I recently heard a
friend talk about grit and grace, the need to have grit and grace to get big,
hard things done. There’s been a lot of
grit and grace, determination and faith, in my life, especially in these last
four years since my spinal surgery.
Recently, I’ve been
upset about my left arm getting weaker and stiffer and it being more difficult
to drive my wheelchair. I haven’t been
able to go out on my own, which leaves me feeling trapped. As I write about in this column published in
Friday’s Claremont Courier, I am exploring a new way to drive my chair, just as
we all are exploring how to venture out and gathering after a year and a half
of isolation. We are doing this –
leaning to go out again, perhaps in a new way – with grace and grit, faith and
determination, with care and courage.
RETURNING
TO A NEW LIFE
This will work. It has to. I know it will.
After all, it worked for Aurora.
If it could work for Aurora, it could work for me.
Aurora was a disabled girl who I met with her mother in Grass Valley up
north. My friend Carl thought that
Aurora and her mom should meet me. This
was a year or two or perhaps three before my spinal surgery four years ago,
back when I was able to be much more independent and went all over – often a
few miles in a day - in my wheelchair.
Even though she was non-verbal, Aurora was clearly bright and full of
life. She was fascinated by me, looking up when I spoke and reaching out for
the joystick on my chair. What I found
fascinating about her was that she drove with her head.
It was literally “Look Ma, no hands!”
When we went on a wheelchair-accessible trail after having lunch, Aurora
would laugh and speed off, leaving the rest of us, including Carl and me in our
wheelchairs, in the dust. She was
pressing her head against sensors in the headrest on her wheelchair, but it
looked like she was being propelled by magic.
Even more remarkable was that Aurora was able to control her wheelchair
in this way even though she had a lot of involuntary movement in her body –
more than I did then and even more than I do now. And she made it look so
easy.
I had no idea that day that I would need to drive my wheelchair with
something like this. Yet, here I am,
back at Casa Colina Hospital, learning how to drive my wheelchair with my
head. And finding out that it isn’t so easy.
I really didn’t expect to have to be doing this. Two years ago, I was
thrilled to find that I had recovered enough from my surgery that I was able to
go out in my wheelchair on my own. I couldn’t go nowhere as far as I used to,
but I was able to go around the neighborhood and to the Village and Pomona
College. I was able to go on my own to a
movie or to s concert at Little Bridges, and I even made it to and from
Memorial Park on the Fourth of July. It was tremendously liberating to be able
to go out on my own, even when I was just tooling around my neighborhood.
But over the last year, even as my strolls around the neighborhood were
more vital during the lock-downs, I had more and more difficulty on my outings,
not being able to get far. Perhaps it
was because I stopped going to therapy and got lazy during the pandemic, but,
for whatever reason, I began having less strength, less flexibility, in my left
arm, my only functioning limb now, and had a hard time driving my
wheelchair. I eventually couldn’t get to
the Village and then up to the railroad tracks, much less Memorial Park.
This was very upsetting, but I tried my best, until I went out on a warm
day in February. I was going along fine,
happy that it was finally warm enough for me to go out, when, several blocks
away from my house, my arm froze up, gave out.
I barely got back home, somehow, with people honking at me, asking if I
was okay.
This left me very shaken, scared to go out on my own again. It was a
lock-down in a lock-down. I felt even more trapped and knew I had to do
something.
This is how I ended up back at Casa Colina, where I got a lot of help in
the year or two before the pandemic as I got back to life after my surgery,
where I went in my wheelchair two times a week for years before my surgery to
work out in the gym and to visit my friend Robyn when she got M.S and was
staying there when it looked quite different, where I went to nursery school
with Robyn when she was able to walk before her rheumatoid arthritis got very
bad. I was back at Casa Colina to find a way that I can go back out on my own
in my wheelchair.
Which is why I’m now learning to drive which my head, like I saw Aurora
doing. It’s a challenge, frustrating, I have to say – not nearly as easy as
Aurora made it look. But, then again, as
Aurora showed me, it can be done, there’s a way for me to do it.
I keep thinking that doing this would be easier if I was not wearing a
mask. Wearing a mask makes it a bit more
difficult to see where I’m going, or it makes me have to think more about
seeing where I’m going. Either way, it
makes learning a new way to drive all the more of a challenge. It also reminds me that I’m doing this in a
very momentous time, when we’re all learning, learning as we find our way out
of this once-in-a-century (hopefully) pandemic, find out if our lives will be
different or will go back to the way they were.
We are all learning. When will it
be safe or feel safe not to wear masks, regardless of what the C.D.C says and
the state opening up next month? When
will we be able to go to outdoor concerts?
Will we be able to go performances at the colleges when they open in the
Fall – if they open in the Fall? So many
questions we are trying to answer.
As I try to learn this new, strange way of driving my wheelchair, of
going out and getting around on my own, I am aware that it’s strange that we’re
having to find our way, to learn how to go, back to normal. Or a new normal.
It has felt strange to see television shows end their season, to see
commercials for summer sales, complete with scenes of people traveling. It feels strange that summer is coming, that
summer will feel something like a real summer, when we will hopefully have
backyard parties and be able to go to the beach, whether or not there will be
concerts and performances around town and as we wonder whether to go to see a
movie at the cinema or stream it at home.
It feels strange
and difficult, but I’m not alone, we’re not alone and it can be done.
