“Why are you trying to humiliate me?” My mother glared at me.

I pulled a wheelchair out from the stack under the stairs and pressed down on the two armrests to open it up. Then I hunted for a cushion. “I’ll go and buy you a decent cushion later,” I said. “These are pretty old and ropey.”

“I don’t need a cushion. I’m perfectly capable of walking on my own two legs.”

“There!” I pushed the cushion onto the seat. “Perfect!”

My mother turned her back on me and, leaning heavily on her walker, shuffled towards the door.

I suspected she wouldn’t get even halfway down the path from the seniors’ apartments to the street. I was shocked at how frail and wobbly she’d become since my last visit to England.

But the park was too far from the seniors’ apartments and to get there you had to pass over a narrow railway bridge where the sidewalk almost disappeared and trucks and cars thundered past at high speed, creating quite a wind. There was no Continue reading →