The Wrong Ramp

We'd had dinner in a packed restaurant, with waitstaff that had no idea how to sit a disabled customer, and were on our way out. I came through the / doors and saw that a huge truck had used the cut curb to pull back up into a parking space to unload and store equipment used in the water show that was happening just off the docks beside the restaurant. I could see that a young man had been assigned to watch over the equipment so I headed over to speak to him.

But that's not the only thing I was doing right? I was stoking the fires of injustice and feeling the violation of my space, the only cut curb anywhere near where we'd parked the car. So by the time I got to him I was in fight mode. I told him that the truck was parked over the disabled access point and that I couldn't get to the ramp. But as I spoke there was a roar from the crowd attending the event and he smiled and said, "No I don't think I can let you do that?" "What," I asked.

The truck had a long and steep ramp, used to assist with getting the equipment on or off the ramp. He repeated himself laughing as he said that he didn't think he could let me try rolling up the ramp.  I said, "No, no, I was saying that the truck is blocking the accessible ramp and I can't get down to the car. "Oh, sorry," he said, "give me a second to organize and I'll move the truck right away."

And he did. He kept giggling about his mistake and kidding me about actually trying the steep ramp. There wasn't a moment where I felt that he was resentful of all the work he had to do to move the truck. He had to move equipment that was leaning against it, he had to disassemble the ramp, he had to tie down some of the stuff in the truck. But he did it in good humour and I didn't mind waiting in an atmosphere of 'I got it, I get it, I'll do it.'

And, of course waiting there allowed me the time to put out the fire that I'd set for a fight that I didn't need to have. But you can't tell before hand, can you, when it's going to be needed.

The truck was moved, I got out, he called after me, "Sorry, man, thanks for your patience." I gave him the thumbs up sign because it was all good.

Late Lunch

We got to the restaurant a little later than we had planned. But what's a vacation for but to make plans and then freely set about to mess them all up?

We were greeted by a woman with a disability, she used a cane for stability and for assisting with movement. She was warm and friendly and set about setting up a table for 5, all were set for 2 or 4, with skill and ease.

The most important thing to me was that she set it up exactly right for my wheelchair. No muss, no fuss, no notice, just an accessible table whipped up for us.

I don't know if her disability played into how she provided service, but I'm guessing it might. And right then I was really thankful for her and her skill and her competence and her welcoming attitude. It isn't always so when I'm out.

There are those people that seem to be set in the way of your life, those people you are destined to run into, those people who you will never know and, after a few minutes, never see again, but those same  people can have a real impact on us and our lives. She showed me it's possible to be seated in a restaurant without show or complaint. No one noticed what she did. And that's the point. No one but me, and that, for today was enough.

X-Ray Pants

This morning I had to have an x-ray, a great way to start a vacation, and, yes, everything is fine. We arrived to a long line up and a sinking feeling that we'd be there for hours. Turned out that we got through the process faster than we did at the drive-thru at Harvey's We registered, sat down and were almost immediately called in.

The technician asked if Joe could come in case I needed help she couldn't give. I agreed and we all went into the room. While I was still seated she explained what I had to do which included taking off my shirt and dropping my suspenders (or, in England, braces). I was scheduled for two, one taken with my back to the machine, one taken to the side.

The first one was easy to do because I could hold on to my pants, preventing them from falling to the floor, while in the position she wanted. The next one was going to be more difficult, I needed to have my hands up holding on to a grip she installed. This meant that I couldn't hold on to my pants and that they would definitely fall.

I asked her if Joe could hold my pants up while the picture was being taken. She 'leaded him up' which meant that he had to put on a costume that made him look part samurai and part Dirk Bader. He stood behind me, grabbed my pants and for the first time in our relationship held them up.

It was hard getting an x-ray while wanting to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Disability can be a deeply funny way to live. 

Vacation

Today we begin a week's vacation. Our hallway is lined with suitcases. Packing is nearly done. This is all stuff that Joe does and I am the exceedingly grateful recipient of his expertise. This means that I get to sit and do nothing while he makes satisfied noises every time he remembers something he was determined that he'd forget. It's just what we do.

