Looking for Tarzan

That's Grandma with Wheelie, Lucille, and Johnny

Lately, Wheelie feels the need to have long conversations with me when we go to bed at night. During the day he doesn't want to "bother" me.
His voice is affected by his Ataxia, and speaking is hard for him, especially when I am flitting around the house, outside his or my earshot.

So at night in bed I am the captive audience, so to speak.
Usually it ticks me off, as the conversations are usually about the movies he has seen that day, about the actors etc. Sometimes he seems to be thinking out loud trying to remember names or places. It ticks me off because I am either reading, or watching a particular TV program. Plus it's hard to understand him.

I know, sounds selfish, but bear with me.


Last night he started talking about the time he was little.
It was June 1946. He was 9 years old. While his grandmother was taking a nap, he and his little sister Lucille put on their bathing suits and started walking. Barefoot. They lived in Oakland, CA. They walked for hours, all the way to Alameda, then back along the Skyline. They were both sunburned, blisters on their feet. A lady stopped her car and asked them if they were lost. Wheelie said: "I'm not, be SHE is," pointing at his sister. :>)
The lady drove them home, where a very worried grandmother had already called Mom at work. Mom was a riveter at the Docks. A real Rosie the Riveter! (It was war time)

When I asked him why they did that, he said: "we were looking for Tarzan."

I so clearly saw in my mind's eye, the two of them in their swim suits, walking along those long streets, up and down the hill.

The point of my story is this: We get so frustrated with the loved ones we care for, we sometimes forget that once they were adorable little children, their entire lives ahead of them, full of dreams, high hopes, ignorant to the dangers, loved and worried about by their parents and others in their orbit.

It made me feel rather ashamed to realize how miffed I get sometimes when he wants to "talk" before his sleep meds kick in.

Just glad he is still with me, that I am able to take care of him.