Screams Of Consciousness, Act 5: Calming The Storm

My grandmother had Alzheimer's near the end of her life. Often the conversations would drift randomly. Having hung around six of my nieces and nephews for several hours, how I missed the comparatively focused nature of those old coversations.

In all, keeping with my philosophy of honoring requests as long as they didn't result in soiling, damaging, or nudifying anything, I switched the game in the Playstation 2 from soccer to basketball to soccer and then to football.

T, K and E took turns clamoring for playing time, teams, jersey colors, controllers, and playing partners in various combinations. That is, when they didn't suddenly abandon the game and bolt from the room for reasons explained or unexplained, throwing the door open and shut. The squeaking and pounding of the door, and the screaming and bickering of the players became white noise to my overloaded circuits, as controllers were shoved into and seized from my increasingly numb hands.

Then L came in. The oldest of the brood, he bridged the gap perfectly between my logical adult world and the emotional maelstrom in my bedroom.

"Guys," he said, taking the controller and teaming up with me as the Bears against the Packers. "We need some bliss."

"What's that?" T asked, obediently settling on the bed between us to my amazement.

"It means peace and quiet."

And that's what we got. Following his lead, I stopped fulfilling requests for the night. Slowly all the others left the room, leaving just me and my teammate having a a great time. In fact, when L's dad stuck his head in the room telling him to go to bed (it was 11:00 by then), I found myself saying "It's all right, we're almost done, it's no problem." We went on to beat Green Bay on a thrilling, last second touchdown pass... the first game that was completed all night.

Such is life as a contented uncle. Peaks and valleys of confusion, attention deficit and mayhem (I never did set a decibel limit for screaming), injected with just enough fun to make it worth the exhaustion... and not an instant more.