It is my job to make the reservations and ensure that we get what we want and need. This is made easy because the staff at the hotel remember us, know that I'm a wheelchair user and work to ensure that the whole process is smooth and that my only experience at check in is 'Welcome Back!"

They have the art of customer service down to an art. To a one the staff there seem to want to make everyone feel at home. They seem to realize that, because we need adapted rooms, our needs don't call for adapted interactions.

So when I called last night to reassure myself that all was okay, I knew that it would be. And it was. I didn't have to talk toilets to strangers. (And I bless them for that.)

After breakfast we will move into getting out of here and into there.

I am so looking forward to this!

Love Need Not End

A very, very, very long time ago I wrote about seeing an elderly woman being supported by her son with Down Syndrome. She was a wheelchair user, something that at the time seemed new to her, and he carefully guided the chair around people and other barriers. I wondered, then, if she ever, when he was born, imagined a time where he would not only be her world but allow her access to the world.

As it happened Joe and I were back downtown pushing through the mall where we used to see them. I had forgotten them, busyness and preoccupation can push everything else aside. We rounded a corner and there they were. They were sitting at a coffee shop enjoying the holy trinity of Tims, a chat, a coffee, and a doughnut.

Something was different this time though. He was not alone. He was with a woman who also had an intellectual disability who he loved calling his wife, she in turn used the word husband at every possible opportunity. His mother watched them as they chatted with each other and with her. They had done everything. Gotten the coffee and treat, found the table and made a place for her at it.

She looked so happy.

So deeply happy.

He was loved. He was loving. She had always known he had this capacity. But now he was using it to build a life that would outlast her.

I have met parents, a few, who refuse to allow their children to grow into adults who have relationships. I have met executive directors of organizations that have policies that disallow love burying it under a log jam of policy.

What they fear, what they forbid, is what freedom does.

She looked so happy.

So deeply happy.

His world was so much bigger.

Her loss will be keenly felt, but it will not mean the end of love for him.

Struggling

I sat down the other day to write a post, but I just couldn't bring myself to it. This is pointing to a problem I'm having with writing this blog.

Here's what happened that I was going to write about.

We were off the plane, home again in Toronto, and on to get the rental car that would take us home. To get to the rental car I need to get up a long, carpeted, ramp. What I typically do is get near the moving sidewalk and when ready, grab it. It pulls my right arm and with my left I push my right tire with my right arm. It's a bit of a dance of dexterity but I know how to do it and even enjoy doing it.

I was riding/pushing up the ramp when a woman came careening at me and grabbed the back of my chair before Joe could intervene. I lost control of what I was doing, my right arm nearly got pulled out of it's socket and I'm hurting. She kept, against our protests, insisting on pushing me and she simply wouldn't let go. It's getting a bit loud and now I'm the center of everyone's attention. In situations like this no one gets why I'm refusing help. Everyone assumes I'm an asshole.

Finally we got her to let go saying, (say it with me) "I was just trying to help." Then, before I could answer she continued, "I saw you struggling and just wanted to ease that." At that point, I gave up, I hadn't been struggling, that means she can't see me, she sees what she wants to see disability being the Rorschach test for how people see difference.

But I couldn't write this because, um, haven't I told this story a thousand times before?

Isn't everyone tired of hearing me go on about it?

You see it's the sameness of the experiences that I have as a disabled person that weigh me down, much moreso than an individual incident. I can predict this is going to happen several times a week.

Given the sameness of the experience, how do I write this in a way that's new for you. Every single day that there hasn't been a blog written, there was a blog to write - but I don't want to bore you.

So, I'm struggling.

JOB?

I would never feel comfortable doing a job interview in a coffee shop, but these are modern times. Two fellows met and clearly they had known each other in school. The applicant laid it on a little thick with the 'bonhomie' that came with past acquaintance. The interviewer kept good boundaries but was distinctly cool in his response to the warmth flowing his way. They sit. Neither has a coffee. 

The first question?

"This isn't on my list of questions for the interview today, but I want to start with it anyways. Are the words 'fag' and 'retard' and 'bitch' still in your vocabulary for interacting with people you feel better than?"

