Never Walked In High Heels

              Missy unpacked her book bag in front of me. School hadn’t even been going on for two weeks and there were already crumpled bits of paper at the bottom of her bag, even a permission slip she had forgotten about. It was easy to see why her mom hired me as a temporary math tutor. She then pulled out her math text book, dropped it in front of me, flipped it open to the answer pages in the back, and started copying down the answers. I quickly asked her what she was doing.

              “If I don’t have the answers, how do I know if I’ve done it right?” I can’t help but smile at this honest and yet completely practical answer. Its a question I’ve wondered at often in my own life, now that I’m older. If I don’t know where I am supposed to end up, how am I ever going to get there?

              I want to look in the back of the book all the time. What flat should I move into? Will I be fortunate enough to get married? To whom? How can I make my dreams come true? Will I ever have to bare the pain of being abandoned? The list of questions keep me up at night as I see the worst possible epitaph engraved on my tombstone: Athena Stevens – reached her zenith at eighteen. Died at age ninety nine.

              I would have thought that by my age, all of my insecurities and questions would have disappeared or at least I would know how to answer them as I would an algebra problem. I thought that was the entire point of education, to learn how to solve for Z when all you have is X and Y. Problem is, once you have Z, who’s to say you wouldn’t be better of with Z+1 or Z+3? In truth, a person in real life rarely has all the variables needed to solve the equation by the time a decision is needed. You don’t know how many children you’ll end up with when you buy the three bedroom rather than the four bedroom house. You can’t know Cancer wasn’t included when she said “in sickness and in health.” And there’s never a guarantee that something better won’t come along after we’ve made a commitment… or that it will after we’ve rejected one. You can’t skip steps. All you can do is work with the variables in front of you.

              If I had all the answers from the back of some book, I would set out to complete life rather than live it. I guess I’m hoping that I would be able to save time by making all the right choices the first go round. I can’t figure out why else I’d want to do get to the last page without taking in the whole book. Maybe I see it as running into the supermarket just to buy milk. If I get in and go straight to the back, I will get home faster. Or maybe I see life like homework, if I get all the answers right the first time around, I can go outside and play sooner. Then again, being “done” with life rarely gets equated with a sunny afternoon on a swing set.

              At the end of Our Town Emily cries out, “oh World, you are too beautiful for anyone to ever notice you!” Leave it to Wilder to make us notice what we should’ve known all along. If life was about reaching some finish line as quickly and as flawlessly as possible, why do we dread death? Life is about living in the moment, and doing what that time calls upon you to do. Its about waiting to see the final product, while taking all the steps needed to get there. Because any good Algebra 1 student can tell you, you need to cover all the steps, even the counter intuitive ones, if you ever hope to understand how to do the problem correctly.

“Nobody laughs at God in a hospital  

Nobody laughs at God in a war.

Nobody laughs at God when they loose everything they’ve got

And don’t know what for.

But God can be funny at a cocktail party…”

The first time I heard Spektor’s new song I was struck. Now before we go any further, I’m no music critic. In fact I pride myself on being a musical idiot. But I am, however quite adept at thinking. This is how I was struck by Spektor’s new single the first time through.  

In the chorus she sings about when God can be funny, such as when we are at a cocktail party or ask Him for something specific as we would do to Santa.  But it’s the juxtaposition of this with some of man’s greatest hardships which made me think: now believing in God is quite a luxury.

See, I think most theists will listen to “Laughing With” will hear the idea that ‘God can be funny’ at places that the elites of society dwell. After all, there is the ongoing belief in our world that we, at our best and most developed, have no need for God or at least to believe in him. We’ve somehow evolved or grown up enough that we don’t need to ask anyone for what we want for Christmas.

Spektor’s family emigrated from the USSR in 1989. As she is often cited as being a Jewish-American musician, one can only imagine the internal conflict between the Jewish beliefs of her family while living within a Communist system. This is where the notion of Spektor’s theism comes into play.

