In Transit

I am sitting in the San Francisco sun with Daniel, the cool rabbi from Jewish Family Services, and in his remarkable and refreshing way, neither of us has said a word about dead wives or grief or Kaddish.  In fact, we are talking about Dublin.  I have never been there, but he has, and the annual Bloomsday celebration sounds like something to see.  From Bloomsbury to Bloomsday can't be that far.  And better Bloomsday then doomsday, these bubbly puns wafting through my brain, doubtless spurred by the cappuccino at Caffe Centro, which is located somewhere between Portofino, Los Mochis and Islington.  Laughter erupts from kids playing in South Park.  And I tell Daniel, apropos of nothing, that I realize how much of my optimism came from Marlou.  Daniel does not miss a rabbinical beat.  Perhaps she has handed that task to you, he says.  

Meaning, optimism's close ally, now comes bubbling up like water from a troubled drain.  It is uninvited, unwelcome and fortunately, unending, just like tears, a fresh batch of which also erupt.  Optimism, or the worthwhileness of existing, seems to be a byproduct of pain and vulnerability.  It is hard right now for me to put this all together.  Fortunately, Daniel doesn't seem to mind, appears born to the task, easily quoting from Judaica on the general worth and honor of heartbreak.  He is at least 25 years my junior, and could probably build a convincing case for transcendent meaning in Caffe Centro's soup of the day.  In fact, after a few conversational leaps, we are now discussing in all sanity the possibility that, before boarding the Queen Mary, I might just spend my Saturday in Manhattan wheelchairing about Midtown in search of a Yizkor service.  There are only four of these mourning rituals a year, he quietly explains.  He seems the antithesis of a salesman, yet I am sold...at least in this moment.

When it's time to bid Daniel goodbye, I drift toward the Muni.  Aboard the buses and trams, there is no aloneness.  The whole thing is one big urban effort telling us, like it or not, that we are in this together.  One statistic claims that each day almost 700,000 people ride the buses and streetcars of the Muni, a.k.a., San Francisco Municipal Railway, and, yes, this includes the cable cars.  Since the population of San Francisco amounts to 700,000, the number seems ludicrous.  But maybe not when one considers all the suburban commuters who blow in and out of town each rush hour.  In any case, San Francisco is an American oddity, a public transport town.  

Just watch the buses empty in front of the Opera House, passengers turning into audience as though by magic.  And watch me do something similar, wheelchair lift lowering at Van Ness Avenue and Grove Streets, just across from the box office.  Inside the Opera's echoing, empty foyer, I fumble with my season tickets.  It's all popular summer stuff, and I regret being away for Tosca, but what the hell.  I'm consolidating tickets into a July La Traviata.  There is a gap, Marlou's absence, but I have friends, and someone will occupy the seat.  It won't be the same, and that fact echoes around the marble floors, but fuck it.  What would Violetta do?  Stay home and swoon?  Or get out for the evening and swoon before 3000 people while hitting a series of arpeggios and deciding if the guy in the second row is wearing a toupee?  The man in the box office is most helpful, except that he can't do anything about Porgy and Bess, long sold out, with people queuing halfway to Oregon.  The Gershwins' piece has been rarely, perhaps never, performed by the local opera.  So what?  I plan to be in the Outer Hebrides about that time.

Things transit begin to fall apart.  They always do.  First, the 47 bus vaporizes.  I keep looking up the street at nothing but tourist coaches.  When it finally descends to earth orbit, the 47 is packed.  The bus driver verbally prods passengers out of my way, making a spot for me near the front.  Passengers have to lift their feet to avoid my wheels.  In the narrow confines this requires major acrobatics.  The bus' front seats tend to be occupied by those with crutches, walkers and attitudes, and such people are not terribly happy to see a 175 pound wheelchair bearing down upon them.  They lift their orthopedic aids out of the way and attempt the same with their feet, but few have sufficient joint flexibility.  I try to bump them as little as possible.  

What people in the front of the bus perceive as peril to their extremities, those in the back of the bus only know as delay.  I feel pressure not to crunch anyone's metatarsals and not detain the bus.  The driver isn't going anywhere until my wheelchair gets turned around.  I have to spin 180° to park in the disabled slot.  Doing this, and doing it quickly, requires belief in the survival instincts of the passengers around me.  It is a relief to arrive at the train station on a virtually empty bus.

Because things transit are falling apart, there is more trouble.  Two wheelchairs have already boarded the 12:37 Caltrain southbound, so I have to wait for the slow 1:07 which stops everywhere it can.  I decide not to worry about this.  I decide to read my book.  In fact, I decide to get out of my wheelchair, prop my ever-swollen leg against a carpeted wall, and nap.  Everything exhausts me these days.  Even when I sleep well, which is iffy most nights, there is strain in living.

It is very hard to get used to the cushiness of my current circumstances.  Most of my disabled life has been characterized by high physical demands and low physical comfort.  Now I'm doing everything to make things easy.  Seven days a week, it seems, someone arrives in the morning to get my shoes and socks on.  People make dinner and help me eat it.  Others drop it off.  I could, without much effort, never leave the house for a wide range of services.  Massage.  Car repair.  Piercing or the occasional tattoo.  I have enough available television to keep me occupied for the next century.  I watch about an hour a week.  Still, it's there.  Just as the people are there.  And since everything else is so mysteriously hard, I am learning to make the most of the inexplicably soft.  So, the 1:07 jerks into southbound action, and I alternately read and sleep.  The suburbs appear, one after the next.  And if I have trouble getting out of my seat and back into the wheelchair, help will appear too.  It doesn't always, of course.  But it's there often enough to make me reasonably optimistic.