If they had had coffee that moment would have frozen in the cup.

Apologies toppled over a desperate plea for employment. The applicant looked destroyed but acknowledged it had been a fair question.

"I'm not that guy anymore," he said.

"Good, because I'm not hiring that guy, lets go through the rest of the interview."

What followed was a typical interview.

"Am I going to be considered for the position?" he asked.

"Yes," the interview said, "but I have to really think about it."

"That's fair."

"More than fair!" The words slipped out of my mouth without me being able to stop them, the two of them snapped their heads over to see me. 

I just waved and pretended to look at the paper.

Just One

We had arrived early at the airport for a flight that would be delayed. Rah! We wanted to grab breakfast and decided to go to a restaurant rather than a fast food place and we found a spot and then found a table therein. There weren't many there, the prices where prohibitive. But there were two men a couple tables over from us and across a small aisle way, talking loudly. They seemed very used to taking up a lot of space.

It began with one of them going on about his wife who had put on weight and how disgusted with her and didn't want to touch her. We all heard him. We knew he was speaking to the room. We knew he felt he had the right to speak to the room. His friend urged him on, throwing in sexist, misogynistic, fat shaming remarks that the both found funny. No one who heard them cracked a smile.

Then they moved on to a work colleague who they had dubbed 'The Retard.' I froze. I looked at the table it was the man who had added jokes to the hateful diatribe. I was trying to figure out what to do when two more customers arrived and were waiting to be seated. I turned around to see them and one of them was an older woman in her wheelchair. Her eyes were burning holes through the fellow who had just spoken.

When the hostess came and asked them where to sit. In an empty restaurant she pointed to the table right beside the two men. The hostess tried to dissuade her telling her that there were many open seats. "I want to sit there," she pointed and then began to make her way to the table.

The two men looked very intruded upon. The restaurant was near empty and this woman in a wheelchair and her friend were seated right beside them.

The two men fell silent.

She shut them up.

She made the whole place safe.

She won.

It only takes one warrior.

Just one.

My Place

"He just doesn't ... doesn't ..." pauses to search for words, "know his place."

That's not where I thought this was going to go. It was the standard situation familiar to many of us with disabilities, someone had offered unneeded help which I had politely declined.

Cue offense.

Even though I had cheerfully said, "No, I'm good, I've got it." Even though there was no hostility or impatience in my voice, I say this acknowledging that I'm not always good at handling these things, but this time, I was.

"I was just trying to be helpful."

God, spare me from another of these conversations. I really don't want to ever have to talk about the emotions of those who assume that their help is a gift and my rejection is rude. I really don't want to have to rebuilt the egos of those who, wishing to gain from my perceived need. Please not another.

I explained to her, and the woman with her, annoyance had made them twins, that it's important for me to do what I can for myself.

My need didn't matter.

Resulting was the comment one to the other: He just doesn't know his place.

And what place would that be?

Disabled people don't exist for the general public to get warm fuzzies from our gratitude for their time and attention and assistance.

I don't exist to meet the needs of anyone but my family and myself.

My place isn't segregated into the barren wards that exist in the minds of those illiterate in the nature of disability.

My place isn't to be a man-child lifted into worthiness by the time and attention of those who cuddle at night with disphobic hierarchies.

My place is here.

This space is mine.

And, for fuck sakes, no means no.

Popcorn

So.

This happened.

We went to see "Spiderman" and, unusually for us, we were a little bit late. We can't get our tickets from the automated stations because we use the Access2 card and need a real person help us do that. I spotted a young man at the popcorn station, a place where you can buy tickets as well, and we headed towards him. He knows the system really well and is able to process us through really quickly.

As it turned out the showing that we were going to required us to choose our seats from a seat map. Joe and I both roll our eyes at this ... it's a movie. The fellow showed us seats that he'd chosen for us, like he does for all customers, and when I looked I saw that it was in the middle of the theater and up several stairs. I said to him from my wheelchair: "Um, I'm a wheelchair user. I need the accessible seating."

He burst into a blush and an embarrassed grin.

"Ooops, my bad," he said, and then set about choosing different seats.

And that was it.

