Before anything else: is there a step at your front door
Posted as first_question_we_ask
- Looking for
- friendship first with people whose homes actually work
- Experience
- Seven years together, both switches, plenty of experience and little patience.
- Around
- North York, Toronto
Before anything else: is there a step at your front door, and if so how many, and is there a rail. That is the first question we ask anybody, and the answer we get most often is that they will figure something out on the day, which is not an answer.
Thirty six and forty, North York, together seven years. One of us uses a wheelchair full time. The other one is standing behind me as I type this, correcting my spelling.
We are not asking anybody to renovate. We are asking people to know their own home and to tell us honestly and early, before we have had four weeks of conversation and enthusiasm. A place with three steps and no rail is a no. A bathroom you cannot turn around in is a no for anything longer than an evening. Our own place works, and we would generally rather host anyway.
What we are looking for is friendship first with other people in this, and then, with somebody we have come to know, something more. Both of us switch. Neither of us is looking for a person who wants to make a point of how comfortable they are with disability, which is its own kind of exhausting.
Not looking for questions about how any of it works in the first conversation. Not looking for admiration. Not looking for anybody who thinks the practical questions above are the whole of who we are.