| OCR Text |
Show 12 at but now with the very real fear of losing my seating during this wild ride and I look to the hard floor racing beneath me to imagine my landing there. But now my fear is reducing into the pelting joy of the roller-coaster ride or the decent of the Ferris wheel and I abandon all thoughts of prying questions and eyebrows gathered together over me in pity and sink instead into the solid and reassuring fact that / am. Never mind how I stand or how I sit. I am. I am for my family, I am for God, I am for my neighbors and for my friends. I am for my own self and no one can change any of this but me. The pedal-point bass self in the abstracting fugue of my life remains solid and very grounded in spite of this dwindling body. I am. That is the truth of this day. Karen is slowing as we near the end of the long hall and we turn the comer into the next one at a casual stroll. I am breathing heavily as though I had been doing the running and the pushing and Karen is pointing out something in a store window as if nothing at all unusual had just transpired. "Would you like something to drink?" she is asking as we approach a juice stand. We are simply two friends out for an afternoon at the mall. I grasp the grey rims of the wheels of my classic black wheelchair and push myself away from Karen and up to the counter, raising my voice above its height to place my order. "I'll have a peach smoothie," I say firmly. It sounds good enough to me. |
