5 Our South American Honeymoon

245 Pages·2012·0.99 MB·English

May You Have an
Interesting Wife!
A Story of World Travel and of Love and Disability
MICHAEL R. MCGUIRE
([email protected])
ii

Copyright © 2010 by Michael R. McGuire. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections
107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher
Dedication
This book is about world travel, but also about disability—it is a dual memoir of me and my disabled
wife Bonnie, our lives and our collective travels throughout the world and in the United States.
This memoir is dedicated to world travelers and those who would love to be. It is dedicated to the
disabled and spouses of the disabled. Most significantly, it is dedicated to my “ever-loving”, interesting,
and sometimes challenging wife Bonnie, a woman with the severe disability of paraplegia who traveled
the world despite her disability. (And in Bonnie’s case, paraplegia has little to do with her being
challenging.)
I coincidentally visited the Russia at the same time as a co-worker, and we both presented our travel
slides at a lunch time gathering. Our slides were very different—My slides were very romantic removing
obstacles from the picture such as electrical poles and wires, but his, not doing so, probably showed a
much truer picture of Russia.
Be forewarned: When I write about travel in this book, the story is romantic, but when I write about
disability and paraplegia, the story sometimes includes the “electrical poles and wires”. This is
deliberate—I would hope the reader would not only learn about the beauty of travel but also about
what life is realistically like to be a paraplegic or to be married to one.
Like many things in this world—being in love, being in war, being a surgeon, or having a child—living
and traveling with a disabled person has its own very special, heightened, form of romanticism.

Contents
Dedication ............................................................................................................................................... i
Bonnie Chin ............................................................................................................................................ 1
Me......................................................................................................................................................... 38
My Life in Saudi Arabia ......................................................................................................................... 77
Bonnie, My Wife ................................................................................................................................. 110
Our South American Honeymoon ...................................................................................................... 127
Minnie and the South Seas ................................................................................................................. 145
Mama Chin, a Woman of Two Cultures ............................................................................................. 163
A Different List .................................................................................................................................... 171
Traveling Closer to Home ................................................................................................................... 213
Life After Travel? ................................................................................................................................ 229

1

Bonnie Chin
The first thing I noticed about Bonnie was her smile. She was in a wheelchair and had a
blanket covering her. We were at a singles meeting at the First Unitarian Universalist
Church in San Francisco. The large crowd that had attended the singles group broke up
into smaller groups and now, afterwards, everyone was leaving for home. I had not found
anyone I was interested in in my group. As we were about to leave, all I noticed was
Bonnie’s smile—she was not looking at anyone in particular, and certainly not at me.
Being shy, I probably would have not tried to get her telephone number or even have
said hello, but a fellow who promised to give Bonnie a ride back to her home found another
woman he was interested in. The fellow asked the crowd if anyone could take Bonnie back
to her home. I happily agreed.
Bonnie, I found out, had rolled her wheelchair down 2 miles of steep hills from Pacific
Heights to the church. She was used to going back up the hill, but it would have taken her
three times as long.
Bonnie hopped from her wheelchair into my car’s passenger seat, and I put her
wheelchair in the trunk. Bonnie, I learned, was a paraplegic. She seemed to be particularly
2

interested in my having worked in Saudi Arabia for two years and that I had just returned
from a trip to China.
When I got back to her apartment, there was a wheelchair ramp in front. “It’s lucky you
found an apartment house with a wheelchair ramp,” I noted. “I own this apartment house,”
she said. “I had them put it in”.
Having dated a few divorced women with young kids, I noticed that the children loved it
when I got down to their level to talk to them. Doing the same, I knelt down on my knees to
talk to Bonnie. I gave her a kiss. I asked Bonnie for a dinner date for the next night, and she
happily accepted my invitation.
***
Bonnie was born in 1945 in San Francisco, the same year I was born in Oakland on the
other side of the Bay. But she was born in April, while I was born in November, so for 6
months of the year I kiddingly like to say to my wife, “You’re older than me”. She hates
that!
Both Bonnie’s parents were from China. The Chins lived first in Salinas, California
where Bonnie’s father was a farmer like his relative, Ah Bing, a farmer horticulturist in
Oregon for whom the Bing cherry was named. The Chins later moved to San Francisco
where Bonnie was born.
Although Bonnie’s father died when she was 5 years old and he was 46, she was much
more like her father than her mother. Her father, like Bonnie, loved to make lists. He had