When nondisabled folks ask me whether I’d take the imaginary cure pill for cerebral palsy, I know what my answer is supposed to be. My questioners expect me to say, “Yes, of course, I’d take that pill in a heartbeat.” And when I don’t, they’re puzzled and disbelieving. They wonder if I protest too much or am defending myself against the unpleasant truth of my misery. How can I possibly not want a cure?

It’s simple. Having shaky hands and shaky balance isn’t as awful as they imagine, even when I slip, totter, descend stairs one slow step at a time. My relationship to gravity is ambivalent. On mountain trails, I yearn to fly downhill, feet touching ground, pushing off, smooth and fluid. Instead on steep stretches I drop down onto my butt and slide along using both my hands and feet, for a moment becoming a four-legged animal. Only then do I see the swirl marks that glaciers left in the granite, tiny orange newts climbing among the tree roots, otherworldly fungi growing on rotten logs. My shaky balance gives me this intimacy with mountains.

I would lose so much if that imaginary cure pill actually existed. Its absence lets me be unequivocal. It opens the door to brilliant imperfection.