2007-05-01 - 1:10 p.m.
Things have been rough, both with Nya and me, over the last while. We went to Florida last week, to my parents’ vacation condo in Boca Raton. Going there was such a mistake; it was such an inaccessible environment. It was so hard for me to get around and therefore I had to depend on Nya, causing her to overexert herself at a time she totally doesn’t need it.
It was almost impossible for me physically to roll the manual wheelchair I’d brought across the carpeted floor, which meant that without Nya’s assistance I was pretty much stuck in one spot. The toilet was along the middle of a wall with nothing nearby for me to lower myself or even a corner on which to install the new portable grab bar I got. Hence, every time I had to go, I needed Nya’s help.
The last day we were there, my sister duked it out with my insurance to get a home-care attendant to come in and help me shower (badly needed after four days). He was real nice; much props to her for effecting that. He was Caribbean and, for some reason, the fact that he had an accent made me feel more comfortable about him moving me around naked. Maybe the distance an accent implies. I know he’s a native English-speaker, but still.
Not that we didn’t have some good times there. One evening we just sat out on the porch in the warm setting sun and talked. The view out over the golf course reminded me of how I used to always get stuck in the seventh-hole sand trap in high school. This one time, there were all these beer bottles in there from where my friends and I had left them the last weekend! Oh wait. I didn’t actually grow up there…
The last night, we went to a Japanese place where all the menus were made out of old rock album covers. Nya got INXS’ ‘Kick’ and I got a Joe Cocker album. We ordered edamame because that’s the rule in Japanese restaurants, although Nya recounted the reaction of one corn-fed ugly American on a tour of :Japan when served edamame: “Soybeans! Hell, we feed these to our pigs!”
But now we’re back in Chicago, in my own easy-to-navigate space. What I have to remember is that other places aren’t my home. I shouldn’t expect them to mesh with my needs.
© 2007 Geoff Gladstone
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