I Haven't Found My Mini-Essay on Disability and Corona...

 in the anthology so I'm posting it, here.(Still buy the book it's nice, and I can see myself as Contributor, but...

I found myself wishing “they knew what it’s like”, that abled people had to juggle their needs and expectations  around some limitation of some sort(the severity of what some people face with the virus make me think of it with a pang now that brings a flush to my cheek, though Nature’s imagination is clearly more vivid and ruthless than mine.) I might have just given the worst offenders big shiny clown noses or something else embarrassing and non-lethal.  I wouldn’t have made my experiment last longer than a  week, as opposed to six months that feel like housearrest, with no clear end in sight.Might have given big butts to the people that take up too much room on the sidewalk. Instead, we have corona, which makes people face a wide range of outcomes, none of which are pleasant. Some of the survivors will join us in disability; our fight is one with my draftees than volunteers. At the very least, I hope that both our government and the disability-rights movement will be there to embrace and guide the newbies, but I can almost guarantee that, as in most other stages of this crisis, the United States circa 2020 will not do enough.

In some ways, I’ve been preparing for  quarantine a long time without knowing it.  I like to read and write, and I’m quite used to having a far-flung network of friends that I could go at least a few years without meeting in person, and I have, or at least had, a large backlog of premium-cable shows to watch and fiction projects that were waiting for a quiet Sunday for me to get back to them. More seriously, as a wheelchair-using freelancer who tries her hand at activism, my life had been somewhat of a ball of work-life-activism-tainment for a few years now.  Though it could be an uneasy mix, and I often felt that my individual needs got lost in the shuffle in favor of the collective warmth of solidarity, but whatever my life lacks in individual hedonistic pleasures, at its best, it’s full of the satisfactions of a job well done and other simple pleasures.(Some of which, even though I have the freedom of movement of a grounded sparrow, have been curtailed for the moment.) Maybe I am fortunate that my progress or even my enjoyment has never exactly arrived in a straight line, at least unless I have birthday money, a favorite top, and a cursor poised over “Add to Cart”. I  have gained and lost freedom before with attendant shortages or living in a group home…it was a while ago now, but I can learn to live with less.   However, apart from the eerie quiet on the streets, quarantine life feels familiar in many ways. If there is a good side to it, I don’t miss as many meetings or celebrity meet-and-greets because everything has become virtual.I still miss a few due to being a Luddite and unprepared for video-conferencing, but listening to stuff while sitting in my sweatpants is nothing new either. If I have a really excellent day, I can feel a moment of satisfaction at being ahead of my time, but it’s not worth the price our country is paying, naturally. What do I hope to gain from this? Cleaner, healthier, public spaces, a sense that nobody is expendable, universal healthcare, working at home without stigma. I want abled Americans to remember the frustration of this current moment and take it inside so that they remember that not everyone has transportation or the ability to meet every need whether social or material so that they might embrace the “vaccines” of accessibility and inclusion.