Never Walked In High Heels

I was brought up with a relatively conservative background for a modern woman. At a young age, we were taught that we were to be careful about relationships we had, particularly amongst those of the opposite sex. We were to prize our bodies and under no circumstances were we to appear unnecessarily scandalous. Later, I revised the last point to add the word “unnecessary” as opposed to simply “scandalous” because after all, sometimes a little bit of scandal was fashionable. Therefore, when I called my mother late last night, I was expecting her to drop the phone on the floor. What I was not expecting was for her to commence laughing so hysterically that it took her a good fifteen minutes of me begging to finally bring her back to some sort of order.

It went like this: Last night my room mate was out of town for a single night and I was home alone. I had instructed a male neighbor of mine who happens to be one of my closest friends here to come over and plug in my electric chair at the end of the evening since I am unable to manipulate the cord by myself. He agreed that he would come by shortly after midnight and I left a key for him to get in. At approximately eleven o’clock, I decided that there is no point in waiting up for someone who is perfectly capable of plugging in an electric wheelchair on their own. So I began to get ready for bed. Shortly thereafter, I was attempting to undress myself and managed to get caught in my own white knit shirt.

Under normal situations, this never would have been a problem. Of course if my room mate were in town she would be helping me with my nightly duties. However, when I awoke that morning and carefully picked out my outfit for the day it came to me that I would be spending the evening alone and thus wanted my garments according to what I could get on and off with my own volition, or so I thought. By the time eleven thirty had rolled around, it was clear to me that because I was so warm from attempting in vain to remove my shirt, that I would never be able to get it off in such a state of panic which I had inevitably worked myself into.

In one last try, I attempted to pull the bottom of the shirt up over my head. This too was unsuccessful, and I had managed to loop the shirt around the back of my neck with my arms still completely in the sleeves. I had now reached a desperate measure and at eleven thirty-five, stuck in a shirt, late at night, I began to call all the female neighbors I could think of.

By the time I attempted to reach the sixth woman on my list, I heard my door unlocking and at that realized that my worst nightmare had indeed come true. I made my way downstairs tangled up in my white collared shirt.

Despite my embarrassment, my friend was more than happy to rescue me from my clothing malfunction. Finally reporting that he actually enjoyed “Rescuing damsels in such deep and disturbing distress.” At which point I raised my hand, forever clenched in that stereotypical quadriplegic fist, and I said “Guess which finger I would like to show you.”

On the one hand it was without a doubt one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. That having been said, there is something that, despite my conservative upbringing and my vain attempts to follow Jesus, I have managed to avoid, a much needed lesson which I needed to learn long before now.

Your best friends are the ones which you will doubtlessly be willing to break all the rules, even the rules of propriety for. Fortunately for me, my neighbor is one of those people who I will not only allow to see me vulnerable, but also see me completely humiliated, sweaty, frustrated, entangled in a shirt which is usually a simple on/off. Despite my embarrassment and the fact that I was on the verge of tears, he looked at me dead in the eye and said, “It’s no big deal. I have helped loads of girls take their shirts off before.”

Thank God for that.

Recently I’ve taken up baking every Saturday morning with my neighbors. They file in with their dishes and types of specialty tea, one of them bringing eggs, another flour, sugar, recipe book. We catch up on the news of the week as we mix and enjoy one another’s company. I am always slightly ashamed when I bring up my “baking club” to people. I’m even more ashamed when I think of the stereotypes of the craft. I do love this time when we bake together. To me it brings up images of 1950s housewives and the pastel icing that is so perfect it screams never to be eaten. I worry now that I appear like one of those domesticated goddesses who seem to know everything about the kitchen and nothing about the real world. I worry that people think that I take my shoes off when I enter my own house.

But in actuality I’m not baking in order to become this feminine ideal or even make beautiful cakes which everyone will love. I don’t bake to become the heroine of the kitchen. I bake because I am learning so much from the experience.

