shut-in

My grandmother would sit, as I do now, at least for a short while, as is the prognosis, at the storm door, looking outside, at nothing in particular and everything in general. What’s out there looks decidedly different when you’re in a wheelchair. Yesterday, I sat at a side window and stared at a patch of green grass in the side yard, the same side yard I’d ignored for the previous 10 months, with the blinds drawn and curtains closed. What struck me were two things: one, how that patch of heretofore scraggly, crabby grass could look so inviting. And, two: what great effort, how much time, it would take for me to get there, out there. I understand, too, better, now, the term shut-in. I don’t think we hear as much, anymore, about shut-ins. Perhaps they’ve been eclipsed by our concern for the homeless, and perhaps well considered so. My grandmother was a shut-in. She lost a leg to diabetes. She’d spend hours of her days in her bedroom, listening to ball games on the radio. She loved Rocky Colavito, the slugger for the Cleveland Indians with the movie-star good looks, who performed the sign of the cross before every at-bat. I think he made her feel a bit less forgotten, somehow, The Rock did. She'd always say, "Don't knock the Rock."