Planting roots

I have a high functioning autistic teenager that I take care of every Tuesday and Thursday. We always go to the library. He's not a big talker and he seems kind of like a robot. Today though he was telling me how he asked his dad for something with headphones that he can bring to school so that he can listen to music. His dad goes to the garage and digs out a really old cassette Walkman which plays the radio station he loves so he's happy because he can't get it at home on his CLOCK radio. God I love that. Everything about that story, especially the part were a 16 year old boy is given a cassette radio in 2015 and is totally utterly content over it. Then he continues to tell me that when he looked inside the tape player there was a really old tape from his grandpa who he lived with and who died of ALS. He's pretty standard robot when describing ALS and his grandpa until he says which was heartwarming for me," I opened up the tape player and saw one of my grandpas old tapes and was like "awh"" just that tiny sliver of emotion from him is enduring, just shows a disability maybe changes for matters of the heart?

If people let me talk to them about their grandparents or relatives it's one of my favorite subjects to talk about. I love hearing old stories, I love hearing about people I never meet, what they did, how they acted. A girlfriend recently told me about her grandma in England who had an apple orchard and would make cider out of the apples, pies and she would let the gypsies (real gypsies in caravans with rags and stuff) take apples and she would get mad that they'd make boozy cider out of them. It's fun to visualize people I've never met.

The teenager I work with told me a little about his grandpa. That he was an engineer and him in his grandma built their house together-his grandma still lives there alone unfortunately, I've seen it it's wonderful and still in tact to its time period, even the appliances. That reminded me of another story I read in the paper recently about a family who built their own house and their memories. It made me think how special being able to do something like that-building your own house that you would live forever in with your own hands. Not many people do that anymore. Maybe we'll get a chance to do something like that someday? It sounds like such a great story anyways.

Today I am grateful for: coffee of course, headphones because I forgot to bring them to work today and now really miss having them, days when you have good lunches. Afternoon visits with friends.