For many of us, not believing in a god of some sort is quite the luxury. What it must mean is the complete confidence in one’s self and one’s position in society. I think it means being able to look in the mirror and say, “this is all I ever need.”

As a disabled women, that is a luxury I cannot afford.

Its not that God is funny, but if you can look at just yourself and say ‘I am enough,’ then yes, why shouldn’t it be amusing? Why should you ever have to wait on something that Santa God is going to give you when you can go out and buy it yourself? And if you don’t get it from Santa God, who is supposed to give you everything you need, why cry when you can laugh about it?

On my bad days I believe that there is a God out there simply because I have to. On these days I am with the ones who need justice and need for the world to change. Doors get slammed in my face, bus drivers insult me, I have no idea how I’m going to eat my next meal. I can’t look at myself and say “I am enough. I am free. This is all I need.” There must be something more. I’m not satisfied here.

But for those of us who do not laugh at God, who believe because we have to, we do it so that we can laugh somehow.

Money is a very strange thing. Money when you are a follower of Christ is an even stranger thing. It is too easy to fall into the trap which absolutely states that money is the root of all evil. For too many, every mouthful of food on your spoon is one that is taken out of the stomachs of starving children in some impoverished country. And thus, not having money becomes an opportunity for reverse snobbishness as much as having money does.

If we are to believe that a person’s value in not determined by his bank account, then it should also follow that his morality should not be determined by his poverty. At this point most of my friends say, “Well that’s easy for you to say because you’re considered extremely privileged by the rest of the world’s standards.”

If you can read this, you are extremely privileged too. There, what do we do now?

One of my dearest friends now lives in Russia. Her family has adopted 9 children and there are always rumors of more. My friend lives her life on a shoestring with so much class and honor she’d make Emily Post squirm. Devoting her life to serving others, she uses every bit of her advanced liberal arts education to make ends meet. When we pack for trips together I’m almost embarrassed by the lotions, the extra tires, the tools, the creams I need to pack to have a ‘normal life.’ And I can’t help but wonder when I crossed over into the realm of high maintenance?

And when she came to visit me in the UK for the first time, she came into my flat and said “wow, being here is so restful.” There wasn’t an ounce of judgment in it.

She doesn’t expect me to live like her. And in this lack of expectation she is the richest person I know. She knows first hand how hard living cheaply truly is. And because of this, she knows that I can’t walk everywhere or sew buttons back on my clothes. And while we both have the responsibility to use our resources as wisely as possible, that’s not going to look anything the same for both of us.

No two people are uniform, so why should their budgets be identical? If a family has a kid whose wheelchair can only fit into an Escalade, should they be ashamed to buy one? On what grounds should they apologize for it? For that matter, which one of their peers has to deem it a ‘need’ before it is the moral vehicle to buy? Or is it the government’s role to determine that?

For the moralist out there, it never says ‘money is the root of all evil.’ Maybe to you we seem the incongruous pair. God has given us very different resources to use wisely. There were many times that the Hebrews and the Gentiles both were aided by very wealthy people. These are the types of people who support my friend, who buy her groceries so she can serve without needing an income producing job at Starbucks. Without giving people like that, nobody could afford to take a vow of poverty.

            There’s a picture on my desktop of one of my best friends in college. She is wearing a straw cowboy hat and holds a handmade sign. She is just as I remember her, smiling, with a combination of hope and opportunity in her eyes that just epitomizes the age of 21 for those of us who are blessed. She is full of the vibrancy of life, wanting to change the world for the better and knowing it is hers to change. When the picture was taken, she was getting ready to go to Nicaragua for a service trip. The sign she holds reads “do not fear.”

            A few months after her return, her world started spinning, literally, out of control. It’s something  she still fights close to 4 years later. Some days  she wakes up and her world is toppling over and over. She cannot find the ground and getting out of  bed is a dangerous task. She finds even watching television nauseating and reading a book is out of the question. The few times I’ve seen her post graduation I have been shocked at how skeletal thin she is. I know she gets tired of explaining why she has lost so much weight to those of us who are busy with internships, new jobs, and new lives. Several doctors have tried to diagnose her but so far they’ve all just been baffled by it.

