At the Museum
I greet a museum guard as I enter a gallery of early 20th century realist painting. The guard smiles back. After touring the gallery, I stop for a while to study a display case containing an artist’s diaries.The guard comes over close to me and smiles again. He stops there, and leaning slightly forward is poised somewhat above me, seeming to watch me read the diaries. He says nothing. I finish reading and roll off to see more paintings, and the guard goes back to his post at the entrance to the gallery. When I complete my tour of the exhibit, I am back at the gallery where I started.
As I wait for the elevator, the guard comes over to me, leans down and says: “You know I was praying for your back there. For you and for all of us. It is a good thing.” This is a story that has unfolded so many times and in so many ways in my disabled life, and in the lives of so many of my friends, that I cannot begin to record the huge number of such unbidden and dubious blessings showered upon us. And I can’t say why, this time, I did not snap off some retort or glower at the man. He looked me in the eye when he spoke to me and I did not feel as objectified as I so often do in those situations. He smiled in a warm and lighthearted way, and did not seem self righteous or morally superior. He had a lined face, a dark brown color, with curly wisps of grey and white hair on his head. I had no words to tell him why his prayer for me was unwelcome and his hopes for me misguided, so I wished him a happy holiday and boarded the elevator.
