(Zaytinya Restaurant in Washington’s hip Penn Quarter neighborhood. Photo Zaytinya.)

Things are better, though slowly. Knees apparently are easy to break and hard to heal.

I stopped wearing the leg brace a couple weeks ago- and have felt marginally better with each day. The chaos and travel of closing out the house in Michigan put the idea of recuperation out of my mind altogether, that and getting a MRI to ascertain the level of permanent damage to the leg. Showers still scare me, since if the limb folded up on me I would wind up in some mass in the tub with other things broken to fit.

Funny how the world gets smaller with disability, and small things loom large. I have to make lists of things to do when I am upright. One of them included looking blankly at the screen in front of me, trying to absorb the news of the passing of Donna Summers, Queen of Disco.  Donna, you poor woman. Born in 1947 and dead. Damn.

Anyway, I felt good enough yesterday morning to essay the laundry. Big PInk is Old School, with laundry rooms located two apiece on each of the eight towering stories. There was a full basket, some of the dirty stuff going back to before the trek to the old homestead. I could not pick up the basket, but discovered the smooth plastic of the container would slide along perfectly well on the Oriental rugs, so I improvised. The handle of the cane I use hooks nicely into one of the handles of the tub, and I dotted up the hallway, tugging it behind, and managed to slide it into the brightly-lit room with the two washers and two dryers and folding table.

I am not going to dwell on the challenges of picking up socks and underwear from the floor- I can do remarkable things with the cane’s handle- but suffice it to say that after finishing the cycles of ablution and carefully flying it all and dragging the suddenly neat and fresh winter-season laundry- why do I have all these clothes?- I wasn’t feeling as good as I had when the morning began.

A shower and into the office, and I was teetering a bit.

Friends from out of town were attending the big American Institute of Architecture convention at the Walter Washington Center downtown, and they had extended an invitation to dinner that night long before the minor personal disaster, and I had to calculate how to get to the Zaytinya restaurant downtown.

As you may recall, I used to work down in the office complex that sits atop the proud Art Deco façade of the old Greyhound Bus Terminal on New York Avenue, and slogged across the river each day, but it has been quite a while since I stopped while crossing the marble aggregation of the Federal City. No place to park being just one of the reasons, and the general madness of the crowds and buses another. I decided that circling endlessly to find a place at the curb and then hoofing several blocks was not going to work, so I took a cab from the Westin Hotel next to the office.

The gentleman from Sierra Leone who piloted the vehicle was listening to excerpts from the Charles Taylor trial on the radio, and we agreed that the former dictator only deserved a hole in the ground. Once across the Potomac on the 14th Street Bridge I peered out the window at the hip, young, well-dressed throng on the sidewalks. Chinatown is the hot destination now, what with the Verizon Center events and the cluster of restaurants and bars in the neighborhood.

There were throngs of conventioneers, tourists, lobbyists, legislators  and bureaucrats on the sidewalks. And it was rush hour, of course, replete with Metro Transit Goliath-sized buses that rule the crosswalks and the tourist charter coaches dominating the curbs like mobile ramparts. I was in seersucker pants, blue shirt, wild bow tie and shock of white hair with the cane and white shoes. I looked like Andy Griffith in his Matlock guise, and to a casual observer, the classic Cave Dweller District denizen, even if Arlington is where I hang my hat.

Damn, I thought, I forgot my hat. This part of town is where something called “The Penn Quarter” collides with old Chinatown.

The African let me out somewhere near 8th and G Street- I wasn’t sure exactly where the restaurant was, since I did not have my bearings. I could see the former Patent Office where Walt Whitman had been a nurse during the Civil War, and is now the spectacularly refurbished Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian. I thought the numbers must go up, and headed toward 9th Street. I pecked my way up a block and across the street to the restaurant: it was gleaming new, soaring ceiling, and apparently featured Mediterranean cuisine.

Bonds n’ Donna were waiting inside the door, and there were tales and catching up at the table. Liza (with Z) was our server and she explained the deal: the food is Greek, Lebanese and Turkish in origin, envisioned by Executive chef José Andrés. “Though the plates are small, each is supposed to be shared. We think the sharing encourages conversation, and allows everyone to sample a wider variety of spreads, cheeses, vegetable, meat, poultry and seafood.”

The bread and olive oil dip alone was to die for, though of course I was not willing to do so literally.

It was still broad daylight when we were done. I managed to get down the marble steps without falling. I did not introduce myself to the cabby on the way back, Bonds stepped into the street to hail a cab, and and it was the sort of day that caused a taxi to swerve to the curb as soon as his hand went up. and the dusk was just settling in when I plopped down on the comfy brown chair in the living room of my little flat.

Anyway, it was one of those fine days in DC, and I had completely forgotten what a curious, energetic, astonishing city this is.

(We dined at the table at the extreme lower right hand corner. Photo Zaytinya.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com