Wrench

Sometimes cellular memories come fully into focus when you run across old photos. The photos hold the parts of this life that I have buried, forgotten and pushed away.
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Like when she asks to see a photo of herself in the halo. And you find the picture and the halo is bedazzled with bling and rhinestones and twisty pipe cleaners. Because somehow in your parental fatigue and just-getting-thru, and surgery after surgery, you believed that the bedazzling and the jewels will make the large metal contraption on the head of a four year old better?

And then you see the lambskin fuzzy inside of the chest piece of the halo, and remember how there was no way to clean it, during the summer (one of the hottest summers on record) So the fuzzy lambskin of the inside of the plastic takes on a brownish tinge because of the sweating and playing in sand and the just being an almost five year old.

And lastly, there is the metal wrench. The wrench that is taped onto the plastic chest piece of the halo, on the almost five year old. The wrench is for the parents, "in case of emergency". The wrench will remove the screws and the metal parts and take the halo off the child, in case of a car accident or a problem or in case we couldn't get to a doctor, to remove it "in case of emergency."

But isn't this an emergency? The almost five year old, in the summer, wearing the device on her head that is attached by frankenstein looking metal to hold the neck that now contains more rods and screws? And would we be able to use the wrench, in a pinch, if we needed to?

The wrench that I had completely forgotten about until I dug out the picture of the almost five year old in the halo.