10/08/2011
Dear Diary
I met a wonderful woman today; attractive, amusing and with
a smile that could melt butter. I helped her home with her grocery shopping.
I do not know exactly why I did so, perhaps because she was
in a wheelchair and seemed to be struggling with the bags on her lap; they
seemed to be so precariously balanced as she drove the wheels. The sweeping
movements of her arms made a hypnotic rhythm all of their very own. It was as
if she could propel herself to an alternate future, a different destiny, one in
which she was not disabled or confined to a wheelchair.
It is always hard, I think, my dear diary, to proffer
assistance in such circumstance; the wheelchair-user does not, in the main, consciously
curry pity. Theirs is a life which brooks no meek sentimentality from us, the
able- bodied, those able to walk. The wheelchair-user does not even, on
occasion, favour the term ‘disabled’; in what way are they any more disabled
than the chronically obese? They, or so they would argue, certainly get around
better on two wheels than the obese do on the two legs that a generous God gave
to them; they are not, at least, perpetually out of breath and constipated. They
do not need or require our social compassion; that inadequate semblance of a
desire to help, as if help were needed.
And yet, something tugged at my heart. Perhaps it was her
beauty, her indecipherable radiance which moved me, although I did not know whence
such a glowing aura might spring. Perhaps it was the flawless olive skin of her
face and her bare arms. Perhaps it was her will, the ineffable desire to
struggle alone. Perhaps it was the inevitable loss of the bags from her lap. I
do not know, diary, but I came upon her and I offered my assistance, scant
though it was or could ever be.
“I will be happy to push you,” I said. “If you would be good
enough to tell me where you are going, I will gladly help. If I push, you can
then hold the bags fast against your chest and this will prevent their falling
as they surely must on your journey home.”
“I have no need of your help,” she replied politely but then
paused as if another thought, contrary to the first, had passed through her
mind. “However, perhaps I do need some help; these bags are awkward to position.
I have bought far more shopping than I intended. I live but a short walk from
here; I will direct you. I thank you for your kindness; the kindness of
strangers.”
We,
I, walked in the summer sunshine; we swopped names and I asked questions. Why
was she in a wheelchair? Did she have a job; how did she cope? At each response,
she looked back, turning her head, searching for my eyes; she reminded me of a Leonardo
or a Raphael drawing I had once seen or perhaps a painting. The way her hair
gently fell in cascades of ebony or, perhaps, it was her eyes, sharply shifted
to the very corners of their sockets as she peered up at me; so difficult for
all but the most accomplished of draughtsmen to achieve. As other images,
Leonardo or Raphael, Michelangelo, DΓΌrer, portraits
of noblewomen, flashed through my mind, images which perversely flattered not
to deceive but to reflect the true beauty of the sitter, I was held captive by her
smile, her laughter, the radiance of her eyes as she told her sorry tale of MS,
multiple sclerosis, and how some days were better than others; a tale of days
when she did not have to use the wheelchair, especially so today. The motorised
chair was being repaired.
After about 15 minutes of slow-paced walking, in a small
cul-de-sac, she indicated a house; a house in which she lived; a house with a
small garden in front filled with dwarf roses, camellias and a large
rhododendron bush; a late Victorian-era house, a house like any other. I trod
the ramp up to the door and paused.
“You have been so very kind,” she said, as she fumbled in
her handbag for her house keys. “Won’t you come in for some tea?”
I was caught on the horns of that eternal dilemma, my dear diary;
does someone genuinely seek your company or are they just being polite? Are
they asking, in the hope that you will decline? Are they expecting that you
have some more pressing business elsewhere so that they do not need to regurgitate,
recycle, the inane niceties of our urban existence? I accepted her offer; tea
would be extremely pleasurable after my minor exertions. And she was beautiful;
tea would be an exquisite pleasure, bathed in that gaze. You could, if you were
human, become truly lost in those eyes and in that smile.
I walked, drove, her across the threshold as she unlocked
the porch door; the propylaeum of her demesne.
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