I have had the privilege of traveling a lot in the almost 20 years since I started using a wheelchair due to multiple sclerosis. It’s always fraught but well worth it. Importantly, my husband, who knows all my needs, has always been my companion.
But this time, I would be accompanied by my friend of over six decades with whom I hadn’t traveled since our wild time in Negril, Jamaica, in 1977, when we were both able-bodied and spent our days swimming, sailing, and touring the green hills of that beautiful island on the backs of motorcycles with young men we met there.
All these years later, could this relationship between a lawyer and an artist who have always wielded equal amounts of power transition into one in which she was my caretaker when I needed her to be? And would we still have a terrific time together?
Although I knew there would be tons of laughter and deep conversation, I worried in the months before the trip. I often woke up at 3 a.m. fretting about her having to take on all the work that being with me inevitably entailed.
How would Beth manage to lug all our gear through security while I underwent a pat-down search, and hoist our luggage into overhead bins while I transferred into the airline’s aisle chair to get on the plane? How would she maneuver my wheelchair through the dilapidated, serpentine, steep and step-filled streets of Athens, the Peloponnese coast, and the island of Santorini, where we planned to visit?
Ah, but there was much I didn’t foresee during those months of early morning angst.
Beth schlepped our gear with a smile while the airport staff helped us through the security line and onto the plane. The group we traveled with, put together by a fabulous organization called Wheel the World, consisted of three pairs including Beth and me, each with one mobility-impaired partner, plus our tour guide and driver. Traveling together from Athens and along the coast with stunning Greek music as our soundtrack, we stopped at ancient sites along the way. And our group did it all with great love for one another.
On the day we visited the Acropolis, high above Athens — and only on that day — the elevator to the top was miraculously working. Why? Because the minister of culture was visiting so they somehow got it to go.
When Beth pushed me around the Plaka, a crowded, cobblestoned neighborhood and shopping area in Athens, my wheelchair came to a screeching halt when its seat belt got stuck in the wheels. Immediately, a man stopped his motorcycle — not to lambast us for obstructing traffic but to help get my wheels unstuck.
On our last day, on Santorini, we wanted to walk into Fira, the town near our hotel. The concierge discouraged us, saying the town was inaccessible as it was filled with steep climbs and steps. We went anyway. Whenever we came to a step, bold Beth shouted to everyone within earshot: “OK, who wants to help lift my friend?” Two or three gentlemen would quickly appear to assist.
Greece doesn’t have the laws or accessible infrastructure other places have, but its people were so welcoming. Maybe — hopefully — its laws and infrastructure will catch up to its citizens someday.
As for us, conquering the obstacles we constantly faced only filled us with laughter, like everything did when we were kids and has through the decades since.
Carol Steinberg is a writer, attorney, and disability activist. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. TELL YOUR STORY. Email your 650-word unpublished essay on a relationship to connections@globe.com. Please note: We do not respond to submissions we won’t pursue.
