Right

If M. Swann had his way, then I get to have mine, and it leads from Peet's Coffee and straight up the street, the actual pavement, that is, to my home.  Live Oak Ave., named for the fact that it is singularly dead, cars rolling by at the rate of one approximately every five minutes, and is virtually devoid of oaks.  And after 17 years, it is my way, M. Bendiques' way, and if the route hasn't carved out its place in literary history, my wheelchair tires have.  

What tree blooms white in the spring?  Pears?  Almonds?  Rudimentary Menlo Park botany seems to have eluded me.  Never mind, for the tree has not.  Its white petals fly proud.  And like any grand boulevard, the passing scene is best viewed from the street.  Which is why I am doing this bold thing with my wheelchair, rolling straight up the pavement as though I owned the street.  Traffic be damned.  Throwing caution to the vehicular winds.  It's been a year since my wife's death, almost, and while my emotional state varies, things are trending upward.

"I need to get up the driveway."  I like the way I have said this to a gardener whose parked pickup blocks my progress.  Blunt, utterly American, and appropriate to the circumstance.  The gardener's mission, blowing leaves about one of the neighboring apartment blocks, is hardly critical.  Nothing about his work requires blocking my route, the way of M. Bendiques.

"There's the driveway," he says.  I have anticipated this, do not flinch, and point with my available hand.  There is a place at the bottom of the ramp from sidewalk to street where the concrete drops a sheer inch or so, a vertical wall, imperceptible to anyone driving a car, but probably noticeable to a bicyclist and unmistakable to anyone driving a wheelchair.  

This one-inch lip does surrender its pout.  It gives way and gently droops from sidewalk to asphalt, in one spot.  That's the place where Joe, the landlord in the front four-plex, poured a helpful bit of concrete, creating a mini ramp for my use.  An observant guy, Joe.  He had watched me kicking my wheelchair into high gear, ramming my way up the inch-high barrier and bouncing, often with a bag from Trader Joe's, toward my home.  Historically, this Joe has played a key role in my Menlo Park life.  Crutching about the neighborhood 17 years ago looking for a post-divorce apartment, I encountered Joe watering the lawn, we chatted and he directed me to Tom, who has been renting me one or two apartments, month-to-month, ever since.  I do not own the apartments, but as we say in California, I own my space.

The gardener backs his pickup truck down Roble Ave. to make way for my wheels.  Joe having made the way for my wheels years before.  Life is difficult, but it is more difficult trying to do everything alone.  I get by with a little help from my friends.  I help myself to what is mine.  Neither experience comes easily or naturally to me.  But both indicate a certain vitality.  Marlou has been dead for almost a year, and I am coming alive.  Blooming like the trees, whatever they are.  Obsessed with garden pests, whatever they are.

And I have researched the latter thoroughly.  Little eggs have cropped up under the lettuce leaves.  Something has chomped down viciously on the red cabbage.  But the culprits are shadowy and elusive.  They defy capture or even identification.  Mentally, I have erected a sort of guard tower over my two raised beds, spotlights sweeping back and forth, machine guns ready.  But nothing moves, only cowers, perhaps burrows.  And in time the patrols must stop, the sentries must go home, the fortifications come down.  I'm considering the dismantlement of the anti-squirrel netting.  

In short, the day offers an essential question: who gets to live and who gets to die?  One must be clear on this point.  No question where the squirrels, aphids, snails and cutworms fall in terms of agricultural right to life.  But what about me?  The answer lies way beyond biology.  In fact, the answer lies at Trader Joe's, right by the cut fruit department -- yes, there is one.  I had rolled up behind a tall store employee, a guy jabbering away in a southern accent about bread and how he stacks it while some hapless shopper listened.  He turned around, revealed himself to be Chinese, this being America, or at least Greater San Francisco, and I asked him to grab some apple slices off a high shelf.  I thanked him.  Not a problem, he said.  Yes, I wanted to say, it is not a problem.  For you.  Or for me.  Feeling good as I was.  Full of life.  The right to a life.