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Gabrielle Giffords first made history in 2000 when she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona State Senate. She went on to become a U.S. representative and was serving her second term when, in January of 2011, she survived a gunshot wound to the head in an assassination attempt that killed six and wounded thirteen people. She stepped down from Congress early this year to focus on her recovery, but vowed to return. In Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, she and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, share their remarkable story. Told in Mark’s voice and from Gabby’s heart, the book is a reminder of the power of true grit, and the transcendence of love. ***Chapter 1 The Beach
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the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, or whether she was alone with me, talking about her yearning to have a child. Gabby doesn’t have all those words at I used to be able to tell just what my her command anymore, at least not yet. wife, Gabby, was thinking. I could sense it in her body language— A brain injury like hers is a kind of hurthe way she leaned forward when she was ricane, blowing away some words and intrigued by someone and wanted to soak phrases, and leaving others almost within up every word being said; the way she reach, but buried deep, under debris or in nodded politely when listening to some a different place. “It’s awful,” Gabby will know-it-all who had the floor; the way say, and I have to agree with her. But here’s the thing: While Gabby she’d look at me, eyes sparkling, with that full-on smile of hers, when she wanted me struggles for words, coping with a conto know she loved me. She was a woman stant frustration that the rest of us can’t who lived in the moment—every moment. fathom, I still know what she’s thinking Gabby was a talker, too. She was so much of the time. Yes, her words come animated, using her hands as punctua- haltingly or imperfectly or not at all, but tion marks, and she’d speak with passion, I can still read her body language. I still clarity, and good humor, which made her know the nuances of that special smile someone you wanted to listen to. Usu- of hers. She’s still contagiously animated ally, I didn’t have to ask or wonder what and usually upbeat, using her one good she was thinking. She’d articulate every hand for emphasis. And she still knows what I’m thinking, detail. Words mattered to her, whether she was speaking about immigration on too.
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Latino Perspectives Magazine
¡ March 2012!
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