I Ought to Understand Frailty
Across a stained, wooden table
our daughter reads a comic book
about a babysitter with diabetes.
We wait for hot chocolate
at a packed coffee shop
a short drive from our house.
This is a description of that moment.
Our daughterâs chin rests on her hands
while her eyes scan her colorful book.
She wears a leopard-print coat
and mis-matched gloved: one pink,
one black with grey stripes.
No, that isnât right.
She took her gloves off because she was hot.
Already hot.
Children so warm.
Little furnaces of biology.
She looks up and smiles.
âWas your diabetes like this?â
she asks, points at a page.
No, that isnât right.
She asked me to read the page â
in my head, not aloud.
The pictures show a young woman
(maybe the babysitter)
with signs of wooziness, then
falling asleep into a plate of food.
âIt was a lot like that,â I tell her.
We came here for hot chocolate
a few years ago and she spilled
her cup all over the floor.
No, that isnât right.
It was our son.
He thought I would be mad.
No that isnât right.
He was mad at himself
because he lost his hot chocolate.
Our daughterâs chin rests on her hands
while her eyes scan back and forth
over her colorful book.
She tells me she thinks she needs glasses.
She is seven years old.
She is seven years old and tells me
the chalkboard at school seems fuzzy.
She tells me thatâs why she stands
too close to the television.
We are flawed, she and I.
We are flawed and in need of assistance.
No, that isnât right.