Lucky Me, Part Two

I actually still remember my original point.  Amazing.  Short term memory is not my forte' these days.  And did I mention that It's hard for me to remember things from just a few moments ago?  Well, while I was in Manhattan last week, I got a prolonged glimpse of the big world out there.  That's very unusual for me; I tend to be a stay-home, curmudgeon-ly type and when I do venture out, it's usually within the confines of my insular, cloistered community.  I used to travel to the Big Apple every day by subway, but now I see that trip and the city itself not through the jaundiced eyes of a tired commuter but rather through the fresh eyes of a pilgrim.  It's a remarkable place, En Wye Cee!  But I didn't start this ridiculously long, two-part post to sing the praises of Gotham.  No, indeed.  Yea, were I to choose a place to immortalize in this humble blog it might be Paris or Rome or perhaps even London.  Or Bayonne.  I like Bayonne.  There's a dairy Queen on Route 440 that has these incredible milk shakes.  But it is cholov stam, so caveat emptor ("the cows are dying").  Those are all wonderful places, to be sure, but they are not where I went.  I was in Manhattan.  And while there I had time to people-watch.  My epiphany was not one of those sledgehammer-upside-the-head moments; it was much more subtle.  First I noticed a woman who was no older than her mid-fifties.  She was in a wheelchair.  Then there was a guy who couldn't have been more than sixty or sixty one who was using a walker.  Then I saw a young fellow, maybe twenty-eight or thirty, in one of those computerized wheelchairs.  I started thinking back to my days at Silver Lake, when wheelchairs and walkers were my only means of getting around.  Not to mention the oxygen tank or concentrator that I was tethered to 24/7.  That kind of cuts down on your mobility as well.  So my epiphany came sneaking up on me like one of those salty sea breezes that somehow occasionally finds its way up Ocean Parkway or Coney Island Avenue from Emmons Avenue or the Brighton Beach Boardwalk.  After noticing those first few unfortunate souls quite by accident, I started counting.  By the end of the day I had seen thirty-two people either around my age or younger, who were dependent on either a wheelchair, a walker, a cane, or an oxygen tank.  Thirty-two!  Suddenly my little bouts of dyspnea* didn't seem very significant.  Suddenly my slight drop foot seemed inconsequential.  I had almost forgotten those interminably endless days and nights in the ICU, wondering if I was every going home, let alone do any people-watching in New York.  Want to go get some Good Humor in Central Park?  No problem.   Want to take in a movie?  Sure, what tickles your fancy?  Have you been to the Guggenheim?  No, let's go explore it!  Nothing is beyond reach, nothing is undoable.  Amazing.  I stare at the picture I carry in my wallet at all times, the picture Kalman took while I was sedated.  Eyes tightly closed, but somehow the expression is angry nonetheless. Tubes everywhere.  A picture of someone hanging on by a thread.  Then a horn blows and shakes me from my reverie.  Lucky?  Me?  Nah.  The luckiest man on Earth.  Thank you, G-d.  Thank you very much.

*Dyspnea=shortness of breath