The Little Grabber That Lives by Our Kitchen Door

The first thing I bought after my knee replacement was not a walker. It was a grabber reacher, thirty-two inches long, and it is the only piece of gear in this house that has never once made me feel old.

Two months after surgery I could not bend down. Not to pick up a nickel off the kitchen floor. Not to get the newspaper off the porch. Not to fish a sock out from under the couch. I am five foot four and I had been tall enough for everything in my life until that spring. Gene would hear me make a noise from the other room and come down the hall, and I hated that more than I hated the knee. The ZAYAD reacher grabber is the thing that gave me my own hands back.

I tried the obvious things first. Tongs from the kitchen drawer, which will not grip a coin. A wooden spoon, which is worse. Asking my husband, who is 74 with a weak right hip and balance trouble of his own, to bend over for me instead. That is not a solution, that is just moving the problem onto a man who should not be bending that way either. What I wanted was not to be helped. I wanted my own hands to be longer.

So I ordered the ZAYAD reacher grabber, the foldable one, and it weighs 8.6 ounces. That is lighter than my choir folder. I did not spend a month reading about them. I was tired and I wanted to pick up my own mail.

It came in a box I could open sitting down. I hung it on the hook by the kitchen door, where a tote bag used to live, and that is where it has stayed for three years and ten months.

I did not want to be helped. I wanted my own hands to be longer, and it turns out that was a thing I could just go get.

Here is what it does in an ordinary week. It picks up the mail that slides off the front step. It gets the coins out from under the car seat without me kneeling on the driveway. It takes the newspaper off the porch on a wet morning. It pulls the remote out from between the cushions. It reaches the top shelf of the cabinet over the refrigerator, which had been decoration in this house since roughly 1998 and is now a shelf again. None of that is dramatic. All of it is the difference between a day where I ask for help four times and a day where I do not.

Here is what I do not use it for. Anything heavy. Anything breakable. I am not lifting a full jar of pickles with it and I am not carrying a glass of water across the kitchen with it. It is a longer reach with a grip that closes when you pull, and mine stays on light things. The day I try to move something breakable with it is the day I mop the floor.

Gene borrows it. He is five foot ten and can still reach most of what he needs, but the things that roll under the bed are his problem now too, and he knows it. He does not always hang it back on the hook. We have had words about this, forty-six years of words, and it is still on the floor next to his chair about once a week.

I fold it and put it in the sedan when I know the day will have low shelves in it. Church on Sunday. The drugstore. The church hall where the choir practices and where a pencil will hit the floor at least twice. Folded it fits in the door pocket or the seat beside me. Unfolded it is thirty-two inches, and it has picked up a dropped hymnal more than once while everyone else was still looking at the floor. The ZAYAD has held up through all of that, and the grip still closes cleanly.

One thing to be honest about. It does not fix anything. My knee is still my knee. Dana, my physical therapist, told me four years ago that the surgery would give me a knee and the work would give me a leg, and she was right. The grabber did not do that. It just meant I could stop negotiating with the floor while I did the work.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to ask your physical therapist or your doctor before you change anything, because I am a retired music teacher, not a medical person, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. I would tell you not to buy a cart full of gear the week after surgery the way I did, because half of mine sat in the garage for a year. I would tell you to start with the small thing that solves the thing that actually humiliates you. For me that was bending. If your knee or your hip or your back is what stops you, and the floor is where your day keeps going wrong, start with the grabber. Have somebody hang a hook by the door. That is the entire system. And if you are the one who has been turning down help for months, I know exactly how that feels, and I would tell you this is not help. This is a longer arm.