Unearthing a life.....

Some cages are more ornate than others. Some are practically invisible until you escape them ... and then you begin to sense their shape in the absences that flirt at the edge of vision. Cages enforce routines and routines embed themselves in the sort-of-automatic part of the mind. Then one day the cage is gone and the mind begins to trip and stumble around looking to regain its balance.

I've been in the 'cage' of being Aleister's weekday daytime caregiver for at least the past three years. He and I have developed a lot of routines together. Now it appears that I may get the summer 'off'. It hasn't happened yet, but it has been promised. And certain routines will be suspended and leave their ghosts behind.

One such happened just before I sat down to write this and was the inspiration for this piece. I suddenly snapped into alertness and thought "3:30! Time for me to get out front and meet Al's school bus." And as my body began its turn towards the door, I remembered -- "There is no school; his Mom picked him up an hour ago; he is not here." I think I'm going to be fighting off a lot of those false starts in the next couple weeks.

He was here this morning and we did motor out to Silverdale for his Thursday Speech Therapy appointment. We listened to the Talking Heads on the car CD player and held our noses when we drove by the mud flats. On the way home we dropped into Safeway to shop for food. Pretty routine ... EXCEPT!

....as I was wheeling the cart across the parking lot with groceries above and Aleister below, I was startled when a front wheel went BUMP! up over something. For about four beats, there was silence. Then he bellowed, "I'M BLEEDING!" and rolled off the cart's lower platform and out onto the pavement. Aleister hates to bleed. It sends him into a frenzy. And, indeed, he jumped up crying and displayed a spot of blood on his thumb.

Somehow - down there out of sight of me the cart driver - he managed to get a hand lowdown and in front of a wheel and I right ran over it with the combined weight of the cart, groceries, and grandson. The thumb damage was minimal. The one small bubble of blood remained one small bubble of blood. The adjacent index finger took more of a beating -- broken skin, but no bleeding ... and a fingernail beginning to turn black. Hey, hey! The Fruits of Summer!

At home, grandpa applied water and ointment and band-aids. I think he would have been better off leaving his wounds to the open air, but he puts a lot of stock in Band Aids. So they are de rigor in all cases involving traumatic loss of blood.