Lessons From a Small Boy in a Wheelchair

Sometimes it’s hard to feel burdened.

I am sitting in the early winter sunlight, a persistent warmth hanging inside a light, cool breeze. Beside me is a six year-old boy, his body within the confines of a wheelchair. Except his left hand, which reaches out, entwining soft, small fingers with mine.

We sit like this for a few minutes. The usual questions, giggles, chatter, are suspended for a while, as we take in the view of the houses and road below. It is an ordinary day in an ordinary street, but it has become a moment of unusual calm and extraordinary affection.

This is lockdown 2021. It is supposed to be difficult and monotonous, wearing down patience and building anxiety. Frustration at all the things we are missing out on. But here, in this minute, it is and will be a time to savour, the happiest remembering of the year.

I am homeschooling because I can. My grandson is trapped in the wheelchair because his ankle was broken on the very first weekend of Covid internment, 2021.

To the adults, his wheelchair seems an annoying and cumbersome burden, but he enjoys finding ways to overcome its limitations.

He enjoys racing and spinning, dancing across smooth floors, navigating gaps and bumping around and over obstacles.

We sit inside for most of the day, usually cheerful and working industriously through assigned tasks. But at times, the painful ankle and itching cast wear the small boy’s patience thin, and we change course.

I wheel him outside to my front garden, high above the cul de sac, looking outwards through trees, and silent except for the birds. There is a constant…

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