I was brooding under the covers, talking to my mother on the phone. "I should just cancel my book tour," I told her, frustrated to the point of tears. "I can barely get to the bathroom. How can I possibly get across the country?"

My knee had been badly injured two weeks earlier, and hobbling to the kitchen had become about as much adventure as I could stand. Now, however, my collection of essays about Jewish women had been published, and I was scheduled to go on tour. Local travel was clearly doable, with friends schlepping me back and forth to bookstores and synagogues, but the whole Los Angeles/Seattle/New York/Boston thing seemed out of the question.

"Why don't you rent a wheelchair?" suggested my mother, always the problem solver. Living in Berkeley, Calif., where organizations for the disabled are as common as coffee bars, I was used to seeing all kinds of people roll by -- paraplegics, amputees, people with cerebral palsy, whatever -- yet somehow, until she said it, I hadn't considered it an option for myself..(full article)