SUCH AMBITION

Earlier this week Keech concluded his 2-month visit, which in terms of elder time lasted slightly over 3-4 days, maybe a week. Elder time, as all we who live it know, accelerates exponentially. I had barely spun three times in my wheelchair at the Big K's arrival, when he was waving farewell at the station.

Despite the headspinning brevity of it all, it was great to have a youthful body around that could run upstairs 2 or 3 steps at a time and then bound down like he had wings somewhere, lift heavy objects and split wood for hours, though that latter task was difficult for me to merely watch and not be too much of a supervisor, since I used to know right well how to do it all myself-- and better than anyone else, now that I’m unable.

Among the more-than-a-year-overdue household chores that awaited the limbs and energy of youth were such tasks as painting, caulking, chainsawing, lugging logs and climbing ladders onto trees and roofs, plus major etc. I'd never realized how many limbs and convolutions are actually needed for the formerly 'simple’ task of climbing a ladder and then moving around on it to even higher, teetery places -- a fearful set of skills, best not to watch. There are so many key areas of common life to which one has given little or no thought by this common time in my life-- a shocking series of revelations, when at last they dawn and one has thankfully survived, predominantly intact.

It was nice too to have renaissance conversations with the Big K, those rambling-where-they-will kind that I enjoy so much... he was more focused in his older being than when I last saw him... 

All those many thanks to Keech...

As to my own ongoing return, of which more anon, my blurry hand is more and more finding its own place-- often irritatingly insisting on it in fact, like a child (it is, after all, little more than a year old): I wanna brush teeth! I wanna use those scissors! I wanna open that jar! Lemme try! I can carry that! etc. Go ahead, I say; knock yerself out! 

A heartening thing, such ambition in the young...