JOHN WALSH
We needed a wheelchair; otherwise, my mother would miss the show.
My daughter, Juliana, was performing in her last high school theater production, cast as Golde in “Fiddler On The Roof.” Mom, a longtime fan of Broadway musicals, knew the role better than anyone and said, with a grandmother’s certainty, that Julie was perfect for the part.
My mother had been less sure about whether she’d be able to attend. Two weeks earlier, a virus had slowed her down — an unwelcome add-on to the macular degeneration and a chronic lung ailment that she normally dealt with. But when I walked into her Warwick apartment on the Wednesday before Julie’s Saturday matinee, her voice was strong and her spirits high. She was coming to the show.
So we needed a wheelchair. There was no way Mom could make the trek from the parking lot to the auditorium at East Greenwich High School. And forget about any stairs.
My brother Rob mentioned that there was a wheelchair in the coat alcove at St. Luke’s, our church, and when I called the office, the rector said we could borrow it. Julie was thrilled. Not only were her grandparents from Connecticut coming in for the show; now Nonnie would be there, too.
On Saturday, I went to St. Luke’s to get the chair. But when I looked in the coat alcove, it wasn’t there. I looked in another closet. Nothing. I looked in the office, the entrance foyer, the back of the church — no luck. I looked at my phone. “Fiddler” was scheduled to start in less than an hour.
And then an angel appeared. My friend Ken was working with the youth group, making pizzas for a mission trip fundraiser. It turns out he had a wheelchair at home, one his father-in-law had used for years. Ken said he’d be right back with it. Thank God! Thank Ken! He returned with the chair, and I slid it awkwardly into the trunk of my car.
The show was endearing in the way most high school productions are, with seasoned theater kids mixing with first-time performers. And thanks to the wheelchair, Mom was right in the front row to take it all in. When Julie sang Golde’s bittersweet duet with Tevye in the second act — “Do You Love Me?” — my mother fished a tissue out of her bag. I felt my eyes sting, too.
“You were marvelous,” Mom told her youngest grandchild after the show, giving Julie a kiss.
In deference to the cold, late-winter air, the two of them waited inside the glass-doored entrance of the high school as I retrieved my car. With the Elantra’s tailpipe puffing at the curb, I wheeled Mom out, helped her into the passenger seat, hustled around to the driver’s side, and jumped in to take her home. That evening, when I returned to the high school to see the final performance of the musical, I noticed an unattended wheelchair on the sidewalk outside. Funny, I thought — it looks just like the one I borrowed from Ken, blue seat and all. What a coincidence.
It wasn’t until the following afternoon, as I loaded groceries into my empty trunk, that it hit me: There was nothing coincidental about the wheelchair the night before. In my haste to get Mom home, I had driven away without it. And now my mother’s voice came to me, straight from childhood: “You’d lose your head if it weren’t attached.”
I raced over to the high school and, to my relief, discovered the wheelchair orphaned in a wooded area near the parking lot. I wished the chair was equipped with a GPS tracker so I could review its adventures. I imagined hooting teenagers careening down darkened streets deep into the night.
As I hefted the wheelchair back into my trunk, I was thankful — for the generosity of friends, for the love and presence of grandparents, for the sweetness of young voices, and for the wheelchair itself, found and lost and found again.
It was a weekend I’ll always remember.
— John Walsh (john@walshadv.com), a monthly contributor, is a partner in the East Greenwich-based communications firm Walsh & Associates.