Review by Lara Lillibridge
You ask any four-year-old what they want to be when they grow up, and the answers are relatively predictable: doctor, teacher, firefighter, astronaut, veterinarian …
[…]
My honest, doe-eyed reply?
I wanted to be a chair.
Ryan Rae Harbuck was a sixteen-year-old girl in Colorado who swam on the swim team, went to high school dances, and all the typical things until an accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. This heart-warming and often funny memoir follows her journey through young adulthood and into marriage and toddler-rearing. This is not an illness or disability memoir, however, as Ryan examines her family of origin, her relationships and own insecurities as she grows into her strength.
There is never a reason for the reader to pity Harbuck, as it is quite clear that “After all, it’s not the chair that made me me, but it is the chair that made me be.”
You can’t use words like “confined to a chair,” when Harbuck takes that chair to India, Paraguay, and beyond. Clearly, she uses a chair, she is not restricted by it.
Harbuck’s voice is often reflective, yet filled with empathy for her younger self. She writes,
If only I had trusted myself more.
If only I had tried harder.
If only I didn’t care so much about what everyone else thought.
If only I had let swimming feel this important to me before my accident.
I found this so relatable—so often when I look back at my own younger self, I wish that I could only have appreciated who I was at the moment, and allowed myself to strive for more. Like Ryan, I was too insecure and afraid to put myself first.
Likewise, she has compassion for her family, even though they did not always (or often) come through for her in the ways I would have hoped.
As the years wore on after my accident, I became more and more aware of how my paralysis was indeed something carried by my loved ones, and perhaps, on some level, carried even more.
I found that the universality of her story is contained in her story of becoming a mother. As she wrote, “That was my first lesson in being a mom. It didn’t matter how I felt anymore. It didn’t matter that I didn’t feel prepared. That baby was coming. That baby was everything.” I think all parents will be able to relate to the emotions, fears, and struggles of her descriptions of early parenthood, even if our own particular circumstances might differ. She captures the terror as well as the unimaginable love that comes from being mother, and her memoir will warm your heart as it strengthens the connection all mothers have across different cultures, countries, or circumstances.
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Chair: a Memoir by Ryan Rae Harbuck
Old Goldie Press, 2022, $19.95 [paper],
9780578983738]
Lara Lillibridge (she/they) is the author of The Truth About Unringing Phones: Essays on Yearning (forthcoming with Unsolicited Press); Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent, and Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home, both with Skyhorse Publishing. Lara is the Interviews Editor for Hippocampus Magazine and Creative Nonfiction Co-editor for HeartWood Literary Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from West Virginia Wesleyan College.