Breathe, Listen

Little Red got a breathing machine today, so he can start taking breathing treatments. He'd probably just as soon send it back, but I suppose time will make it customary. Evidently, he inherited my lungs. I used to be regularly knocked on my back for 3-5 days at a time, sleeping propped up, wheezing, too weak to do much more than breathe--which was work enough in itself. I remember one weekday, in the house in Buckhead we briefly inhabited, I was laid up in my upstairs bedroom that overlooked a church parking lot. I guess I must have been staring out the window, because I see a couple of cars pull up, and a girl get out of one and into the other (or vice-versa; it may have been the boy). They appeared to be talking very closely to one another for a while, then they did the most extraordinary thing: they both got in the back seat! I could not for the life of me figure out what they would want to do back there. I mean, who sits around in the back seat of a car?

The Big Brother decided that he didn't like the noise of the machine or of Little Red squalling, so he made sure to give orders that the treatment be done in another room. He also was good at giving orders last night; he asked me to play "Legos" with him, which doesn't mean really building anything--not yet--it means playing with the little minifigures as action figures. So we had a little platoon of men (and one droid) that went on several reconaissance missions around the room. He was sure to give me precise and repetitive orders, so as to make sure that I did things the right way. I really really want to build that spaceship that he recently got from Grammie and Pappy, but I keep reminding myself: no, Piers, that's not yours.