A New Yorker Rediscovers Her City, in a Wheelchair

I once measured good travel by how far I could get from the familiar. Now, travel for me means navigating what lies beyond the walls of my house.

In December 2023, I endured a long hospitalization marred with medical errors. I returned to my Brooklyn home in late June 2024 as a bilateral below-the-knee amputee. My only remaining digit was my left thumb. A wheelchair has been my primary means of engaging with the world since.

From the moment I left the hospital, I felt like a tourist in my body and in New York, my home of nearly two decades. Creating connections and seeking belonging feels like navigating a foreign landscape governed by new rules.

Even when I couldn’t travel because of an existing chronic illness, before my hospitalization, I found adventure in my backyard. I spent my days off practicing Arabic at Sahadi’s, a Middle Eastern grocer on Atlantic Avenue; picnicking on a blanket in Prospect Park; or riding a bike along the East River, seeking novelty and thrill in my everyday. New York had always made sense to me, having been raised in Lagos, Nigeria — another audacious, crowded, loud and overstimulating city.

Travel begins for me now by powering on my electric wheelchair with my residual thumb. My palm moves back to rest on its joystick, and the chair ever so gently propels me forward. Just as I learned to drive my first car, a 1996 white Honda Civic coupe with a manual transmission, I am learning to put faith in a new way of moving through the world.

But there is much that impedes my forward progress. Steps. Thresholds. Ledges. Closed doors. The gap between the platform and the train? An uncrossable chasm.

Whole neighborhoods I once frequented, obstructed with craggy sidewalks and never-ending construction, are impossible to steer through. When I leave the house, I run a mental list of the establishments I can access.

As my new abilities have been quietly and starkly revealed to me, I’ve begun to feel a certain disconnection from New York, as if I am new here. So, to face my fears, I decided to embrace this feeling.

I created a three-day itinerary in Manhattan to measure how my relationship to the city’s public spaces and private establishments, its cultural institutions and tourist attractions alike, had changed. This January, my husband, Mark, and I booked a Midtown hotel room and packed our suitcases. I gave up my title as a resident of New York City, and, for a brief few days, became one of its millions of tourists.

My first day as a tourist began at Little Island, a public park perched above the Hudson River at the end of 14th Street, open since 2021, and one of the few parks in downtown Manhattan I’d never visited. Its meandering, paved pathways freed my mind of the constant worry of looking out for obstacles or potential dangers. Biking is not permitted on Little Island, and I was one of few wheeled pedestrians. Peaceful vistas overlooking the full expanse of the river were accessible to me.

After our park visit, and a stop for dumplings at Chelsea Market, we took a wheelchair-accessible cab to the Sofitel, in the heart of Midtown on West 44th Street. The hotel is surrounded by broad sidewalks, as well as curbs well sloped for easy crossing.

Mark had already studied photos of the available rooms online, and booked a room with both a shower and a bathtub. For me, a hotel room labeled “wheelchair accessible” isn’t always the best fit. For instance, I bring a foldable aluminum shower chair with me. It fits in a large suitcase, and I transfer to it using a slide board from my wheelchair when I use the shower. I don’t need a “roll-in” shower because I’m not necessarily rolling into it.

At the check-in desk, the staff offered to bring our luggage to a room that was compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Once there, we discovered with delight that the wardrobes all had clothing rods placed low enough for anyone in a wheelchair to reach. But the bathrooms were fitted with tubs, not showers. Back downstairs, we were offered another A.D.A.-compliant room, which was the same. At the front desk for the third time, Mark showed a picture of the room we had reserved online and explained why a bathtub would not work for me. The staff, while incredibly nice and helpful, couldn’t have anticipated my precise needs and wants.

That night, we dined on chilled seafood, mussels in aromatic broth with shatteringly crunchy fries, and steak au poivre at Le Rock at Rockefeller Center. It was close and convenient, and our conversation touched on my unshakable nostalgia for French restaurants (after working in them as a young pastry cook). After dinner, I wheeled beside my husband through the light rain toward Birdland jazz club. Coming from the calm, controlled restaurant, I relished the sudden distractions of the crowded Midtown streets, traffic lights, conversations, horns blaring; my New York was right here with me.

Attentive staff held open the doors at Birdland and ushered us down a gently sloped walkway to our seats in the front row, stage right. We watched Dee Dee Bridgewater weave sublimely through classic jazz standards mere feet away. Her performance reminded me of the excitement and curative power of live music; she warmed my spirit on a chilly January night.

The next morning, I tried and failed to enter a Blue Bottle Coffee shop (the accessible entrance was a full block away). Mark ran in to get me a cup of hot coffee. Afterward, I drove my wheelchair up Fifth Avenue to reach the Museum of Modern Art. Though the museum is crowded on weekends, a quiet Wednesday morning was a special time for calm reflection. I absorbed the “Ideas of Africa: Portraiture and Political Imagination” exhibition on the second floor, and the retrospective of Ruth Asawa on the sixth.

To me, art is a way to see possibilities, and New York’s museums always remind me of this. At the Studio Museum in Harlem, which has reopened after a complete renovation, very tall ceilings and open galleries were mostly easy to navigate, which felt empowering. However, I found that even with my prosthetic hand, I didn’t have enough strength to pull open some of the glass doors separating galleries. These moments remind me how much my world has changed.

I left both museums feeling at once inspired and filled with grief. I missed when I could stand eye to eye with a photo or a painting, almost losing myself in the world I would create as my gaze traveled from one painting to the next. I still miss my old vantage point, and the ability to take it in from a 5-foot-9-inch height.

At Summit One Vanderbilt, the observation-deck-meets-multisensory-art experience on 42nd Street that I visited on my second day, I felt included in everything. In a transparent elevator — despite my fear of heights — I was above it all, up in the sky, and delighted to take in the view of the city that I had called home for the past 18 years. It all felt beyond my imagination, New York as a visceral web of commerce and humanity, its transit infrastructure trying to figure out how to make it all work.

The highlight was a room packed with dozens of big, silver inflated spheres. People were swatting them like beach balls around the room. As one balloon approached, I reached into the air and sent it away with a forceful bang. Over and over again I did this. Every bang felt as if I was letting out my anger at the tragic result of putting my trust in a hospital that did not take care of me. I would strike the balloons and a wash of relief would sweep over me.

Perhaps that’s what I’d been looking for all along: spaces that are truly accessible to all, ones that don’t assign a separate lane to those who are differently abled. I want to feel both charmed and truly included.

Before dinner, we hustled down to Joe’s Pub on Lafayette Street to see “Jokes and Poems,” a showcase by the comedian Mike Birbiglia and the poet J. Hope Stein. The evening’s performances offered frank, hilarious and deeply human insights. In a darkened theater, elevated above the stage, I set down my self-consciousness and just enjoyed the show.

By the time we arrived for our reservation at Kabawa, the chef Paul Carmichael’s lively East Village restaurant, my sense of belonging to this city was starting to creep back in. So many of the menu’s Caribbean ingredients are the foundations of the dishes I make at home. Food has always helped ease me into travel. I search for a world beyond the boundaries of what I’ve known.

Over these few days as a tourist, rediscovering my “new” New York, I realized that I do not need the city to be a kinder place to me. I need to be kinder to myself. I am doing the best I can.

Often circumstances beyond our control can reshape the world we think we know. As a tourist, I was able to simply bear witness to what I encountered. But I want more than to be present for the life ahead. I want to engage and adapt, and to allow myself the grace to learn how. This shape-shifting city is a product of our humanity. Its beauty is our beauty. Its flaws are our flaws too.