his life Jesus would be living with them.

“Then, when the subject about him staying longer came up, we just didn’t say no,” said Marge.

That was more than 11 years ago.

I don’t know exactly how Jesus’s time is split. I do know, from spending time with Jim and Marge, that he’s with them often enough for them to consider him their son.  It’s obvious in the way they encourage him at the skate park. It’s obvious in the way they joke about him being like other kids in every other way except the prosthetics.

“He has selective disability,” Jim maintains. “He’s perfectly fine until it comes to cleaning his room and doing his homework.”

Not Seeing Disability
Jesus doesn’t see himself as having a disability.

“Even when he got his legs amputated he was more concerned about a hangnail,” Jim said. “Here he was, missing his legs and he was telling every nurse and doctor who came in that he needed medical attention--for his nail.”

When Jesus was 5 years old, however, he did ask Marge why he didn’t have legs like everybody else. She showed him a picture of what his legs were like before surgery and he never asked again.

After that, his disability became such a non-factor to him that when he was asked in school to write about someone who had overcome diversity, he sat and fidgeted for a long time. What’s wrong?” the teacher finally asked. “I can’t think of anyone,” Jesus answered.

Jesus has also always had a natural confidence.

“He was at a dance a while ago and he was acting like, ‘Come on girls. Here I am. Your dreams have come true.’” Jim laughs, but there is underlying pride in his voice.

The Badowskis claim that they can’t take credit for Jesus’s confidence, though.

“He’s always had it. We just never took it away from him. In fact, his first sentence in English was ‘Me do it’!”

When I meet Jesus after his skateboarding session, I see what his father means about his self-assurance.

“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” I ask the teenager, who is sitting on the floor complaining about a splinter to his host mother. “Depends,” he responds.

He is neither shy nor sullen. He is just matter-of-fact. If he feels like answering a question he will. If not, he won’t. I admire his ability to decide for himself. I realize he’s had a lot of experience deflecting questions by now.

Understanding that he doesn’t want to be asked anything too personal, we discuss skateboarding. Like any 13-year-old, he loses interest pretty quickly. Besides, he’s still preoccupied with the splinter that is causing him obvious pain, even though a half hour earlier I watched him fall off of a concrete ramp onto the hard ground without batting an eye.  Go figure.

As a volunteer takes out the splinter with tweezers, I bid the group goodbye. I’m not concerned that it isn’t really the time or place to have a serious conversation with Jesus. I’ve realized by then that I’ve already got my story, and it isn’t really about him - though his host father asked that I make it about him, not them. But it’s not about them either. It’s not even about disability - unless it’s about the ability to overcome a disability.

In the end, it’s about a child from the Dominican Republic who once needed help, and a couple from the United States who offered it.  It’s about three people randomly thrown together who turn from strangers into a family - and who don’t believe it was random at all.