            On her bad days, getting to the toilet can prove to be a combination of agony and terror. On her good days, she can’t plan much further than what the moment gives her. Long term planning is out of the question.

            Sometimes I look at her picture on my computer screen and get frustrated. How could this happen to her of all people? Why would a person wishing to devote her life to service, ready to be a force of good, be struck down by something we can’t even put a name to? I look at her holding that sign “do not fear,” and I think what a crock. This is when the force of irony becomes too much to bear. I change my desktop.

            I always change it back.

            It’s because I need to be reminded by her in particular that to fear is worthless. The constant worry of what terrible pains lurk  in upcoming years does nothing to enhance ourselves today. In fact, it stands to rob us of the times of hope and expectation which makes our struggle worthwhile when we need hope to come out the other side. In college she was fearless not because she didn’t know what horrible things there were to fear. Ignorance is not always bliss. But she was fearless simply because  life was hers  to shape into whatever form she wanted.

            We keep in contact the days she feels up to it. On the days she doesn’t I think of her often in my quiet moments. There are many times that I feel my life overwhelming me and I look at her picture, to try and breathe. Sometimes I find a frustrated email in my inbox from her, asking all the same questions I struggle to understand. She worries that she is preaching to the choir. I remind her its ok, there are moments where only the choir understands it. More often than not, life is overwhelming. During those times, all we can do is look around, see the situation the clearest we can, and do our best not to fear.

Declaring a Miracle

By the time I was eight years old, I was a religious fanatic. I was convinced by the televangelists that if I played my cards right, God was going to heal me. And, of course, with each morning would come the disappointment of not being able to play kick ball, still having to depend on someone for meals, and still being gawked at rather than listened to. On Saturday I turned twenty-five, and now I have good days where I appreciate having shoes for five years which still have never been walked in, or how one can use a stranger’s stare to her advantage.   But there are still nights where I go to bed praying for a miracle. 

This somewhat large concession comes with a massive amount of irony. Nothing will get me to walk out of a church faster than a little old lady saying that she is praying for God to heal me. I think its the idea that our idea of perfection is somehow supreme to God’s which I find infuriating. The only way the world can be perfect is if it fits our own view of perfection, and anything that isn’t how we think it ought to be is a flaw. It’s like saying God isn’t big enough to have perfection in any other way than what is easy for us to swallow.

What constitutes a miracle, as opposed to a coincidence or perseverance?  Biblically speaking, when Jesus healed the paralytic, he first said, “Your sins are forgiven,” and then he healed the guy. Which was the bigger miracle there? The act of healing, the act we more readily concede as ‘a miracle,’ actually only took Jesus laying hands on a man. The first miracle would take God walking among us for thirty-three years and sacrificing himself in blood. After erasing one’s sins, healing the guy would be a piece of cake.

And yet, we actually need to be reminded of the first miracle via Easter or communion. A bit of bread and a bit of wine serve as a mental check to ensure that the act that ransomed us does not slip our minds. Which means, without these reminders, we most likely would forget. So, if I’m likely to forget how I became liberated, how much more likely would I forget that I was disabled in the first place? It would slip my mind entirely, and I would pass carelessly through life - because that’s what I want on some level, an easy, unexamined life. I want a life that lets me credit myself for every day a survive. We all desire that, deep down.

I used to pray for a miracle, and in the process I would miss the ten thousand miracles that were there in front of me. In waiting for a miracle that came in the specific shape that I thought it ought to take, people would open doors at just the right time or someone would come to fill a spot in my life which no one else could fill. And for some, those might be coincidences. They do certainly look that way as we go forward in life. But looking backward… Well, often it seems as if today’s happy accident will actually look much more like providence tomorrow. And really, which is more amazing?: The single miracle that is so life changing that you forget what life was before it happened, or the ten-thousand small miracles which make up one’s life in the first place?  

