Margin

​I’m envisioning my time in Argentina two weeks from today and wonder if I’ll be able to manage on my own. I remember my life in Buenos Aires when I was quite younger. Back then, I was able to move around from one place to another either on foot or by bus. Buses were old and creaky, always spewing dark smelly gases. They would stop briefly on every stop and speed up after passengers got on or off. They had no wheelchair lift, and the magnetic devices that had made bus drivers’ job easier were too high for disabled people to reach them. When you met with friends at coffee shops to have a chat (a typical Argentine tradition), you could find bathrooms only up or down the stairs. I would take buses and coffees and never give it a thought. Now, more than twenty years later, I can’t think of anything else. When my publisher asked me if I wanted to have a “live” book party, the first question that came to my mind was, can the center be accessed directly, or are there stairs to reach the entrance? Can you remind me if there’s an elevator to the second floor? And I even overlooked the bathroom for disabled women.
Everything has changed since my injury. I’ve had to shift the angle from which to look at things and the questions I pose. I have to think of myself in a different way. I’m no longer able to do things that used to come naturally to me. I have to wait for somebody to push my wheelchair, as I had to do at the rehab center – until (if) I get strong enough to walk with a walker while keeping my balance and don’t get tired. Until this happens, until I’m strong enough to be able to control my muscles well enough to climb up and down the stairs and go to the “normal” women’s bathroom, I’ll keep standing outside buses, coffee shops, and museums. Like the character in the “Cafetín de Buenos Aires” tango, I’ll see everything from outside the glass window of the local coffee shop.