Sixties Chick

“It’s me, the Jew bearing gifts,” I announce with bravado as I let myself into the house after a few perfunctory knocks. I hold up the bag of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies as soon as I see him across the room. “Look what I’ve got for you!” I say, and go to give him a big kiss on the cheek.

He can’t extend his hand to take the cookies, so I put the bag on the kitchen table, the nearest surface, but still beyond his reach. “So how are you, handsome?” I ask this good-looking 30-year-old man in a tone as light as I can make it.

He is semi-reclined in a wheel chair. It’s an electronic one and seems state-of-the-art, at least to me. It was bought from the money raised from the fundraisers that have been held for him since the night he was shot on a city street for the sixteen dollars in his pocket.  The shot that blew the earring out of his ear and left him a quadriplegic.

The chair moves up and down, backwards and forwards with the slightest pressure of the head, the only part of him he can still move. It allows him to shift his weight off a body that lies motionless 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is a ritual that’s performed every half hour to avoid lesions that could be life-threatening.

He wants to hear about my week, but I’m reluctant; I want to hear about him. He asks again so I scan my short-term memory for anything worth telling. I go over the projects I’m working on: PR materials for a new Bible App—the creation of tech-savvy, Midwestern evangelicals; web content for the launch of an innovation firm with 16 consultants worldwide, each with a different opinion and a strong ego.

And, perhaps the greatest irony of all for one who knows nothing about managing money, an assignment that has me writing about wealth management for a bank on Philadelphia’s Main Line.

I tell him about my dog, the Vet and my plea for doggie Xanex, and about my friend Lorenzo’s brilliant exhibition in Seattle, entitled The Pizza Presidents. Of course, I rant a bit about the latest affront to humanity, which this week I deem to be genetically modified foods. I try to make the stories juicy, funny, as outrageous as I can.  I want to entertain him. I want to make him laugh.

He doesn’t need me to make him laugh. He’s just happy I’m there. What he does need, though, is his nose scratched–something that only dawns on me after I watch him twitch it left and right and up and down for longer than I’d like to admit. Sitting with him like this—his spirits so good—it’s easy to forget that this able kid, who was once my tenant bounding up the stairs to the third floor apartment, is no longer able to brush his teeth, feed himself, write, pick up a phone or scratch his nose.

That’s right. Scratch his nose. And, if you’ve never had the experience of scratching someone’s nose or having someone scratch yours, let me just say; it’s plenty awkward. It’s personal. It’s innate.  It’s one of those things that when done for someone else can never be done adequately.  Is this the spot? Is it too hard? Too soft? Is that better?

The point is—it’s a helluva thing to have to rely on others to do for you.

Since that time, I am vigilant, always on the lookout for that first twitch.  Consumed with the prospect of what it must be like, I can’t help wondering how I would fare. Could I carry on?  Would I have the strength? Could I dredge up some gratitude—the way he has—even just the tiniest bit from that bottomless pool of loss and despair to find my way back to love?

Without trying to, this young man shows me the grace that comes when you live in gratitude. Without his uttering a single word, I hear him affirm, “True, I can’t scratch my nose, but how grateful I am for those who would do it for me.”

For updates on  Kevin Neary: kevinneary.com

For 5-part gallery talk on the Pizza Presidents by Lorenzo Moog: http://vimeo.com/52893283 

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