I used to spend my mornings with a man I called Mordichai. Much like the character he is named after, he was a long-time outcast in his family and would, no doubt, be considered one by my own relations if they had ever bothered to meet him. I would sneak into his room before classes began and try to warm my hands, wounded from a combination of the harsh Chicago cold, and the reality of living in a wheelchair. Looking to him for a combination of wisdom and simple sanity, I would sit at Mordichai’s desk to write, to read, or simply trying to sort through the inner workings of an eighteen year old’s brain.  Each year I grew a year older but it seemed as if he did not. Rather, with each passing year we became closer in age and a learned more of his reality and he learned more of my secrets. 

Becoming a woman alongside Mordichai and his partner provided me with grace and an added level of support to the already strong scaffolding that my parents gave me. They were a couple with whom I would disagree fiercely and still know that I was loved… perhaps loved even more because I had the strength to disagree.  As time went on, our conversations revolved more around big topics, which were out of my grasp when we first met and I was fifteen. Questions of freedom and liberty, morality and common good haunted us some nights as our meeting venue changed from his classroom to the fireplace in his own home. I was now living independently, working part time, and continuing with my education at the university level. 

And as questions became easier to grasp, the answers grew increasingly slippery. Until one day it occurred to us both that our America is not limitless, and the entitled freedoms that we were promised in the Constitution have yet to be delivered in full. My world had to stop at the first unpaved road I came upon so long as any wheelchair could not cross it. And for him and Tom, what was everyone else’s private business was still held in court, waiting for a decision that seemed obvious to me.  

In many ways, I am jealous of the media’s attention to Mordichai’s issues over my own. And who can blame them, the image of an angered drag queen will no doubt get more viewers then a group of paraplegics crawling up the steps of the Capitol building at an abrasively slow rate.  What’s worse is that as a disabled person, my rights are constantly pitted up against other causes, such as the new environmentally-friendly taxi cabs which, in order to save on fuel,  have been made so small that no wheelchair will ever be able to fit inside. It’s an either  / or society. Where Mordichai’s right to have his partner visit him in the hospital gets debated on national television, and in the same week the American with Disabilities Act gets stripped by the Supreme Court and nobody notices. 

“This is why you’re a writer. That’s why you need to always have your pen, and hands that are at the ready” Mordichai’s voice echoes in my ear. To give a voice to a community that it still voiceless sometimes feels like trying to remove barnacles with one’s bare hands. To find my own voice on top of that challenge can prove to be as effective as a screen door on a submarine some days. Sometimes I think we all wish we could finish growing up before the troubles come. 

I went back to visit Mordichai a few weeks ago. He is getting older, even though it’s not always obvious. The winter wind is nowhere near leaving Chicago in April and I can feel a film of salt covering my hands as I come inside. He asks me how I am, and I don’t know where to begin. When did life scatter to a thousand different directions? I start with the most obvious, “My hands hurt from this horrible weather. How do you stand it?”

“I’m not in a wheelchair,” he begins. We all have that one thorn in our side, which we wished to have removed. And yet it painfully stays there to shape our world. 

Without speaking he gets up and leaves, only to return will a bottle of lotion that smells of sandalwood. He puts some on my hands and rubs it in. He starts muttering about how I should be taking better care of myself, about how I only have so many units of energy per day to spend and I should be more selective in the battles I fight. Sometimes having him around is like having a second father. I argue with him, if for no other reason then it’s my role to do so. It doesn’t matter because we’re both convinced we are right. I need my hands so I can go places and be just like everyone else. He stops me there.

My hands, he reminds me, should be used in a way nobody has ever  used them.

On the rare days that I have the balance to walk, I choose to do so barefoot, even if it means that I compromise my stability in the process.  Grant you, those days are exceedingly rare and when they do come, I am like a child again, constantly making discoveries that my peers have forgotten long ago. I was 18 when I first felt the morning dew from the grass on the bottom of my feet. I was walking across a freshly mowed field in the foothills of North Carolina, a friend on each side, when the crystal drops kissed my feet. Each little drop held an entire universe of color and science as it baptized my feet with the fresh water of the new morning haze. 

