Through the window

I looked through my window and watched as the little boy pulled himself up the hill.
His gnarled and twisted legs, each with a manic, jester-like will of its own, working in the opposite
direction, contorting and jerking like a puppet at the hands of an inexperienced child.
Each step was a measured and controlled exercise of endurance. He pulled out his crutches,
and thrust them into position, and then he waited, resigned, until his palsied legs had finished their dance of dementia and lurched themselves forward that measly twelve inches.

I watched as a tear of perspiration rolled down his face. He took his hand from the crutch and wiped at the tell-tale clue to his pain and suffering. I caught a glimpse of his hand that was chaffed and callused and I thought of the
times when my hand had opened and bled from the plight of my twisted body.

His mother, tall and resolute, walked slowly by his side, never once guiding or taking the child’s burden for her own nor giving any indication that, like her son’s broken body, her heart was contorted and palsied. She pretended that she couldn’t see the cold stares of passers by and the pity loaded in their eyes for the struggling little boy. She ignored the dirty looks of the ignorant who didn’t understand why a mother wouldn’t help her suffering child. ‘If he was mine, I’d carry him up the bloody hill,’ she heard.

He took the final step at the summit of the hill. His face was red and moist with sweat. It had been hard work getting up there. He’d had a bad night and the pain in his left leg was worse than usual, he hadn’t slept much. He pulled hard at the air to re-infuse his lungs. He felt the pulse throb in his temple and waited for his heart rate to lower.
He leaned on his crutches for nearly a minute without moving. Then he raised his head. He glanced behind him at the hill that he’d just climbed. His face broke into a grin of triumph. The road to school was an easy one from here and the first battle of the day was won.

His mother put her hand on his head and lightly stroked his damp hair down. She didn’t fall to her knees and load him into her arms offering him praise and glory. She didn’t gush words of effusive patronisation. Mother and child looked at each other, the little lad no more than chuffed, but the mother, in that small glance, gave her son all the love and strength that he would need to get through his struggles.

I turned and wheeled myself away from the window and remembered the days when I,
too, had to fight the world for just the smallest triumphs of independence.