Sara is sitting cross-legged on her cot. No swimming, no shower. “Looks like we have some time to kill.” She closes her book. “I see you brought a photo album. Could I look at it?”

I fling the book in front of her, transfer myself onto the bottom half of her bed, and watch her turn through seventeen years of photos, which my mother has carefully labeled. Christmas mornings, birthday parties, cookouts. A one-story wood-frame house with a pecan tree in the yard, a backyard garden with tomatoes and green beans, small tidy rooms with wall-to-wall carpeting. A console TV. A smiling family—a mom and a dad and two girls. Each picture illustrates a typical small-town family of modest means. A perfectly normal family, normal except for the much-loved crippled daughter.

Margie kneels on the floor beside us and marvels as the pages flip by. I don’t know whether she finds something particularly amazing in each picture, or whether it’s the idea of a scrapbook itself that has her so astonished.

Along with the photos there are newspaper clippings from the Crosstown weekly, and a few from the Chapel Hill paper. Sara reads the headlines to Margie. “Crosstown Cripple to Lead Fire Parade … makes Honor Roll … gets award … Poster Child.” There is a telethon flyer for nearly every year of my life. An eight-by-ten version of my poster. “Gracious peace!” Sara says. “The Crosstown Cripple sure gets a lot of press! Who’s your agent?” She’s mocking me, but I don’t mind.

She stops at a full-page story, “Crosstown Girl Learns to Walk.” In the photo, I’m seven years old, adorable, with an enormous grin. I’m standing on full leg braces, my hands squeezing a walker. Sara reads it aloud, the whole story: four years of physical therapy, two operations, the high cost of keeping a growing child in braces. Proud parents. Courage and determination. “This little girl is an inspiration” is what my physical therapist said.

She looks at me with gravity. “It looks like a good part of your childhood was swallowed up with all this walking stuff.” She pauses. I shrug.

“It is funny. Therapists, teachers, relatives—everyone—they all think walking is such a wonderful thing. And we don’t question that. We believe it must be worthwhile, or they wouldn’t torture us for it. And then, finally, you get up on your feet, take a few halting steps—pardon me, I mean courageous and determined steps—and the cameras flash, and everyone’s inspired. But then you find out walking is a lousy way to move from place to place. And as you get bigger, it’s worse. When you fall down, you have farther to go. When you start to think for yourself, you realize a wheelchair is a better way to get where you’re going.”

“The wheelchair’s nice,” Margie says. She plucks Sara’s metal spokes. Each sounds a different tone.

“Yeah, Margie, it is nice,” Sara says.

“Did you e-ver walk?” I ask Sara.