Two years later, I found myself walking along the southern beaches of the Carolinas, again firmly supported by two more friends. Never before had my feet sank into the sand, been covered by a compound so vast, or felt the entire earth move beneath my feet. I had no sense of the ground I was walking on, what crevasse the sand and splinters would next inhabit my foot, and everything beneath my step was alive. The shells, the critters, everything that the ocean pulled in was full of vibrant life compared to everything I felt on my sole. Walking barefoot connected me to the rest of all that was in existence rather than that same mettle plate that held my feet day in and day out. When I did not walk, what I felt beneath my feet was only the same five inches of steel day after day. 

And so, when I stood to feel the life beneath my feet, the new discoveries were made with two other souls by my side holding me up from the ground. Souls who had felt the life move beneath their feet when they were still stumbling to walk neglected their discoveries now. It was a period of their life which had passed long ago and they had long since forgotten. But now, they were serving me by walking me across such an unknown landscape, not just helping me get my destination, but unknowingly allowing me to explore a new corner of a complex life. To the people walking beside me, it was the place I was trying to get to that was the important service. Any new discoveries I made along the way were side effects.

Often I think when people look at me, they see an opportunity to serve, to have a good deed done for the day. While I do need more help than most, my independence is all the more valuable to me when it comes to the very limited amount of things that I can do.  Many of my friends call it stubborn when I try for 20 minutes to open a can of soda or put on a jacket, but it’s so much more for me than that. Every mundane accomplishment is a declaration that I am here, that my actions are strong and that I am still a force moving and shaping this chaotic place. Reduce me to someone merely to be served and I am worthless except when it comes time for you to feel good about yourself. 

And yet. as an individual of faith, I am bound to appreciate my fellow man and the offering of service he renders. To serve another is to knit me together with my fellow man in an offering to the transcendent truth that is merciful to us all, or so they say from the pulpit. But I, in my frail humanity, am often considered one to be served rather than offer service to another. I sit in the simple wooden pew and even in the silence feel the questions boar inside my skull from the rest of the congregation.  Now I feel connected to all around me only because 10,000 inquisitions bounce around in my head from being trapped inside like a thoughtful superball. Should I? How much pain? How long? What can I do to help? The answer: I’m fine. I got here by myself, didn’t I? 

However, let me challenge you for just a moment in a way that drives the Western world mad: let me serve you. I am not just someone to be served when I need it and when it is convenient to you. I do not only exist at Christmas or when the charity bucket gets hung up for donations outside some Wal-mart chain. Therein lies the true shame of it all… here is the true tragedy of disability, if you will: Are we not all equal? And as equals are we not required to pull our own weight so that not only do you feed me dinner because I need to eat but then, I can hold your head when you’re fighting from going under. My hands still work, my heart is not yet at peace, and my heart yearns to shape this world as much as yours does. I want to shape the ground that my feet walk upon. 

A few weeks ago, we held a foot washing ceremony during the worship service I go to every Thursday night. The service is simple in that Calvinist sort of way that only can come with years of struggling with calloused hands and aching muscles. The feeling and optimism come from hard work and from biting into the impossible while trying to swallow the world whole. The sanctuary is dimly lit by flickering candles reflecting against the whitewashed walls and simple oak pews. Our water basins are not made of glass or silver, just sturdy plastic so that the containers can have a myriad of unexpected uses. The towels we use are old and have seen everything from rainy days and the bottom of muddy boots to hot pans from an oven. The tools are meager, but like so many things in life, the more meager something is, the better it feeds your insides. 

The Christian tradition of foot washing is one of my favorite actions. It’s not a ritual, requirement, or even retribution. It’s just a form of service taken from the ancient days when everything that was in the world (rocky, soft, or just plain disgusting) touched the bottoms of a man’s feet. For me, that’s the tenderest area of body, mainly from years of inexperience.  However, when a host did not wash the feet of his guests, that was a sign not only of dirty floors but of a hard heart, as well. 

