Bristol

I stumbled off the Queen Mary sleepless, upset and into Bobby space. This is a familiar part of my universe, deriving as it does from the very formative years after my injury in my early 20s. My cousin Bob and I easily get under way, whatever way we're going. This way led to the local train station and on to Bristol where Bob's son and his sister's daughter both attend university. I had slept so badly the anxious last night aboard ship that southern England now passed before my eyes in a sort of dream. I had dinner, I think, with Bob's son and his girlfriend. But I'm not sure. I may have been hallucinating. I was very tired. I was at a point that led, reluctantly, to the prescribed sleeping pills. It only took a half to knock me out and get me into a state of relative rest.

I have to stop eating English breakfasts. I have had enough bangers to last me a lifetime. Still, I managed to knock down four in the course of my one day in Bristol. Actually, five, if one counts breakfast and lunch. Let's blame Alexandra. It was her idea to go to a restaurant that featured sausages. My cousin Caroline's daughter Alexandra has grown into a warm and very endearing young woman who welcomed me the way, well, family does. She drove Bob and I all around her neck of the Bristol woods. Perched on the hilly part of the city, the old neighborhoods of Clifton share something with San Francisco. Everything is different of course, but neighborhoods in both cities enjoy the high ground and keep opening up from narrow streets into wide vistas. We had tea at the edge of the Avon Gorge.

To pull all this off, I left my electric wheelchair in my hotel room. This stimulated the body's memory of the decades ago when I moved about the world with the help of a walking stick and my cousin Bob. In those days, I needed his help less often, but it was always there and available. Today, it's hard to accept my degree of neuromuscular decline. For in the years with Bob, I crunched everywhere in London, up and down stairs in tube stations, up and down stairs to the invariable basement toilets so beloved of Indian restaurants. And now crutching down the hall and a few meters across the hotel lobby to Alexandra's car requires enormous willpower and, to feel safe, Bob's arm.

What softens the blow of physical loss also has to do with feeling safe. In all my years in Britain I never quite got comfortable with being helped. British family and friends helped me constantly, but in those years I dragged around a basic sense of unworthiness. Was I bothering people? How much help could I legitimately demand? Was I demanding? I remember in those years frequently cringing. I was too needy, too lacking in the required stuff of life. Now, I am somehow more comfortable in my own skin. Bob and Alexandra have spent the entire day hauling me about, in and out of cars, up and down steps. And it all feels relatively natural.

In my years with Marlou I seem to have relaxed into myself in a new way. True, the sense of security, or whatever it is, often crumbles. I can be mercilessly impatient with myself. But there's something else. And whatever it is, I can see it in my Bristol afternoon. Bob, Alexandra and I talk. We jump from one subject to the next, the time is broken up into its usual urinary intervals, and in between trips to the loo, I feel the pleasure of old connections. And there is the newness of seeing Alexandra in her own element. And there's the pleasure of being in my own. Britain may not be my only element, but it's certainly one of them.

At day's end, I remember the battery charger, the new one, 220-voltage compatible, that arrived by mercantile magic at my hotel in Bristol. Bob plugs it into the wall. Later, I plug it into my wheelchair, or attempt to. I cannot get the plug to fit. Now, I remember. Of course, I had told the wheelchair guy in Oxford that I was bringing the other wheelchair, the one that folds, the one that is a different make and model. I try to force the plug into the wheelchair's recharging port, but no go. I am stupid. I am incompetent. Everything is fucked. Sitting alone on the bed, I stare at the bleak situation, stranded in Britain with a wheelchair that I cannot recharge. This will require a special trip to Oxford. Someone will have to do this for me. While my batteries run low and life itself peters out.

Finally, I give the plug a twist and a push and it slips in, but barely. A red light illuminates on the charger. Surely red is a bad sign. Red means stop. I stare at the red light seeing more signs of doom. I decide to go to sleep, or attempt to go to sleep. In the morning...well, there will be a morning, probably. There is. There is even a light illuminated on the charger. Overnight, it has changed from red to green.