I bake so I can enjoy my neighbors. It’s actually becoming the equivalent of the Saturday morning cartoon watching ritual when I was a kid. The ladies pile in full of ideas and laughter and I am reminded how much I miss them throughout the busy week. We are forced to watch each other and give opinions about the meringue or marriage. Most of the women are older than I, and so hearing them speak and listening to their responses regarding issues that I am currently struggling with is a good comfort. With our Saturday morning ritual comes a dedicated time when we all come together and escape the busy world to get to know each other and what we need in our lives, better. Today in London I don’t know many other opportunities to do exactly that.

I bake because it forces me to make the best of a situation where there is no script. Inevitably something will go wrong; we run out of flour or someone puts in too much milk, the egg yolk won’t separate and it’s our last egg. All of a sudden five women have to put their heads together and figure out what can be done in an effort to counteract impending culinary doom. For once in life the problems are small and we are able to laugh about them. The cake may not rise, despite our best efforts, but we are able to fail in that limited way. While the cake may not look the way it did in the photograph, it still tastes good. Problem solving skills therefore become like a clever game rather than seeming like a rendition of a modern day Sisyphus.

I bake because it truly opens up a world of skills that I was never exposed to growing up. In England, not only do they measure things in grams, but we actually use a balance scale to tell just how many pistachios to put in the macaroons. For the first time in my life I feel exactly what bread dough needs to feel like before it is placed into an oven. In the past, women taught each other these skills in exactly the same way I am learning them now. They would come over and have the community cook a meal; allowing the younger generation to experience all the details required to perfect the meals well before they reached the helm of the kitchen. Most days we choose recipes by Nigella Lawson who is in a matter of speaking, insanely old fashioned; making everyone whip eggs by hand or blanche almonds themselves. But from this crazy insistence on ritual comes clear traditions passed on within the community from woman to young woman so that she is never isolated even when she is stuck in the domestic realm of plainly perfect housewife.

I love Saturday mornings. It’s my favorite part of the week now. Some mornings I can here the laughter from down the road as the women meet up with each other before entering my flat. Ease and perfection isn’t always considered standard, and simple things are really exciting. I will never fit the perfected housewife mode, I don’t want to. I have other dreams and goals for my life so it’s ok when we make lousy mistakes and burn the pavlova. Real people sometimes get to talking so much about life that they forget that the pudding is still in the oven.

When I opened my back door at the sound of his knocking, it was obvious that he came bearing gifts. The presents, sloppily wrapped in brown paper, came as a sort of surprise,  I wasn’t expecting anything from him at all. Instantly the selfish side of my mind takes over.  All I want to know is what he could have brought me? What he could have seen that made him think of me?  So I open the package.  At first I think it’s a joke because it’s a paper cup that has vegetables painted on it with a plastic top. The entire thing weighed no more than a cup of noodles, which I ate back in university. I look at him.

“You bought me a cup of vegetable soup?” He rolls his eyes and tells me to pay better attention. I look again, it’s seeds for a chili plant. The paper cup is full of dirt.

Why even bother to get me anything if you are just going to get me a cup of dirt?  Nothing wrong with the gift, I say, but the fact is I can’t plant seeds. I can barely take care of myself let alone making me responsible for another object, it’s not my idea of a good time. He starts talking excitedly of the chili plants he’s been growing and I am still stuck on receiving a cup of dirt for my birthday.  Doesn’t he know me at all?  Doesn’t he know my limitations of what I can and cannot do? What does he think, after feeding me hundreds of meals, cleaning my flat, fixing broken wheelchairs, and unlocking doors which I didn’t have the physical capability to open, he would know that this present would be more trouble than anything else.

“So are we gonna sit here and keep talking or are we gonna plant these things?” All of a sudden, with massive amounts of dexterity he jumps up and flies over to the kitchen sink, opening the paper cup and the package of seeds, adding water as necessary, and then dumping the seeds out onto the table.

“Your turn”, he says. After a second I look at him blankly. What is he talking about?  What is he doing? He continues to look at me in expectation. “Go on then, I’ll hold the cup, you put the seeds in. They need to be planted about two inches apart….Its not going to spill, I have hold of the cup right here.” I look at him, he has absolutely lost his mind.  Even if I do manage to get these tiny little pepper seeds into a pile of dirt and bury it, the thing is just going to die. I really don’t have the capability of managing any more house plants. When you depend on someone else to get you a drink of water, the plant seemed like a good excuse to start a group called “Planned Planting” to look for alternative homes for the houseplant you’ve been given. The chili seeds are impossible for me to hold on to until I get them on the tip of my finger and I am slowly able to make the seeds stick to my just long enough to be placed on top of the dirt. He poked behind the back of the seeds, pushing them in

“That should do it nicely, I’ll come by in a few days to water and, when it’s time, you and I can repot them. There’s loads of new pots at Tescos. Though, you should get a set now for when they grow bigger. I even have some compost in the back of my boat.”

