I am sitting at my desk (a heavy oak door that my father, decades ago, turned into a coffee table and end table, in the early, poor years), looking out the window. What led me back to the blog was sighting the adult boy and his mother walking along the sidewalk that fronts the stores in this little commercial complex where I rent space. After seeing them weekly last year, I hadn’t seen them in several months. As usual, the mother watched as her grown son, with his cane in hand, at the end of which is a ball that I imagine both steadies and propels him along as he moves, took a detour to move up and down the concrete ramp. She lets him lead as they move along. His movements seem full of joy. His left arm swings out and up, maybe for balance, but also, I think, expressing the sheer pleasure of movement. Moving through the muggy air under the gray June sky. The pleasure of being alive in a body. Sometimes he’ll circle the little green island in the center of which grows a large, healthy birch, a rhododendron, a couple of boxwoods. He circles and waves his arm and his mother waits and watches. I think with patience. I think with love. Their movements and postures are familiar and when I saw them again today I felt a rush of warmth and gladness, to know that they are still alive and moving in the world, this pair bonded by love and struggle.
Coming Around Again
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