Sian’s wonderful monthly meme now in it’s third year. Picture the Precious is the theme for this year and this month Sian suggested maybe something that reminds us of someone.
I have a small 4×6 wool mat that has lived on and around my desk for many years. It was given to me by a boy called Matthew, Oh! so many years ago.
Matthew was one of the children I minded before and after school.
He was eight years old.
I can’t for the life of me remember his surname. Perhaps by the time it comes to press ‘publish’ it will come back to me.
Matthew was born with Perthes’ disease and was in a Spica cast when he came to me. His plastered legs were joined by a cross piece just below his knees. His feet were free, I remember putting his shoes on and off.
We used to push him up and down to school in his wheelchair. He was met at school by a member of staff (oh! my goodness it was Mrs Blackwell! How on earth did I remember that?) And spent the day being moved about between classes but when he came back to me after school things took a different turn.
Matthew was like a little monkey; there was nothing he couldn’t do with the other children.
He was a slight boy, bounding with energy and life. He could flick his lower body to wherever he wanted it to be.
He used to run! Just like a toy soldier. Remember the soldiers in toy story? Their feet were on plates and they ran along in a kind of lopsided fashion. That’s how Matthew did it.
He could climb up a plank, side ways.
He could go down the slide. He threw his plaster cast legs over the handles at the top of the slide. And fly down to the bottom on his bum, with his legs in the air.
He was happy, a perfectly normal little boy except for these legs in blue plaster.
Matthew was supposed to rest. An eight-year-old boy and resting just don’t go together do they? He loved coming to our home where there were lots of other children to have fun with.
I have clear memories of him on the tyre swing that hung from the tree in the garden; somehow he had threaded his plaster legs through the tyre and was playing along with the rest of them. He joined in with them all the time, it seemed that there was nothing he couldn’t do.
There was something Matthew could do that none of the other children could do. It made them all squeal and brought me out to the garden from wherever I was.
Matthew could swing upside down from the branch of a tree by hooking the crosspiece of his plaster casts over a branch… I nearly died the first time I saw him do it.
“Matthew, get down! Your mother will kill me!” was a frequent cry of mine in those days…
He brought this little (4”x6”) rug back from a visit to his father in Saudi.
I would love to see him now.
It is raining here (again), a perfect afternoon for reading all the wonderful stories that are over at Sian’s blog today.