I dipped my feet in the warm water and prepared to lift them up by request. I looked at yet another friend who had gotten me up countless mornings, fed me a multitude of meals and caught me from falling both physically and emotionally. Without thinking, I got out of the tub and knelt beside her, every bone of my foot pressing into the wooden floor. I did not worry about splinters or even sores in my feet, I only wanted her to know that she was loved. The warm waters of the bucket felt more soothing on my hands than it did on my feet. Though I felt that every eye in the room was watching me, I did not mind that I was feeling such discomfort. I knew I had not completed the act of washing her feet because I wanted everyone to see what a stellar servant I was; I did not mean to get on the floor for my own comfort, because if it was up to me I would be doing it in a closet. I washed her feet to understand her life, her way of traveling the world, and the places her feet had taken her that mine had not.

Nobody in Sunday school ever teaches us that waiting is such an act of faith. 

When someone says, “Living on faith,” our mind automatically goes to some poor missionary family living in hostile Russia, speaking out illegally, and having Bible studies in their living room with the authorities at their door, ready to barge in at any moment. And while this form of faith is to be applauded, victorious bravery is not the only kind of faith there is.

When Noah built the ark in a region of the desert that had not seen rain for years, that was an act of faith. Going into his workshop every day, molding the wood because God told him to, when everyone else thought he was a madman, was really asking for trouble in a lot of ways. We look at the story of Noah, and we see faith, we see virtue largely in the second part of the story. The man who collected animals in order to save them and lived in his boat for weeks as the flood waters rose and fell. It is, of course, amazing that God singled out this family to survive the destruction of the world as He pulled out His Etch-a-Sketch and decided to start over, but this version  forgets about the years of work preceding the flood and the effort it took to build the ark. 

No doubt he was laughed at, scorned, and even harassed to varying levels of degrees in his own workshop. In many ways, it was the day to day mundane faith it took to believe in the voice of God and build a contraption that few in the region had ever seen, which was more noble than waiting and serving the creatures of God on a boat during the flood. 

It is all too common for us contemporary Christians to dismiss our lives as being too mundane to excitingly serve God. As Francis Bacon wrote, “Large changes are easier than small,” and it seems that we fantasize that God can only be glorified through the exciting service on the mission field rather than within the lives of suburbia. If I was to tell you that God demands the same from both of His servants, many people would take that to mean that everyone should sell their possessions and move to the bush. Then what would happen to suburbia?

God didn’t first ask Noah’s neighbors to build an ark and was declined by those neighbors. Nor did He ask Noah to take such extreme measures regularly throughout his life. Rather, it was the day by day form of living at the meal table in the garden and how Noah interacted with members of his own community that made God point the finger at Noah and say, “This family I love. And this family I shall save.” 

I think we often trick ourselves into thinking less is assumed of us because God made us bankers or doctors or even janitors, but God asks a man who is slow of speech to be the leader of the Israelites out of Egypt. God does not make extraordinary people to serve in extraordinary situations. Rather, we are all ordinary people, handcrafted by God and each deeply and intricately made in detail to be in the exact position we find ourselves in, be it a lawmaker or a janitor, and we specifically are made to serve in those parts. So, so much of that is, of course, waiting patiently for God to show Himself to us. 

Waiting is a limbo. Waiting is probably one of the most annoying parts of the human condition as it means that we once again have to give up control. There’s nothing we can do, no way to change the situation, no way to speed things up or slow things down. It’s not like our math books in school where we can peek at the back and find out the answer. And in that waiting time, we question everything. We all do. It’s human nature. Did we read the signs correctly? Did we miss anything? Will God provide, or are we just deluding ourselves? And every day, of course, that waiting becomes more and more difficult to deal with. It’s supposed to. Giving up control is always supposed to become difficult.

When we wait, we watch God, realizing that our hands are tied, and there’s little else we can do. Sometimes God is visible through our waiting, but more often than not, we find ourselves questioning His existence as much as growing impatient. Every leaf that shudders during this time, we try to fit into our cosmology as one would the bottom of a teacup after emptying its contents. We think our hands are tied, and as I’ve said before, there is little we can do, but, of course, there is much we can do as well. We cannot speed up or slow down what we are waiting for, but this is the time that we must allow God to work and glorify the work that He is doing, even when we doubt its existence.