That's all that happened.

There is no more to tell.

What didn't happen was more significant than what did.

He didn't get all flustered and apologetic.

He didn't make a big deal about it.

He didn't draw anyone's attention to what was happening.

He didn't make himself the hero of the story.

He didn't make himself the victim in the story.

He didn't me into a victim of my disability.

He didn't do anything other than correct a simple mistake.

Isn't is marvelous when sometimes a disability is just a disability and not a reason for spectacle.

Morning

I get up first.

Pretty much every day.

I like mornings.

This morning I stepped by the fan that was attempting to circulate cool air into the bedrooms and headed towards my desk. I noticed then a little girl solidly asleep on the couch, covered in a light blanket, her face lit by the brightness of the morning. She looked as if she was safe and at peace as she slept.

Dancing beside me was a dog, a big one, waiting on her morning treat. She loves to get up with me and she rushes to my desk where she sits and waits for me to arrive. Her eyes flick up to the treats up on the top shelf, she wants me to know that she knows they are there, she wants me to remember the morning routine. I toss 4 into the air and she deftly catches all of them. Ritual complete she slips away to lie on my side of the bed.

I go through emails and check on a few things that I need to keep up on and then decide to go back to bed to read. I walk by a bedroom door that had been pushed opened by the dog on her rounds on her way back to bed. I see another girl, slightly older, sleeping on her back with a slight smile playing about her face. I wave, she doesn't wave back. She's dreaming of something that makes her happy, that enriches my morning.

Coming back into my bedroom to read I find the dog fully stretched out in my place. Joe is on his side of the bed still soundly asleep. I get the dog to move and pick up my book to read.

***

And people thought my life would be lonely as a gay man.

And people thought my life was over when I became disabled.

***

Life brings gifts to all of us.

Even those thought undeserving.

***

The quiet happiness of a Saturday morning.

Takes all shapes.

***

Even mine.

The Killer

Yesterday we paid $25 for just over an hour's parking.

YIKES.

Both Joe and I had an appointment with the doctor, we both go in together and even though the Doctor listens to each of us separately, it's like a real family visit. For example when the Doc had a question about my cough, he asked Joe to comment as well in terms of what he's noticed. I like the feeling of being treated as a legitimate couple who live legitimate lives together - even though we've just celebrated our 50th anniversary we find our relationship is never seen as 'real' as our heterosexual counterparts. All this to say, it's nice, but it's also not what I'm wanting to write about.

When it came to me the doctor laid out two possible courses of treatment, the risks and benefits of both AND the research behind the approaches. You can tell he's also a teacher, teaching at the local university, because he is able to lay out information in a manner that's easy to follow.

The reason he went into the detail was because he said that he felt that I was in the best position to choose which course I'd like to try. In fact, even before he said that I had decided which one made sense to me and was going to advocate for it ... but there was no advocacy necessary.

We talked about it a bit more, and we were done.

Our doctor has always made sure we were fully consenting to whatever treatment he was offering, he has always made sure we understood the approaches suggested and some of the research behind the recommendation. We've always felt in the driver's seat.

But this time was different, more overt, I'd guess.

So, we paid the parking fee and drove away. It's worth every cent.

We get our health care for free but the parking can be a killer!

A Destination and A Companion

It was sunny and warm and we were on a mission. We wanted to find a particular restaurant that we knew was somewhere near by. The street was crowded with people going, it seemed, every which way. We got out of the flow of pedestrians and tried to figure out which was to go. Once we had it figured, we set off.

I saw him almost right away, he was about half a block away and headed our way. He was a homeless man who had a shopping cart full to the brim with everything he owned. I paid attention to him only because with my chair and his cart we both needed to ensure that we had the room we needed to pass each other.

He did not see me until we were only a few feet apart, I know this only because I saw him see me. (Anyone who is different knows what I mean here.) His face changed into something akin to anger. And he charged me aiming his shopping cart right at me. It was only seconds before he was about to hit me, I saw the charge and waited until he was close enough that I could grab the front of the cart and veer it forcibly off to my left and away from me. It worked.

I sat there shocked.

