Hobby Lobby was a nightmare. I had never been inside one, so I wasn’t prepared for the aisles stretching endlessly in every direction, teeming with Christmas items. There was nothing for Halloween, even though it was still a week away, but a small corner of the store was dedicated to fall items, so I grabbed a bunch of fake leaves and a roll of ribbon decorated with pumpkins and rolled the hell out of there on my knee scooter.
The following day my brother and I drove to Ithaca, where my sister was getting married. We would be up there all weekend, staying in a faux French hotel. Blue Mountain –yellow and orange with foliage- loomed above us like a wave, and we dove right into it to emerge on the other end of the tunnel in slate country.
As soon as I rolled into the hotel, we were thrown into the social maelstrom. The lobby was full of arriving guests, some of them relatives I hadn’t seen in years. By the end of the night I was exhausted from trying to hide my social anxiety behind a mask of friendliness and humor. I felt self-conscious about the scooter, and in the crowded room I kept bumping into people. When everyone started dispersing to their rooms I did the same. I took out my autumnal decorations and, like the Peanuts gang resuscitating Charlie Brown’s pathetic tree, I transformed my rickety mobility device into a stylish transport designed to make every bridesmaid blush and every groomsman question his manhood.
The makeover did what I had hoped and made me feel slightly less self-conscious about my being disabled. I maneuvered through the wedding with only a single sleepless night of crushing loneliness. People commented on my stylish ride, whom I christened Harvest Lightning. She was especially admired at night, when I switched on her lights. I accepted the compliments with modesty and grace but secretly I loved the attention.
I stayed at my mother’s another week after the wedding. We took day trips to the Reading Public Museum and the Barnes Foundation, two institutions that could hardly be more different from one another. Having to use a scooter –decked out or not- made it difficult to pay full attention to the exhibits. I constantly had to make sure I didn’t bump into any masterpieces or hit a crack or bump and go flying. Still, I was grateful that being physically disadvantaged didn’t prevent me from taking in the Renoirs and shrunken heads, that I was still able to enjoy a cheese steak at Pat’s.
Before I’d embarked on my trip, I had called the airline to request wheelchair assistance. At the Portland airport, everyone had been astoundingly helpful. A chatty young woman who was going back to school for computer tech even though her boyfriend, whom she lived with in Kelso, had his doubts about her ability, though what did he know since he worked in a warehouse for Amazon, had wheeled me across the bafflingly beloved teal carpeting past the check-in lines, where a TSA in training had awkwardly felt up every part of my body while I remained sitting in the chair. Every step of the way, everyone was courteous and helpful.
Flying back was a little trickier. Newark is nobody’s favorite airport, but it’s the only one in the area that has direct flights to Portland, so I wind up being there a lot. The place was more chaotic than usual as they were undergoing massive remodeling. I eventually made my way to the assistance desk, where a woman told me I needed to get my boarding pass and check my bag first. I tagged both my items but the man at the bag check told me I needed to leave my scooter at a spot across the enormous room. I told him I couldn’t walk without it and he immediately got flustered. He walked me back to the wheelchair desk, where the woman had abandoned her post to go to the restroom. The bag check man told me to sit in a chair and he took my scooter away. That morning, I had removed all the decorations, assuming they’d think the string of lights was a detonator or something. Stripped of her foliage, Harvest Lightning was reduced to a black skeleton.
I sat there for a while, repeatedly glancing at my watch, before the woman returned to the desk and told a young man to wheel me to the terminal. He immediately informed her that they had double booked him. Eventually another young man was assigned to push me. We got through security fairly smoothly before having to go downstairs and outside to take a shuttle to the proper terminal. He had me get out of the wheelchair and said someone would be by to take me down the bridge onto the plane. He took the chair with him. The plane started to board and no one showed up to help me. I kept trying to get the attention of the two ticket takers, but they were both distracted by an issue with one man’s ticket not scanning. Eventually I just got up and hobbled down the bridge by myself.
We sat there for a half hour while they sorted out some issue dealing with “an issue with excess baggage weight,” according to the captain. Then we sat on the runway another half hour waiting for other planes to take off. I was irritated and stressed out, but along with the wheelchair assistance, they had upgraded me to a seat with extra legroom, so I eventually managed to relax. Adding to my comfort was a vacant seat between me and my neighbor, a lovely but slovenly college student. She kept spilling seltzer on the empty seat and I kept helping sop it up. The flight attendant kept saying she liked my drawing. She looked like she was about 12.
As I hobbled off the plane there were three attendants lined up with wheelchairs. Two of them were young but the third was very old and obese. This last one held up an electronic pad and asked me, “Are you George?” I said no, and went to talk to one of the other attendants. “Sit right here,” the old man said. I again told him I wasn’t George but he insisted, so I sat down, and with some difficulty he wheeled me up the ramp into the airport.
He talked the entire time, telling me he had come out of retirement to work here, despite the fact that he had plantar fasciitis as well as neuropathy in both feet. I instantly felt guilty but he was good-natured about his pain. We sat where we could see both the luggage carousel and the door where the larger items come out.
My duffel bag arrived first and the old man struggled to pull it off the carousel. Just the week before, an off-duty pilot sitting in the cockpit had attempted to crash a plane. The plane had made an emergency landing right here in Portland. “I saw them when they took him out and cuffed him,” the old man said. We both agreed it was a horrifying story. By this time the carousel was empty and the old man went to talk to the attendant. “That’s all of it,” he said. I asked about my scooter and he once again talked to the attendant, then wheeled me over to lost and found, which was a very narrow little room stuffed with bags. A weary woman took my information and filed a report. She told me it should arrive the next morning. I sat there trying not to scream
The old man wheeled me out to the curb, where I called my friend who was picking me up.
I spent the next day calling and texting the airline but got nothing but automated messages telling me they were still searching for my baggage. United Airlines had experienced record profits this year. Its CEO took home ten million dollars.
I had an appointment with a new therapist that afternoon, so I took my crutches and slowly made my way across town. The therapist was nice and I enjoyed babbling on to her about myself but the appointment was barely 40 minutes and she said she couldn’t see me again for another six weeks.
I made my way home and after hours of texting was told that my scooter would be on the nine o’clock flight. At ten someone called me saying it would be delivered to my apartment by eleven. By midnight I gave up and started drifting off to sleep, when I got a text saying there were only two deliveries before mine and that a man named Edwin should be there by one. At one I got a text from Edwin saying he would be there at 1:30. At 1:30 he texted again to say he would be there in fifteen minutes. At this point I could barely keep my eyes open, and to keep from missing him, I hobbled down and leaned against the front of my building with my crutches to wait. At 1:45 a car came tearing up the road, screeched to a halt, and a man jumped out.
“You waiting for a mobility thing?” he yelled. I said yes and asked if he was Edwin. Without answering he pulled my scooter from the trunk, set it on the curb, and sped off.
I had another doctor appointment the next day, and when I got home from it I unpacked the leaves and ribbons and lights and that night Harvest Lightning sped through the rain, flying through the dark until she hit a crack in the sidewalk and nearly pitched over and after that I slowed the fuck down.