It wasn’t until he said that that I finally realized what my birthday from him actually was.  All of a sudden I had my very own gardener to help me plant chili plants. He comes back every few days to check up on them and give them water when needed. And, just as I promised, I bought three  pots on sale from Tescos for one pound fifty. This morning when I woke up, I found eight tiny seedlings in a paper cup. Their heads just beginning to raise towards the sun, and immediately I texted him to see if he would come by and have a look. Whenever he comes to give them more water, the value of his birthday present grows exponentially.  He is one of those people who gives up his time freely, making you feel like you are the most important person in the world. And with that comes the astounding ability to give a precious gift that no one else can replicate, regardless of how much money may be thrown or the size of the celebration.

Every morning when I come downstairs, I look at the tiny plants in the paper cup, wondering if they need to be watered for that day. Whenever I start to think that they do, he inevitably comes by with the watering can, ready to make sure that everything in our little paper cup garden is properly cared for. I’ve even started to figure out additional uses for chili’s to see what will come during harvest time. One morning he came in with a new challenge, sunflowers. He wants to see how high he can make one grow inside my two story windows. This time, I didn’t turn my nose up so quickly at his present. I realized that he gave me himself.

I can tell that it is him pushing my wheelchair without looking behind me. The way his black gloved hand grabs the push bar sends a surge of confidence through the entire chair. I can feel it in my spine. And then after that shudder comes a feeling of such relief and relaxation that I sit back in my chair a bit more peacefully. I don’t have to look for every crack in the sidewalk, every possible stick my front wheels could get stuck on. My eyes, my mind, my muscles can all rest for a few moments knowing that he has my back and is thinking for both of us.

We dodge in and out of the commuters at London Bridge Station, a fog of air coming out of out mouths giving the only visible sign of exertion. He tells me that people stare at us all the time. I have never noticed, and he has long stopped caring… or maybe he never did to begin with. Our contrast is almost more shocking than the obvious. Me in my white fur hat, him in a battered bomber style one. His coat tattered and grey, I’ve just gotten mine for Christmas, the bright red making me look like a special holiday doll which is never allowed to be played with. Rarely do people comment on the fact we do not look like we belong together. In our circle of friends it’s assumed we can get by in the most chaotic of situations.

Arriving at the elevator we wait alongside mothers with their young children draped in fleece blankets and tucked inside a multitude of layers. The women avoid eye contact with us. He and I are clearly the odd ones out. But the children, even I can see them look at me with as much curiosity as they’ve ever had. This is when my friend’s imagination gets the better of him. He leans over and whispers in my ear.

“It’s almost like they’re saying ‘wow, she has a really big stroller. Maybe if I play my cards right, I won’t ever have to get out of mine.’”

This is why he and I get along so well.

“Going out with you is like going out with the crazy girl,” my friend says on the other end of the line. “No I’m not. I’ve always considered myself more of the girl-next-door type,” I replied. I can’t help but laugh. I had just rescued my chair from a building in the center of London. While attending a class in the basement, the lift had decided that it would be an opportune time to break, trapping me and my wheelchair downstairs. I am fortunate enough to be able to walk up the stairs, but my 400 pound electric wheelchair had to be left overnight. The next morning I received a phone call saying that the lift would be broken for at least three more weeks as new parts had to be ordered. My wheelchair was still stuck within the basement.

Seeing that I needed it to get around London, I immediately called two of my guy friends who are able between them to get the wheelchair out through a secret passageway (I kid you not!) in the building. Apparently, this passageway, kept behind locked doors, was formerly used as a shooting range for the British militia. So through the super-secret, hidden, locked, forbidden passageway the three of us climbed after my wheelchair was taken up three small steps in order to enter. We even had flashlights in tow to make it more dramatic.

