Limitless

By Teresa Swartz Roberts

Blog post 63 Copyright 2026

I watched my grandbaby for more than a week. It’s not that I was in charge of her—I’m not able to do that. But I was able to literally watch her play, taste, reason, love, create, express—all the things we human beings do in the course of a day. 

The Guppy (Grandpa came up with her nickname.) cannot be summed up in adjectives. I could spend days describing the depth in her eyes when she’s trying to figure out the answer to an engineering problem. How can she make a square house for her toy monkey  out of triangular building materials?

She speaks in complete sentences and is not only reciting books but retelling the stories. The Guppy uses words like “collapse” to describe what happened to the straw house that belonged to the first of the three little pigs. Hearing her use such big words makes her seem older than her age.

Meanwhile, because she is only 2½ years old, she doesn’t always understand how the world works or even how her own feelings work. She challenges herself all the time but also challenges her parents. She’s trying to figure out her limitations and is upset when she finds out what they are. She is often frustrated by what she finds on the other side of that line she’s always trying to cross.

While The Guppy has limits imposed upon her,  she’s also fighting limitations. At 2 1⁄2 she does not have the vocabulary that she will have at 12 1⁄2. That’s a limitation she tries to overcome by listening, using sign language, and relying on nonverbal cues.  Mostly, when she wants to get her point across, she screams (which makes her a normal toddler).

The Guppy reminds me of myself. She is frustrated by her limits and limitations. I like to set my own limits regarding what  society says I’m allowed to do.  I like to think of myself as determined or quirky rather than rebellious. I am basically a rule-follower. But I was always outspoken and opinionated in school. I remember when my mother suggested that boys might like me more if I didn’t raise my hand to answer every question. That just was not me.  I also took it as a sign of respect when one of my professors began a lecture with “Teresa isn’t going to like this, but…”

I took classes in yoga, dance, swimming, and weightlifting, even though I was fat. How is that rebellious? Fat women tend to shy away from physical activities because they feel unwelcome. Not me. I had a gorgeous friend at the age of 16 tell me that she wasn’t going to swim that summer because of her figure, a beautiful figure that she was hiding behind bibbed overalls. At 65, and with both arthritis and Parkinson’s Disease, I have limitations that prevent me from dancing the way I used to. My limitations on dancing make me a  wallflower more than a dancing queen these days. But when my body tells me it’s safe, I don’t care who’s watching. I dance. No limits.

There is joy in overcoming limits and limitations. While The Guppy was visiting me, she was not allowed in the library. I had blocked it off with some empty boxes, and she crashed through them into that room just so that she could spin around with the joy of knowing that she had violated the limits. I have always been happier when I color slightly outside the lines. Parkinson’s, however, is not about limits but about limitations. I now color outside the lines because my hands shake. There’s a big difference between the two.

Limits and limitations can both be met with rebellion and determination. But I have to be careful about how I let myself feel about them. Limitations come under the heading of what I cannot control. The Serenity Prayer says, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” It’s that wisdom that’s the tough part.

I am preparing to deal with my limitations in a new way. I am a candidate for deep brain stimulation, or DBS, and I have surgical consultations coming up in a couple of months. I have hope, not that deep brain stimulation will turn back the clock on my Parkinson’s Disease, but that it may give me more time to be myself, just as carbidopa-levodopa and the Big and Loud exercise programs did for my body and my voice. I am willing to stretch past my limitations to improve my quality of life. I am cautiously determined. I will not set limits on myself. I have not given up.