How to Invite a Disabled Friend Over
The first time my friend Ann invited me over to her house, I had to pretend I was a spy. As I spotted her front door, up a staircase partially without rails, I knew I couldn’t get to it without a little ingenuity.
I took a deep breath and looked around. Were there any sticks I could lean on for balance? I once found a sturdy one at the edge of a yard that I used to climb up a sloping lawn, arriving at an entryway as if I were sticking a flag into a peak. There was the time I took off my cardigan to cover my hand so I could gingerly fling myself from the side of a cactus toward the landing of another address. And in the “great greenery incident of 2007,” I leaned on a line of cascading potted plants to get me down to the street.