To say that trouble follows me is an understatement. Don’t get me wrong, it’s rarely anything I do. But between the collapsing toilets, the broken elevators, and a plethora of dead batteries at very inconvenient times, I am beginning to be known amongst my guy friends as Calamity Jane, someone who is always a damsel in distress. They answer the phone and immediately wonder what sort of sticky situation I have now gotten myself into. The thing is, it’s nothing to do with me. Really, it isn’t. I live as normal of a life as you can imagine. I go up and down stairs using elevators. I accomplish precisely what any able-bodied person does. And it’s not as if I’m trying to scale the walls of Big Ben or create some other mischief. Believe it or not I’ve come to the conclusion that things of this world are not particularly ready for someone in a wheelchair to conquer.

None of my friends realize until I tell them that we live in a world in which disabled people are not expected to go out much. At work they estimate that as much as 75% of disabled people go out of their homes once a week or less. This is the city in which public transportation can be a nightmare for anyone who doesn’t travel on two feet. Services such as Shop Mobility and Dial-A-Ride which as supposed to help individuals with physical disabilities to get around put a strict limit of using their services 6 times a month per person. For me and my career, I’m lucky if I don’t need to go to 6 different places a day. Such restrictions not only prove the point that disabled people are not mobile, it reinforces it, thus creating a cycle that London has yet to break out of. Unless you’re me, and then you run the risk of being trapped in the basement of a building whose lift has just gone out.

I once had a wheelchair vendor come to my house for a yearly tune-up. He was able to plug a computer into my electric chair and get a reading of exactly how far I had traveled in it within the past year and a half. When he saw the mileage, he dropped his computer. “You ride your wheelchair hard. It wasn’t meant to be used this much.” What does he expect? My life has taken me all over the city and actually all over the world. When I buy a wheelchair I expect it to keep up with my way of living, not the other way around.

I am often told by my friends that people still stare at me when we go out together. This actually is news to me as I usually don’t notice. But the fact that seeing someone out in a wheelchair still is a reason for stares, shocks most of my friends as much as it does the other party in seeing me.

I’m not Calamity Jane. I’ve always actually considered myself a girl-next-door type. But the fact that when my number pops up on the phones of my guy friends, they begin to itch, wondering what adventure will come next. And in this way, maybe my friend is right. I guess every neighborhood has one and I’m it. I am the crazy girl-next-door.

I see it all the time, particularly in older couples, but the truth is, despite what I would like to think, most of my married friends are headed to it too. Couples get to a point where they just miss each other. One person attempts to show love and the other person doesn’t realize it, or it doesn’t come in the form that she is expecting, and so she complains that he doesn’t love her at all. Likewise, she didn’t to anything that he thought ought to be done. And so they miss each other again. Both of them are attempting their best to show the other all the love in the world. And yet there is no (…luck?)

Dr. Gary Chapman writes in his book that there are 5 basic love languages. We have a primary love language, and then a secondary one, a way we show love, and a way we automatically receive love. Briefly they are: physical touch, quality time, acts of service, encouraging words, and the giving of physical gifts. For me, the hardest love language to accept has always been the idea that acts of service communicate a form of love. When you’re disabled and always needing help, it becomes customary to constantly have individuals help you. It’s just what needs to be done and so you assume that every ramp somebody builds with their own hands, or every tire they change, is simply done out of necessity rather than love.

One of my favorite moments in the movie Anne of Green Gables is when Marilla tells Anne, “Anne, you have tricked something out of that imagination of yours that you call romance. Have you forgotten how he gave up the Avonlea school for you so that you could stay here with me? He picked you up every day in his carriage so that you could study your courses together. Don’t toss it away for some ridiculous ideal of romance that doesn’t exist.” I know I have myself been guilty of that exact fault. Missing the love of many people who are directly in front of me who love me because they do not look how I think suitors or adorers should look and act. If he doesn’t hug me, and yet he spends 8 hours on a Saturday trying to fix the electric door opener on my backdoor, should the physical touch be taken as a more suitable or a more devoted act of love than the quality of service?

