A little boy once asked Shane Kapitzke where his arm was. Shane looked at him and said, “I don’t know! Have you seen it?”
The kid went looking for it, and apparently decided this was too important a mission to handle alone because he recruited his friends. Before long, Shane had a group of children roaming around his daughter’s school looking for his missing left arm and returning periodically with progress reports.
Now that is how you answer a kid’s question.
There was no awkward explanation about disability and no attempt to turn a child’s curiosity into a teachable moment. Shane saw an opportunity to have a little fun and took it. Somewhere, those kids may still be wondering what happened to that man’s arm.
That story also tells you quite a bit about Shane. His disability has always existed alongside the ordinary, messy, funny and sometimes painful business of raising children.
Becoming a Father While Rebuilding a Life
Shane lost his left arm below the elbow in a motorcycle accident in 1998. His eldest son was born only a few days later, which means there wasn’t much time to sit around contemplating his new identity as an amputee. He had a newborn and a life that was rapidly becoming much more complicated.
The years that followed weren’t pretty. Shane struggled after the accident, and his problems extended far beyond learning how to do things with one arm. His finances collapsed, family court battles consumed his savings, and for several months he was homeless, squatting in an abandoned house with other homeless people.
This is where a profile about a disabled father could easily become one of those inspirational stories about a man triumphing over adversity, except Shane’s life doesn’t cooperate with that narrative. He made mistakes. He had periods when he wasn’t handling life particularly well. He can look backward now and admit that.
At the same time, he had children who needed him.
His sons grew up during years when there wasn’t much money. Shane was broke for a long time after the accident, and his boys were his priority with whatever he could manage. What they did have was a lot of time together, and Shane decided that mattered.
His philosophy about parenting is one of my favorite things about him: “My job as a Dad is to fill you with happy memories, because one day you might need those memories to get you through a time when things aren’t so good.”
There is wisdom in that without Shane trying particularly hard to sound wise. He understood that if he couldn’t give his children everything, he could still give them a childhood filled with laughter, goofing around and a father willing to be as big a kid as they were whenever life allowed it.
Of Shoelaces, Motorcycles and Fathers
Of course, growing up with Shane meant his children learned certain things differently. All of them learned to tie their shoelaces one-handed because that’s how Dad did it. They soon discovered that using both hands was considerably easier, which makes me laugh because that’s exactly how children learn. They copy us first and ask questions later.
His eldest son also learned to work on cars and motorcycles with Shane. He picked up some one-handed techniques from his father, but what Shane believes his son really learned was how to approach a problem carefully, think it through and find a way to make something work.
That connection through cars and motorcycles didn’t begin with Shane and his son. It began with Shane and his own father.
Shane didn’t live with his father until he was seven, and when they finally came together, they didn’t really know one another. Working on cars and bikes gave them somewhere to begin. Eventually, they started riding together.
Their relationship isn’t simple, though, and I wouldn’t try to make it one. Shane describes growing up in a family that believed strongly in “tough love.” His relationship with his stepmother was difficult, and he believes his father often followed her lead, including during periods when Shane desperately needed support.
Yet Shane loves his father and values the relationship they have today. That’s life. We can love people while being perfectly capable of identifying the ways they disappointed us.
Motorcycles eventually gave father and son another chapter neither of them expected.
After losing his arm, Shane stopped riding for nearly twenty years. Then his father was diagnosed with cancer, and the prognosis frightened him enough to think they might be running out of time. Shane wanted one more ride with his dad, so he designed and built an arm that would allow him to get back on a motorcycle.
They got their ride.
Thankfully, it wasn’t their last.
His father went on to beat cancer three times, and the two are still riding. Shane has since become a qualified motorcycle instructor, bringing him back to something that has connected three generations of his family while also changing the course of his own life.
Today, Shane can identify the parts of his upbringing that shaped him. He became fiercely self-reliant, stubborn and protective of his children, his time and his space. He also admits those characteristics can make him difficult to get close to.
At least the man is self-aware.
His Daughter Changed the Assignment
Shane has three children with three different mothers, so fatherhood hasn’t exactly followed one predictable script. He has a good relationship with his youngest son’s mother, and the two have worked together to support their son, who also has a disability.
