Rolling

It's a long haul to San Francisco.  But the haul would be even longer if Lorna had not started turning up, virtually every morning, to get me and my socks and my shoes and my tea and my bran muffin and my clean handkerchief into gear.  She is one of those people who appeared during the Marlou crisis.  People hire domestics in relative profusion in Menlo Park, and all it took was a phone call to some friends to begin getting names.  Lorna was among them, and unbeknownst to me, I had been rolling by her home for several years.  She lives 100 meters away.  It's not much of a commute.  

It's also not much of a job, amounting to one hour per morning.  That's all I need and all I want.  Laid off from the accounting department of some big regional bank, she seems happy to have turned her attention to getting the socks on my feet.  Her help makes all the difference.  It diminishes the day's grimness.  The fact that she has sewn my torn trousers, had her husband tighten my wheelchair footrest and keeps offering to do my laundry, all this adds to the equation.  On days when she has something better to do, there's always Maria in Fremont.  Jewish Family Services even claims to have a volunteer.  My life may be burdened by loss, but the putting on of socks is only a minor part of the daily load.  Thank God for help.

'Usual', asks the Caltrain conductor?  He knows I am heading for San Francisco.  He knows me.  Being known counts for a lot these days.  I am largely unknown to myself.  My future is unknown.  And much of what I have come to know recently about life and death I would rather not know.  So the conductor and his familiarity and the snappiness of the 8:39 AM express, three stops and slightly more than half an hour to San Francisco, all of this nurtures.  I am in good hands, safe, swift and certain.

When the train pulls into San Francisco, the conductor looks at me, then looks beyond me, and asks who wants to get off first.  There is a phantom feel to this.  The wheelchair space is occupied by only one wheelchair, mine.  There is either a ghost wheelchair behind me or...now I see, this man with a seeing eye dog.  I insist that he go first.  The conductor directs the man onto the wheelchair lift, which is something like walking the plank.  The thing projects straight out from the train, hanging in space like a diving board.  None of which the blind man can see as the thing rolls forward and lowers him to the platform.  The lift returns, and I do the same.  The man has unfolded his stick and has a question for the conductor about the location of the San Francisco city tram.  Maybe I can help, I say to the conductor.

I enjoy leading Damien -- we exchange names within seconds -- to the Muni tram stop.  Along the way, I plunk his coins in the fare machine, hand him a ticket and observe his dog.  The shiny coat, perky canine disposition, unfaltering guidance through the station, negotiating doorways, aiming dead center for the street crossing markings.  The least we can do is help each other.  Damien's dad lives in Palo Alto.  We make small talk.  I get off and wish him all the best.

We are all in this together, I am thinking.  Not only do I have home help popping out of nowhere, but I've got major wheelchair backup.  I was just about to shell out a sobering $5000 for an electric folding wheelchair, seemingly the only solution to traveling in Britain without a costly lift-equipped van.  Forget it, said my wheelchair repair guy.  I'll sell you this folding one for $650.  Sold.  The receptionist in my dentist's office, my principal destination in San Francisco, knew about Marlou's death from reading my blog.  The university English professors whom I met an hour later for lunch had attended her funeral.  Now we were eating sushi.  Now enjoying coffee in the sun.  Now saying goodbye as I hail a bus.  

The bus driver stops, eyes my wheelchair and begins motioning for the waiting passengers to back off.  She is a large black woman and commands attention as she oversees the sliding and dropping of a wheelchair ramp.  I consider the thing.  It seems awfully steep.  I can imagine myself tipping backwards.  But that's how things are these days.  I imagine everything is tipping backwards, and there is nothing to do but face reality, zip ahead and into the bus.  I start up the ramp and do have this odd sensation.  Actually, it is more than a sensation but an accurate perception.  The wheelchair is falling backwards, for the angle is too steep.  Worse, I have started up the thing at an angle, so that I am not tipping straight backwards, but off to one side.  That is to say, I will fall directly off the ramp and onto the street.

Whoa.  A queuing passenger grabs one of the handles of my wheelchair and tilts me forward.  I continue into the bus.  The driver looks stricken.  She clutches her hand to her chest and all but sobs.  Her response could not be more heartfelt for her own child.  In this instant, I gape a bit myself.  It is as though an actor in a Broadway show has dropped his character and walked downstage to check on the health of an audience member.  I reassure the driver that I am okay.  No, she says, this is not okay.  This is not okay at all.  On the short drive to the Mission Street subway station she even phones headquarters and reports on the near tipping backwards of the guy in the wheelchair.  I am in good hands.

Rolling into my home alone at night sobers me.  Any number of things could go wrong here on my own.  Eventually, they will.  Life and its perils are unavoidable.  Death stalks us all.  The only question is what stance to take.  It seems to me that I live my life with a reasonable level of caution.  And a reasonable level of fear.  And there is nothing to do but keep on rolling.