One need only to open a book or switch on a TV to get a rather absurd ideal of what love ought to look like. He brings you a dozen roses to say I’m sorry but yet refuses to change his ways. She completely blows your mind and yet refuses to respect your parents, insulting them and driving a wedge between you and the two people who love you most. If everybody is different and unique, surely the way they express love is as unique to them as their own voice, or their own way of moving. And if we owe it to everyone to try to understand their background and where they are coming from, perhaps we also owe it to them to try to understand their expressions of love, their natural expressions of love, rather than complaining that they don’t suit our ideal.

Love is actually surprisingly easy to miss and it is simpler to assume it isn’t there when it doesn’t take the form we desire to see. Over and over I hear, “look for ways to love your neighbor.” That’s important and crucial. But are we also looking for ways in which other people show their love for us, even if it’s not necessarily in the form we expect?

This week I’ve been reading about an old friend and her family history. In recent months this author has become a substitute grandmother, filling me in with all sorts of wisdom, platitudes, and calming truths that I was never given. She tells in her books about her own family, how her great grandmother was the daughter of the ambassador to Spain, and grew up in the Spanish courts. How her parents were reporters, following news stories wherever they could in the days of WWI. They were citizens, soldiers, and those who enlisted bravely. Women who knew how to use a sword and run a house at the same time.

And then there’s my family. We’re from mid-America, poor, and relatively suburban. Well, not really suburban I suppose, though it seems particularly uneventful to me. I’m pretty sure that a member of the family or two had a run in with the law. We have no heirlooms that I know of. My grandparent’s basement is legendary for holding things but nothing really of any value. And they know that most people when they grow up and become independent adults, they choose to become close to their family. They leave for a while and then return, settling down and starting a family of their own. But doing that was never really in my mind when I embarked on adulthood.

They say that a family is equal to your roots and that having such people in your life will guide you as well as make you grow tall and strong. But, what if the roots you come from don’t run particularly deep? Or you don’t necessarily want to go in the direction that they’re going? What then? To what extent is blood thicker than water? And does this really mean anything? Are you necessarily bound to any family just because your genetic code is similar in some way?

In college, I was the only girl in my dormitory who didn’t come from what could easily be termed as “old money.” Lots of girls had monograms engraved on their tote bags or jackets with family shields pinned on them; their emblems and symbols, histories and romances ran deep. So deep that it was nearly legendary. And then there was me. It wasn’t uncomfortable so much as it was surprising that people even existed who treasured their bloodline so much. All of this (…?), the weight of standing on your ancestor’s shoulders seemed to be the only way to get anywhere in a new southern society.

For those of us who lack an ancient family tree that’s knotted and crooked in some places, although strong and formidable, if we don’t have such roots, do we stand alone? My family can be considered small and when I am away from them in the United Kingdom, holidays can be rough. It is during this time that everyone goes to their family. But, after several years I have learned that a family is made, created almost, rather than genetically passed down. I find myself in the UK with people who are closer to me than cousins and young women who have become my sisters within the past several years. Because like any transplant, we go down, digging our own roots and holding on to whatever we possibly can. Once we’re a little bit stable, we reach out and make our own new family.

“Is it easier if you are disabled from the beginning?” she asks me on the phone. My friend has been sick for months and she recently had to break down to get a handicapped parking badge. Not the red ones which are temporary, but a blue one. This unknown medical condition is going to be hers for quite some time. Maybe even forever.

“No, it isn’t.” At first I can’t explain why having a disability from the day you are born isn’t any easier. It’s a question that a lot of therapists have asked me. Kind of like, do you think it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Do you think it’s better to have walked and then lost the ability rather than to never have the ability in the first place? And yes, I do, actually. Being a child with a physical disability is one of the worst things you can imagine. You don’t play on playgrounds or get to bake cookies like everyone else. You sit and watch and are more or less at the mercy of people deciding to be your friend rather than making your own.

When we are kids, regardless of abilities or not, the fact is, we have no idea what we’re signing up for in life. Even in high school we think, go to college, get married, get a job, everything will run smoothly. What we don’t realize is that human bodies fail. All of them. Fail us, and what we want them to do, eventually. My mother used to say the minute we are born we begin to die (she’s normally a very cheerful woman) and while mentally you realize that’s true, you don’t feel the impact of it until you are much older and your body does begin to break down and fail.