His experience raising his daughter has been very different. Shane calls her “bub,” and for roughly the last decade it has primarily been the two of them. Her mother left when she was young and hasn’t been a consistent presence in her life.
One of Shane’s decisions as a single father says quite a bit about him. He deliberately made sure his daughter had strong women in her life. He doesn’t pretend that being a devoted father automatically made him everything his daughter could possibly need, and he gives those women credit for helping shape the young woman she’s becoming. I respect a man who is secure enough in his role as a father to recognize that surrounding his child with other people who love her doesn’t diminish him.
But his daughter wasn’t the only one growing.
Shane sees a difference between what his sons witnessed and what his daughter witnessed. His boys watched him rebuild his external life after the accident. They saw him fail, adapt, work and eventually establish himself professionally. His daughter became the catalyst for what he calls the emotional and internal growth.
Now that makes me smile.
Apparently Shane could figure out life with one arm, survive homelessness, rebuild financially and raise two boys, but his daughter still looked at the finished product and decided Dad needed some additional work.
She pushes him when she sees him slipping into self-doubt. He admires her integrity, her boundaries and her ability to hold people accountable without making them feel small. He wanted to raise a daughter who knew her worth and chose carefully whom she allowed close to her. From the way he describes her, I’d say Bub understood the assignment.
She also keeps her father in line, which might be the most demanding responsibility in the family.
Dad Has One Arm. What Else Is New?
When Bub was little, she used to draw pictures of her father with two arms. I find that particularly funny considering that other children were apparently wandering around her school trying to locate the missing one.
Shane doesn’t remember his children being treated differently because their father had one arm. More importantly, his memories of raising them aren’t organized around his amputation. They’re about being present.
He attended the school parades and parent-teacher meetings. He was there for sick days and when they received awards. He worked on cars and motorcycles with his son and went on adventures with his daughter. He made sacrifices, sometimes struggled with those sacrifices, and continued doing the job.
That’s the part of Shane’s story that interests me most. Not that he managed to raise children with one arm. Frankly, having two arms has never guaranteed anyone good parenting skills.
Shane wasn’t a perfect father, and I wouldn’t be interested in profiling him if he tried to convince me he was. He screwed up. He struggled financially. He made choices he regrets. He’s stubborn, guarded and sometimes difficult to get close to.
His children still knew he was there.
Now his sons are grown men, his daughter is becoming a young woman, and Shane is facing something he couldn’t prevent by being stubborn enough or working harder. His children are growing up, which means the years of being what he calls a “full-time Dad” are coming to an end.
For someone who spent so much of his adult life focused on being a father, that’s going to be an adjustment. His children, however, seem to have become exactly the kind of family he hoped to create. His daughter has two older brothers who, according to Shane, would “burn the world down for her,” and when the four of them are together laughing and bouncing off one another, he considers it one of the best parts of his life.
That’s what makes Shane Kapitzke audacious to me. It isn’t that he raised three children with one arm. The arm has been gone since 1998, and even those determined little kids couldn’t find it.
It’s that fatherhood happened while his own life was still being reconstructed. He raised his children without pretending that he had everything figured out, gave them happy memories during years when he couldn’t give them much materially, carried forward the best parts of what his own father taught him, and allowed his children to teach him a few things in return.
Shane’s life isn’t a story about overcoming disability. It’s much more interesting than that. It’s about a stubborn man who wanted to be a good dad, sometimes got it wrong, kept showing up anyway and ended up with three children who appear to know exactly how much their father loves them.
One arm, three kids, plenty of mistakes, a ridiculous amount of stubbornness and enough happy memories to get them through the times when things aren’t so good.
Not bad, Dad.
About Shane Kapitzke
Shane Kapitzke is a mechanical design draftsman, qualified motorcycle instructor and father of three in Australia. An amputee since 1998, he rides motorcycles, trains in Tang Soo Do and plans to be the kind of granddad who never sits on the sidelines. Find him at twentythree2.com and on Instagram @1_x_arm.
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