By the time I had opened my fourth wedding invitation in one week, I was convinced my life was over. I was going to die single, alone, with flowered wallpaper in my flat. I would be at some point in my mid sixties and having a successful career as an actuary. Because I was an actuary, I would be able to calculate the chances of  dying on that particular day and, realizing that  my odds were increased, I would have laid myself out in the wedding dress I bought at 30 and waited for Death. Of course, what I would’ve forgotten to consider would be my nine cats. Who, after going three days without food, would begin to eat my face. 

Why is it we are told to always plan ahead? In our freshman year of high school we were told to start thinking about colleges. At college we were told to on the first day to consider our options for graduate schools. And for my masters, I have to come up with a five year plan for my career, which to me sounds vaguely like Stalinist Russia. And I know whatever I say, be it I want to be married by 35 or I plan to be complete my masters within the standard two years, God will just laugh.

The irony of planning ahead is, of course, when things don’t go according to plan we feel like failures. It’s like the more we know about the path we feel that we have to take, the less confident we are in the direction we are going when we get blown off course. As a disabled person I can’t live alone, but I have no idea who I’m living with after May.

“This is why you need a manslave,” my friend begins. She’s been engaged for just under a year and I’m planning her wedding. I feel like she has her next five years planned out, but then again, she’s calling from Russia.  

“I’ve got my own company. That’s kinda like having a husband and a baby all rolled into one.  I just worry if this deal doesn’t go through and the company folds, I’m going to have to live in a nursing home and play card games all day. Maybe I’d be better off doing that though.”

“You wouldn’t. You can’t even hold the cards.”

Days like this, I’m in freak-out mode at full force. Life seems too long, an endless series of events and unforeseen occurrences that I can’t begin to plan for. Who will be cooking my dinner a year from now? What if I never find an agent? What will I do when my wheelchair dies now that the company has quit making the kind I need? What if I think I find someone, and he leaves me one night with no help? 

I can’t see past the next hour at this point. And I am well on the road to driving myself to the funny farm. So I do the one thing I know how to do. I go to the pub. 

Another friend is there and he asks me how I am. I’m fine, just like everyone else these days. 

“That good huh? Spill it.” He’s known me for over five years, and is therefore one of my oldest friends in the city. Which means he’s earned the right to hear.  Everything.  Even the bit about the cats eating my face.

“…And then I think about I have nothing to worry about so I shouldn’t feel bad. So of course then I feel worse and worry even more that I’m going crazy.”  By the time I’m done my friend has every right to bolt. 

“Well, that’s certainly logical,” he states, looking at me.

“How?” I can’t help but challenge him on this one. 

“Because no one can see that far ahead in any sort of detail. Really Athena, looking ahead further than next month is always overwhelming to those of us who are among the living. It’s just like acting. We stay in the moment because it’s all any of us can do.  It’s got nothing to do with your disability. We can’t hardly take in the now fully. There’s too many variables to try and figure out five years from now.”

Oh. 

On my way back home I make my way down to the docks to wait for the next ferry. It’s cold and I have no idea when the next boat’s coming. Maybe I missed the last one. My mind reels off again. I think about everything I want to do this year. How I want to direct Macbeth and Our Town back to back. The two together would provide an interesting death and rebirth of innocence. After that, I want to call in a new movement teacher for a workshop and perhaps start a new study on neurology and Alexander Technique…

The boat is just visible on the eastern edge of the Thames. Its bow light echoing on the surface of the water, grows stronger with  each passing minute, oblivious to the blackness that it pushes through. It’s beautiful in a way I’ve never noticed before. And I think of what the Stage Manager says of Emily at the end of Our Town when the young woman asks if anyone every really sees the beauty of the world while still alive. And the Stage Manager says “No. The saints and poets, maybe they do some.”

And then I smile at how we’re all are straining away do live life, that we forget that life is never well planned. And it was never meant to be.