My sophomore year at university, all of us saw my friend’s body simply revolt against her. For days she couldn’t get out of bed and see past three feet in front of her face. She would recover, and then relapse, and then recover and then relapse, each recovery time being shorter and the relapse time being longer. Now she is married and is trying to figure out life as a legally named disabled person.

In the past few years watching her, I have begun to see my other friends, who are as young as I am, have their bodies revolt and receive permanent conditions that they never dreamed of getting at this age. It’s forced me to wonder what will happen twenty-five years down the line when I really watch them age, watch them not be able to climb a set of stairs as quickly as they used to, or even after an accident that leaves them paralyzed. What to tell them when they ask me if it’s easier to be disabled from the beginning? What to say when they need advice and they want to be told that they will be able to rehabilitate themselves and life will be as easy as it once was. For that matter, why do I think I’m wiser and above further ailment simply because I’m disabled to begin with? My condition, if you don’t take care of yourself, means that you will age faster. Arthritis has a higher risk of setting in at a very young age, and there’s little to stop the aging process even if you’re disabled to begin with. Your body will break down even more.

We are at a friend’s wedding, and a week after getting her handicapped placard, my old university friend is feeling well enough to join us for the bridal shower and help us get ready in the bride’s chamber. The day is full of joy and life, everything that a wedding ought to be. She follows me around, helping me open doors when I can’t manage them and the flowers, making sure my dress is on straight, walking with me to the bathroom and constantly holding my hand. She will not let me go. In the bathroom stall I am unable to lock the door and she offers to hold it closed. She is bending down and a thought suddenly occurs to me, “Don’t make yourself pass out with your head below your knees.” She immediately sits on the floor, realizing that this is a distinct possibility for her.

“I guess I wouldn’t be very helpful to you in England anymore.” I hear the small voice on the other side of the bathroom stall and it breaks my heart realizing how much has changed and how much her world has been limited recently. The thing is, I wouldn’t say that she would not be of help to me. Friends, regardless of their physical ability, true friends, are always helpful along the way, in ways that are unique to them and the temporal bodies they occupy.

The dog is nervous because he sees a suitcase on my bed. It’s fully packed and my last remaining hours of visiting my family in Vegas are quickly coming to a close, and I look forward to getting on the big plane that will take me back to London where my work is. Getting ready to board a plane is always a slightly surreal experience. Mom ties my shoes and brushes my hair before pulling it back in a tight braid so it will not be in my way during the flight. Dad comes home from his job at the office to make me lunch and feed it to me as a sort of last meal. These are the rituals I take to board the exact same plane over and over to get to the exact same place at the exact same gate, take the exact same road back to my flat, and even plop down on my bed before undoing the shoes that Mom tied, the hair she braided, and realizing that my last real meal was yesterday with my father. Travelling this route works like a machine. Many cogs put it together to create something that you would never suspect would happen unless you looked at the bigger vehicle.

When most people who I knew from my childhood hear that I currently live and work full time in London, they are in shock. Ex-teachers, therapists, family friends, relatives, immediately begin peppering my mom with questions about how I survive in a foreign country so far away. The fact that we share a common language doesn’t seem to make any difference with regards to me being a foreigner. How does she eat? Who ties her shoes? Who washes her hair? And to tell the truth, this reaction, although on one level understandable, on a certain level is surprising. The more I think about it the more I wonder what they are expecting me to make of my life? It seems too obvious that I’m meant to be in London doing what I’m doing. After all it was their influence from a young age that taught me not to fear the world but embrace it and explore all the corners of the world I could possibly get to.

At first, when I announced that I was headed to England immediately after graduating from university, I was in a way lauded. “Everyone should take a year off and put some maturity under their belt,” they told me. I could still see the fear in their eyes but understood that there was more than this. Several of them did exactly that after their graduation, joining the Peace Corps to live in a remote part of the world and visit a place where they could lend a helping hand. One teacher from high school even encouraged me, saying in an email, “You are entering your wandering years… Don’t let the careerist itching common to our breed start to itch at you. The 20’s are a searching time… Look at this time as the fruit of your ancestors’ hard work. You owe them the best.” Below is a quote from John Adams in a letter to Abigail, as if such a quote was proof of the wandering years he suggested. But, at my age, the gap year between college and real life should have ended several years ago and the fact that I received a degree in London just recently, points to roots that are slowly beginning to grow away from home, raising the eyebrows of so many.

