Her Wheelchair

One hot day, I was driving through a factory town when I saw a woman in an oncoming lane pushing a wheelchair.  She probably had detoured into the four-lane street because the sidewalk was being repaired. The wheelchair was empty, but she had a walking cast on one foot.  She was hobbling along as traffic swung wide around her.

Squinting in the midday sun, her face seemed to be all nose.  Her hair was an unnatural black ratted into a wasp net which listed to one side as though it were melting from the heat.  Too old and too overweight to wear tight-fitting knit shirts and shorts, nevertheless she was dressed in them.

Was she fighting the indignities of old age with dyed hair and girlish clothes?  Or was she fighting old age with all the dignity she could muster?

It strikes me that many of us have wheelchairs where we sit and wait for someone to push us around.  Some of us though, like this old lady, get behind our chairs and push ourselves in the directions we want to go.

I learned later that this lady and her empty wheelchair had been seen shopping in stores.  Sometimes there was an old-fashioned boom-box in the chair blaring away.  Sometimes she talked to an imaginary somebody sitting there.  A parent?  A spouse?  A child?

I guess pushing a seemingly vacant wheelchair in the middle of traffic is something you can do if you are off balance.