I’m at the stage now, after six months at work, trying to force myself to do everything independently, i.e. without my walker, (thanks, inaccessible Victorian building!) that now I am no longer in the workplace, I have come to rely on it part time.

This means taking it with me when I walk the dog back from the school run. Toby plods beautifully along as an old boy (as I write, he’s next to me on the sofa enjoying a 2 hour snooze because we’ve done a half hour round trip to the school gate. Half an hour accounts for our speed, by the way, not the distance, the school gate is in fact only four streets away! We make a good pair.

I tend to also take it with me on Thursday when both girls have after school clubs in a local community hub. Gabby has gymnastics, Immy is at Young Carers. I can pack snacks and a book in the walker and have a ready-to-go seat to sit at the window looking over the gymnasium below.

But recently, I’ve realised how inaccessible places can be. Inaccessibility is not new. Sometimes, as with Victorian buildings, there is frustratingly little that can be done by virtue of preservation. But in newer buildings, it is not always design that lets a building down. It’s the people that function within that building, not needing, or more, not thinking about the impact of their own actions.

I couldn’t get the walker through the chairs and tables in the café without rearranging everything myself because they were too close together to pack everyone in. Actually, they’ve recently cleared the tables back from the viewing window for the gym, which I understand, but even that hasn’t been made any easier. 

I sit on the walker at the window, wanting to enjoy tracking my little girl’s progress and adventure – like all parents do. The sheer amount of people that lean across me to secure their own view.

Am I not here? For the same reason as you? Am I not a parent too?

Gabby is still young enough that the expectation is I drop her to the door of the gym. Immy’s Young Carers group starts at the same time, at a different (exterior) entrance. I cannot be in two places at once, so Immy has had to take the burden of being buzzed into her group by a staff member through an internal door because I don’t want her out in the dark, even for a moment. Because I am her mum. But also because, being disabled means I am not even able to escort her down the stairs to the external entrance.

I am grateful for the understanding and concessions that have been shown by the staff members. I hate that any such concessions were needed. Why must they be? 

Most recently, I took Gabby down in the lift to drop her off to her class. It’s always crowded so I always have to hang back, either because I don’t feel safe on my own two feet or because there’s no room for the walker amongst dozens of parents and their excited, cartwheeling children. I often just have to send Gabby into the crowd alone. It goes against everything I feel I should do as a parent, to protect her from the chaos. But she leaps in, unbothered, unharmed. Brave.

Most recently however, turning out of the lift, I found a pram blocking my path, facing out from against the wall. Probably there to avoid the busyness in the same ways I normally am as a disabled parent with a walking aid. I understood. I had empathy. But in the same moment, I felt invisible and angry. I couldn’t get around it. Nor could anybody else exiting the lift with a pram. So I had to stay there and send Gabby in on her own. 

Why not just move the pram? Well, because it wasn’t mine and I would not want to disrespect another parent in the same way I would not want anyone to touch my walker, because whose place is that, other than the owner?

But I was angry because, in making their decision, this parent had not considered anyone else. They were not around, there was no child in the pram, so likely in the arms of the parent as they dropped off a sibling. And that had made the decision that I, as a parent, now could not drop off my daughter. How sad, how unthinking is that? It feels worse because I always try to consider people’s physical limitations alongside the struggles of parenting because all of these are so ordinary to me.

All of our identities intersect all the time to create who we are as a person. I am disabled. I am a mummy. I am a disabled mummy. But out in the world, sometimes, in the smallest ways, I feel so invisible, unseen. But I am here. I exist.