Heck on wheels: How I learned to roll with the punches

by Loolwa Khazzoom

Editrix's note: this piece originally appeared in the Washington Post. It is reprinted with the author's permission. Thanks Loolwa!

I was brooding under the covers, talking to my mother on the phone. "I should just cancel my book tour," I told her, frustrated to the point of tears. "I can barely get to the bathroom. How can I possibly get across the country?"

My knee had been badly injured two weeks earlier, and hobbling to the kitchen had become about as much adventure as I could stand.

Now, however, my collection of essays about Jewish women had been published, and I was scheduled to go on tour. Local travel was clearly doable, with friends schlepping me back and forth to bookstores and synagogues, but the whole Los Angeles/ Seattle/ New York/ Boston thing seemed out of the question.

"Why don't you rent a wheelchair?" suggested my mother, always the problem solver. Living in Berkeley, Calif., where organizations for the disabled are as common as coffee bars, I was used to seeing all kinds of people roll by -- paraplegics, amputees, people with cerebral palsy, whatever -- yet somehow, until she said it, I hadn't considered it an option for myself.

But it was an appealing idea, especially because I've suffered from an "invisible disability" -- spinal disc degeneration -- for almost a decade, and I've have spent a considerable amount of time worrying about how my condition could deteriorate as I grow older. I was open to exploring the kind of active lifestyle that transcends physical limitations.

Chair Surfing

Surfing the Net, my mother found a store that rented wheelchairs and brought one over for a test run. The act of easing myself into it and maneuvering my way down the block -- excuse me, down a third of the block -- burst the bubble of my active-lifestyle fantasy. Though it was supposedly the lightest in the store, the wheelchair was heavy and hard to maneuver. Rolling its wheels caused terrible pain in my wrist and shoulders.

"This tour is going to suck!" I said, scowling. "It may be extraordinary!" my mother said, ever optimistic. With little option besides giving up, I decided to approach my wheelchair stint as a sort of adventure -- a two-month visit to the world that 1.5 million American wheelchair users live in every day, and which I might someday need to inhabit myself. What I found there was not quite what I'd expected -- for better and for worse.

World on Wheels

To begin with, my book tour was nothing like the one I'd done a few years earlier. Traveling to three cities on my own two legs, I'd taken the opportunity to get in some sightseeing, window shopping, cultural engagements and visits to old friends. This time, leaving my hotel room at all rarely seemed worth the effort. Every outing took advance planning: calling ahead about disability access, leaving extra time for loading and unloading the chair, strategizing one-stop shopping expeditions. Every move was a struggle: barely squeezing through a narrow doorway, searching for wheelchair access to a public area, praying for the light to stay green long enough for me to get across a busy street. I could get exhausted from something as simple as purchasing a bottle of juice -- and that was when I had someone helping me.

In Los Angeles, my first stop, I needed to make copies of promotional bookmarks I planned to give away on the tour. At Kinko's, I peered like a child over the counter to talk to an attendant who printed the bookmarks five to a page, which reduced the price by about two-thirds. Then I rolled off in search of a paper cutter, and soon found they were all mounted at a standing person's height. I returned to the attendant's desk to ask for one at my level. He said there were none. I suggested the store offer me complimentary cutting service, since the self-service option was not wheelchair-accessible. He said sorry, ma'am.

It wasn't just that I had become short again; there were other ways that being wheelchair-bound was like returning to a child-like state. Normally self-sufficient, I found it very hard to be suddenly dependent on strangers. Oddly, people seemed to find it just as hard to offer assistance.

Kindness (or Not) of Strangers

My sojourn in the wheelchair taught me more lessons than the one about being annoying when necessary -- lessons in courtesy, humility and empathy. By the time I ended the book tour, my knee was still too painful to walk around on, but I could drive my car again and even cruise for short distances on my bike. I was delighted to be able to get to a follow-up doctor's appointment on a different set of wheels. As I exited the building, cycling helmet in hand, I noticed an attendant pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair. The attendant pressed a handicapped button near the exit and one of the double doors opened.

I walked over and held open the other door, giving the chair the extra room that made it easy to pass. The man in the wheelchair looked up at me, surprised. "Thank you so much!" he beamed. "Most people don't realize how hard it is."

Loolwa Khazzoom is the editor of The Flying Camel: Essays on Identity by Women of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Heritage (Seal Press). Click here to learn more about Loolwa's work.

Posted: 7/25/2005 in Inspiration | Also posted in: Coping

Host a ChronicBabe movie night! The Editrix already has some great flicks picked for you. Browse today at our Amazon shop!

By Date:

Heck on wheels: How I learned to roll with the punches

Chair Surfing

World on Wheels

Kindness (or Not) of Strangers