Contemplation - week 7

It's hard to believe it was only 7 weeks ago that Reggie came to walk beside me. His illness vaulted us into a time machine. We've lived a lifetime in a short space, scrabbling, willing him to get well and abandoning all aspirations and expectations to the alter of recovery. "Just get better and that will do, l'll be happy with that".

I am the one doing nearly all the learning. He's calling me to up my game. I appear in his field, he comes to meet me and escorts me back to the gate. "It's OK human, you don't need to strap my head up, I am coming by choice". "It's OK human. This is the indoor school? I've got this, I am not scared, what do you want me to do?".

The two weeks he's been home from hospital I've met his willingness with abject incredulity. I have read and read and read, trying to match his understanding and generosity with understanding and generosity. His is innate. I am learning manually, but I am learning slowly through his teaching and others who are helping. "Captain my Captain".

Today I arrived at the Yard and skipped to the field to find him. We were supposed to be hacking out with Karen. I learned fairly quickly that he had deposited a shoe somewhere in a mahoosive field. Without it we were confined to barracks and all the "jobs" I've been meaning to do instead of hacking suddenly put their hand up and demanded attention.

He needed a bath. That is different to wanting one. He didn't want a bath. He got a bath.

I am supposed to be doing regular ground work, but much like when I am riding my skills are raw and my communication indecipherable. He has to extract meaning from a cacophony of uncoordinated non verbals. I thought I was good at non verbals. His ability to read mine, in contrast to my ability to read his, pauperise me. They leave me naked in a landscape I thought I could navigate and still he forgives me, takes what I can say and extracts sense from it for both of us.

As it happened Rachel was on the Yard today. She offered to help me bath him. The offer was so brilliantly delivered.... "I can hold him if it helps". She didn't hold him, she held me. She read him for me, translated and told me how to reply. She read me for him and told him what I was trying to say. She was so unassuming and so talented.

His relief at having a translator was palpable. We maybe worked with him for an hour.  I say we.... Rachel did and I watched on a little awestruck but not quite knowing what to attach my awe to.

Reggie fell in love with Rachel. I don't think that's surprising. We all need to be heard and understood. Each time he spoke and she heard, or she spoke and he did, he relaxed a little. After an hour the "big man" looked as though he'd been administered a sedative.

I kept on jabbering in human talk. He didn't mind although he did ask me to excuse him for a moment as he wrapped his huge rubbery lips around Rachels chin and chomped in a way totally reminiscent of youthful snogging behind the bike sheds before either one of the participants know what they are doing . Rachel lent him her chin. She needed a bath towel to mop up the aftermath.

I called today's post contemplation.  I drove home today in a bubble. I realised that having a translator had not only moved Reggie to the equivalent of sedation, it seismically shifted me and my understanding.

I think we should all throw our shoes away occasionally, just for the sheer joy of it.