Forward Motion

He cleared the bar. He usually does.

My son just called from college. He didn't say this, but I think he read my last post and wanted to make sure I no longer thought I was going to die. We had such a lovely talk about everything. He got a 92 on a paper he wrote about the need to redesign the wheelchair, how the typical design can cause injury in able bodied people, more so those whose physical limitations make it necessary for them to use that mode of transportation. He explained how the motions required to propel a wheelchair stress the shoulders and upper body (he used the correct anatomical terms for exactly what is being stressed but I couldn't begin to repeat them here), and how a system of levers and (something circular) would relieve that stress and allow each chair to be customized to the user, etc. etc. I didn't understand it all, but he did, that's what counts. He is back to wanting to be a rescue paramedic for the fire department. His experience with chemistry this semester is making him doubt his desire to go to med school. That might change again, or it might not. Meanwhile, from the time he was a one-year-old showing his grandmothers how to fold his stroller, and finally getting frustrated by his lack of words (or their lack of understanding) and just doing it for them, some part of me thought he would design something that allowed people with mobility challenges to move more easily. Or maybe he already did it in another life and he's building on that. He is such a student of the mechanics of movement in the human body, so I was fascinated by his wheelchair analysis. You never know, as Ms. Moon says, the path that awaits. You just have to stay open and keep clearing the bars in front of you.