I said to Joe, "That guy aimed right at me, he wanted to hurt me!"

He heard me and spun round and started to call me a 'fat fucker' and a 'God damned pig' and a 'lardass motherf#cker.'

I didn't like having those names shouted at me, nor did I like how they echoed between the large buildings around us, it was like the air agreeing with him. I didn't like how it drew everyone's attention, not to him but to me. I didn't like feeling what I was feeling about him.

I hated him in that moment.

I'm sorry.

But I did.

I know, or am guessing, that he has a mental illness, that he has a hard life, and I know that should matter to me in how I assess what happened and how I felt about it. I know that I should be working towards some kind of sensitivity to him and his situation. I can't imagine the life he lives. I know that.

I've waited for several weeks to write this. I thought that, over time, I would feel differently and be able to write a different kind of story.

And I know that I should.

But I don't want to contrive to be here in print who I'm not as I type this.

I have history too. I have hurts too. I don't want to compare and contrast with what his might have been, I'm just saying that I do. I have been a target for most of my life. I've heard words like that for all of my life. And they hurt me. They are words with sharp edges and their job is to cut, and to say they don't is to deny the existence and experience of both the dart and the board.

Joe put his hand on my shoulder and we turned back to our quest. At that moment I was so grateful for both a destination and a companion.

Two things that I have needed my whole life long.

Grandma's Trust

(first appeared in Canadian newspapers in 2011)

I was having a pee.

Thinking about my grandmother.

Thinking about my country.

We'd driven almost 300 kilometres through the wilderness of Northern British Columbia. That is to say, it was a long pee.

My grandmother was born in Canada in the late 1800s. In all ways she was a remarkable woman. She made the hard life of poverty and subsistence farming into a warm life of laughter, card games and home-fried doughnuts. She was a woman that I was always close to. I think I trusted her love of me more than others around me.

One summer I was staying with her in the old homestead. A barnboard shack on a gravel road. The family dreams lay like rusted dinosaurs round the property. Threshing machines that never threshed and tractors that never left a track. Big, hulks, that frightened and fascinated all the grandchildren. But inside those oddly clean sparkling windows, the light was warm. Inside the doors, the spirit was welcoming. That summer, I asked her a question. We had been studying in school the history of Canada. I had learned, with a shock, that at one time in Canada, in CANADA, women were not legally persons, that women could not vote. I had been stunned by this information.

I asked her to tell me about those days. She did. In stark detail. She said, "If you are old enough to ask the question, you are old enough to hear the answer."

She had married lucky, she said. A comment that might have seemed at odds with the surroundings of a life without riches. Water was pumped into the sink with an old hand pump, towels were stuffed around doors for insulation. But her husband, she told me, was never a violent man. He had loved her gently and respected her unceasingly. Other woman, many women, were not lucky. Their men, abetted by the society in which they lived, treated their women with less care than the cattle in their barns.

Women of her class, she said, never thought about the vote. They thought about survival. I asked her, hushed by her tone and battered by her honesty, how she coped.

She gave an odd answer: "Canada."

I asked her what she meant. She said that she always trusted that her country would get it right. That a young country would grow up. That one day a woman would be protected by law, not luck.

"Trust this country," she said, "it wills to grow and change."

It will not surprise you to know that my grandmother was the first to know of my sexuality. A woman of deep faith, she felt that the call to love me was stronger than the call to damn me. So she did. I was her gay grandson, that was that.

Once when telling her that I feared for my job, for my safety if others found out about who, and what, I was. After listening to me and consoling me, she said, "Trust Canada. Give your country time to grow. It will. It will because it wants to."

And it did.

Years later, I am driving long distances along a highway I had travelled in my youth. In those days the rest stops were barely more than "intensely rustic." I suddenly had to pee. We watched for a rest stop. Being a wheelchair-user now, rushing into the bushes is out of the question. I was terrified of what I'd find. Those rest stops in my memory were forbidding for those who walked. But we pulled into the stop and saw, proudly displayed, the blue wheelchair guy. I rolled easily to the door, and had the dignity of travelling in dry pants.

Canada.

I trust this country.

It grows.

Even when you aren't looking.