But why is the fact that I’m still in England so shocking? As I mentioned earlier, I was raised around individuals who came to America from foreign places to pursue their own dreams. I am as much the Brazilian woman who taught me to dress myself as I am the fact that I still need magnetic buttons to close my coat. I am made up of the European woman who taught me to speak and suggested to my mother that someday I would not just master English but other languages as well. I am the Hungarian woman who came to our summer camp every year in order to serve children with a disability, and I am also made up of the Canadian atheist who went into the mission fields of Mexico with me not for claiming what I believed but realizing that I should be able to proclaim it myself. These individuals,  as far as they came,  a piece of themselves was given to me as well as making the woman I am today. Part of being who they were was the love of travel and adventure. That’s where my love of the same travel and adventure came from.

I always feel a bit nostalgic as I untie my shoes once I’m back in my flat. I immediately miss whoever tied them last, wanting to keep them tied as a sort of keepsake. But, I know that the person who did so did not raise me to sit still and cling to loved ones in one place. The people who brought me up taught me to explore,  even despite all the potential difficulties that may come of it. I am thankful for the person who tied my shoes last, realizing the irony of not being able to tie one’s own shoes but yet flying halfway around the world. I am in communion with the person who will tie my shoes in London, living life where we are in the present moment, and I wonder who will tie my shoes when I become restless and seek to travel again?

I’m an opinionated woman. I don’t mean to be going for the understatement of the year here or anything, but the fact is I spend a lot of time thinking and even forming my own conclusions. Public transportation is particularly good for this exercise as it allows me to observe, think and refine whenever there is little else to do.

So I was really surprised when during a conversation with a close friend I said, “I actually don’t care” in the middle of the debate. I try to think of everything in my spare time, but when he asked me about a major ethical issue, I just couldn’t be bothered. It wasn’t that I couldn’t come up with an opinion if I thought hard enough—of course I could—I just wasn’t sure that it was worth my effort.

I have a friend who doesn’t know the first thing about politics, several of them actually. Oddly enough, most of them are human aid workers—reviving people who are dying, rescuing people from floods or avalanches, going in where the rest of us barely dare to pray. I don’t consider myself as the same classification as those friends, but it’s interesting. Outside of naming our new President (and possibly our Vice President) they are completely lost in a political conversation. Ask them about some act in Russia, which turn orphans out of orphanages at 15 and they can tell you exactly who passed it, when, and why, as well as subsequent acts which resulted thereof.

I think the reason why they don’t follow politics is that my friends are too busy fixing things that the politicians in armchairs talk about changing as they smoke on cigars and go out to fancy dinners. The human service acts, which my friends undertake are the equivalent of feeding prisoners of war while the rest of us are talking about strategy. We like to believe in America that our vote is actively changing something, but the truth is that it isn’t. It’s like how some people believe that paying taxes is actually charity—there’s nothing charitable about voting. It’s not some humanitarian act. Humanitarian acts don’t come from a government legislator, they come from actively getting up out of your house and encountering the world face to face, which means not being home to watch the cable news shows, and in this way, my friends being clueless about politics isn’t really an issue.

Not everyone can move the middle of Siberia in order to make the world a better place. I realize that of course, and so it is up to those of us who do have time to follow politics and care about it, to ensure that the America my friends come home to when they need a break from saving the world, it is a country they can be proud of & in. This is the place of voting and taxes. It is not however, human aid work.

After this conversation, I put myself to a challenge. If I don’t have an opinion on something, I don’t give one, that’s okay too. My friends and I are passionate people—wanting to see the world change in a huge variety of ways. However, when you care deeply about many things you cannot afford the energy to superficially care about what everyone else thinks of as being important. In my mind some issues are more important than others, and the issues I don’t think are important need to be left to someone who is passionate about those issues because in the end, who knows if there’s anyone else passionate about mine.