Trapped in Paris

My husband found us a home to live in before I got to France. This proved to be far more difficult that we imagined. We needed to find an apartment that was on the street level, since I can’t walk up or down stairs. Businesses usually occupy the street level of buildings, and most apartments have stairs going up to the entrance. Fear of fire made me not want to trust an elevator, so we eventually ended up in a house. Hemmingway said that Paris is a moveable feast, but he didn’t mention that you also need a moveable neck if you want to drive in this city since you have to be looking at the cars darting in and out around you constantly. By the end of my first day in Paris I realized I wasn’t up to Parisian driving so I was glad we found a nice home, since I’d be spending a lot of time in it! Because of stairs, even getting all the way out to my street requires help. Nothing is in rolling distance anyway, so here I sit, trapped in Paris, with a view via the Internet. If you are an American being transferred to Paris, or the spouse of one, I would strongly recommend you have a full understanding of how mobile you’ll want to be and how much assistance you might require. If you’re here as a tourist you might not realize the every- day frustrations of doing simple, mundane things like grocery shopping. My first trip to the grocery store wasn’t a pleasant one. We were yelled at for leaving the produce area without weighing our fruit and vegetables. Whoops! As I was looking at the merchandise, trying to figure out if detacheur was stain remover, and why on earth the milk wasn’t refrigerated, people would actually walk in the tiny space between the aisle and my chair. This brings up the issue of personal space. There is none in Paris. If you leave a gap between yourself and anything, whether you are in a car or grocery store, that space will be filled. As we stood in the long check-out line, I also noticed they didn’t have people bagging the groceries and offering to take them to your car. These small services made a big difference to me once my mobility was impaired. I later learned, however, that some grocery stores offer a home-delivery service. There’s also sometimes a line for handicapped people but these lines aren’t routinely open so you have to just sit in them until someone comes to assist you. My chair will fit though any line at Mono-Prix, but will only fit through the handicapped line at Auchon, Hyper-Champion and some of the smaller grocery stores. More than once, I’ve had to back all the way out of line, forcing all the people behind me to back out as well. I often wonder how many “invisible” handicapped people there are behind doors. I was grilling my doctor over this subject when I was new to France and asked what people do and why the French people tolerate it. He explained the difference in the social network of care available for handicapped people and I realized I was viewing it through my American eyes. He said the idea of everyone having equal opportunity was American. While I was a completely independent woman in the U.S., the situation in France is different: France is a much more socialistic country. Therefore, the social system does much more to aid disabled people. Doctors make house calls, food is delivered, social workers visit, handicapped vans pick up people to take them to the store or take them to therapy or rehab. I don’t want that kind of help. I don’t want assistance; I want to be as self reliant as possible The doctor also said the laws requiring new buildings to have access are routinely ignored, something I continue to witness first hand. A common statement here is “There is the law and then there is what is done.” I’ve heard this phrase about a thousand times since living here. I’ve been carried down a steep staircase to use a restroom, and once downstairs there’s a handicapped one available. If you visit, you’ll see many of these incongruities. The first time we went to visit friends living in an apartment I was glad we had moved into a house. We drove around for about 20 minutes looking for a place to park. We finally parked quite a distance away and on the way it started raining. When we got to the entrance we encountered about a dozen stairs. My husband carried me up and then went back to get the chair. We had to go up several floors so we were relieved to find an elevator. It was tiny and we thought I could go up with the chair and my husband could walk up the steep, spiral staircase. We folded the chair and tried to get it inside. It would only fit on its side, and there wasn’t room left for me, so we decided I would go up first, send the elevator down, and my husband would put the chair in, send it up and then run upstairs to pull it out for me. We have repeated the same process in buildings all over Paris during the last year. When we finally got to the door of our friends we were late, wet and slightly frazzled. Luckily, the whole thing seemed so absurd we could only laugh at the situation. Overall, in France, I have lost much of my independence. Every trip out involves a series of experiences of being trapped, and trying to decide if there’s a solution and if the solution is worth it. Don’t get me wrong, I love Paris, and I love the French people, but at times, I find that I am yearning to go back to the United States. And the fascinating thing to me is that in many ways it is for the same reason my ancestors started their original journey west…for freedom.   This article is dedicated to Keith Clark, who along with two maintenance men died on Sept. 11th in the WTC. The three men were last seen carrying down a woman in a wheelchair on the 78th floor of Tower 2. And to Abe Zelmanowitz,…