Finally. I was not the token wheelchair guy in the room. The scene? A national conference in Atlanta focused on the study of disabilities. The audience? Wonderfully diverse. Riding in one of the elevators after sessions on the first morning, I was joined by four other...
I like to sit on the picnic tables by Double Bluff Beach on Whidbey Island, a place I can’t easily access, and watch Leslie walk with Gus. We tend to leave Seattle at dawn on these ventures and catch the first ferry over. I take books and my ledgers and pens. Leslie...
Inventors. And necessity. Necessity being the mother of invention. That’s what I thought when I received an email from an advertising agency in Boston, one conducting research for a start-up that developed an all-terrain recreational device and was founded by...
I’m buying chicken frames at Uwajimaya, my grocery store of choice in the International District. A fellow shopper at the butcher counter asks, “What do you do with those?” “I use them for chicken stock,” I answer. She looks incredulous....
I’m not so proud of the clunky hospital wheelchair I first rented on a monthly basis until, to my horror, I realized I owned it outright. Leslie had a melt-down when I admitted my mistake. How could I not know? In the middle of our ensuing fight, I remember...
I got blessed during the last Seahawks game, and not because of the outcome. Gus and I ventured out for supplies right before Blue Thunder, our local drumming corps, marched fans into the stadium. They had massed on Occidental and King, resting their instruments...
The surprise package and note came from a friend who had sheltered me at her sanctuary in Hawaii many years ago. It started this way: “This letter has been in process for a very long time.” She expressed appreciation for my observations. She told me that...
Leslie and I now work a block from each other, which is really great, really. Carpooling is good for the environment, right? The couple that commutes together transmutes together, or cahoots together, or something like that. So it’s all good until it’s not...
I asked the vendor at the U-District Farmer’s Market what makes a second sweet potato a second sweet potato. Little things, mostly. Mostly superficial. Every time I purchase seconds, I feel disproportionately proud. In the summer, it’s tomatoes for...
We were at Tinello in Pioneer Square with good friends from the neighborhood yucking it up at a pre-celebration of Leslie’s birthday on a Friday night when Leslie got a call. She doesn’t usually answer the phone, any phone, especially during a good...
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