Cutting Classes and a Finger

November 20, 2010

  

Gab and I went swimming for about an hour yesterday, while Frederick walked the beach. We wouldn’t allow Derick to swim.  He cut half a day of classes…again. He didn’t return to the classroom after lunch. When I asked each of the boys if they did well in school that week, they each, in turn, shook their heads yes and smiled. Then Emelie filled in the difference between Fredick’s version and the truth. So, Derick kept up a good front of pretending not to care about swimming while Gab and I enjoyed the refreshing water.

Gabriel, 5, kept smiling and telling me “Derick no swimming”, his crude but effective version of English for “Frederick screwed up again and now he can’t go swimming and I’m glad!” Then Gab would call to his brother, 50 yards down the beach, “Me swimming, Derick!” Frederick pretended not to hear, so Gab kept it up until his interest in teasing waned and he shifted his attention to crabs on the rocks. He and Frederick spend many hours throwing rocks at crabs in the fish sanctuary, which is highly illegal but its okay with me if they spend a night in jail.

When it was time to go home, the two boys raced across the road and to the house, picking up their ongoing and never-ending feud about who will unlock the front door. When they got inside, the battle turned to giggles and racing around the house. By the time I got there, Gab was crying and holding his little finger. He’d caught it in the fan that was sitting on the floor. He had used the fan as a pivot point for a fast turn, placing his hand on the screen, and his pinky slipped through and touched the metal blade. The tiny little slice was a near-death experience for him.

He cried for a few minutes then squatted down in front of the fan and commenced studying it with all the seriousness of a man of science. He poked his finger through the grates at various places, then went back to studying. After a minute or two, Gab got up and walked to where the cord was laying on the ground. He plugged in the fan for only a second, pulled it out of the socket, and raced back to watch it spin and wind down, taking mental notes the whole time. He repeated this procedure over and over. Between spins, he studied and poked and studied and poked, trying to determine just where the blade can touch a finger.

It truly was like watching a scientist at work. His patience alone amazed me. He’s only five. Five year-olds don’t have the patience to study a thing for five minutes at a time. They just don’t have the attention span. I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

That was yesterday. A day has passed but the incident is still fresh in my mind.  I wonder about his future. His parents are poorer than the dirt they till for the day-to-day existence that never quite meets their needs. The only things they have enough of are air and water and a place to shit…and the compassion of their relatives and neighbors. It’s the life of the mountain people: a meager freedom where hunger, nutritional deficiency and a lack of medical care are so commonplace as to be accepted without comment; without expectation.