Field Notes

It's a 30-minute drive to the client's house and I get there early... showing up on time is showing up late. Though if I'm honest, I got there 30 minutes early and sat in the car for a bit. Ran through things in my head. Mind racing.

Everything before this, via Mable, had been home and garden assistance, hedges trimmed, floors mopped... decent, honest work, but work that asks nothing of your hands that your hands don't already know how to do. This was different. This was the first time I'd be responsible for someone's body, and I knew it the second the coordinator from the company that hired me a few months ago told me. they even had me ion for a special seizure training. Sh*t's got real...

The mother gives me the tour... which rooms is where, where the towels live, the geography of somebody else's home you're expected to memorise in ninety seconds flat.

Beautiful place. And homely.

I meet the other support worker on shift... Clara, a few years further into this than I am.

And then I meet him. The reason we're all standing in this hallway to begin with. Call him Steve. A teenager. Cerebral palsy, severe... he can't move on his own, can't speak, can't tell you what he needs or doesn't. Everything about how you read him has to come from somewhere other than words.

I talk to him for a minute before anything else happens. Not because it's in the training manual - though it probably is - but because you don't just walk into someone's evening and start handling their body without saying hello first, even if hello gets you nothing back you can name. My voice came out steadier than I felt.

Clara tells me that they've just finished dinner and it's shower time... a two-person job, choreography and all. She walks me through the transfer... hands under the arms, weight shifted just right, from wheelchair to the electric bed. I know it is not the right way to do it... Manual handling regulations and all that. The house is kitted out with overhead ceiling hoists. She asked me, "Are you ok with moving Steve this way?" I just nodded my head.

I felt his weight. This is a person, his full weight, his trust, whether he's able to give it consciously or not, and every part of me is aware that I could get this wrong. We undress him. Quick wipe down. Move him again, bed to shower chair. Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, a toothbrush... the most ordinary rituals in the world, except somebody else's hands are doing them for him, and today, for the first time, those hands are mine... I've no idea yet if I'm doing this right.

Dry him off. Nappy, pyjamas, shirt. Transfer him back to the chair... same careful physics as before, a little less foreign this time. Wheel him to his room. Struggling slightly with the electric wheelchair.. another first.

By 6:45 he's ready for bed, and I let his parents know.

Clara spends the last few minutes of her shift scrubbing down the bathroom, then clocks out around seven. And then it's just me.

I stay in his room until ten. No conversation, because there can't be one. Also, he's already asleep. His parents were awake. Mum would stop by on and off for a brief chat in whispers.

The other times, I sat near his bed. Once in a while looking at my phone. Making notes. Putting it away. Stuck in my head.

He sometimes has seizures when asleep. I was keeping an eye out for one. Praying that it wouldn't happen on my watch. Not this time, anyways.

At 9.57 pm, the night shift support worker arrived and relieved me. Her movements suggested she was a pro.

Before I left, his parents told me he liked me. I couldn't tell. They knew because you learn to read the small stuff after years of it, the things the rest of us miss.

I held onto that the whole drive home. Whatever nerves had ridden shotgun with me all evening, they let up a little on the way out the door. But I also knew I had it easy... no seizures.

I didn't know, walking in fifteen minutes early and half-sick with nerves, that this was the shift that would actually teach me what this work is.

6:55am, and I'm back... this time the sun's barely up and so is the house. Clara's already there when I arrive, which is its own kind of comfort. Round two doesn't come with the same static in your chest as round one, but it's not nothing either. You don't get to relax just because you've done it once. At least I can't.

We wake Steve up gently... Blinds rolled up, projector clicking on, his favourite show. He wakes up happy. That's worth noting, because it means something's working, some rhythm the house has built long before I showed up.

Pyjamas off. Nappy change, proper clean-up, no shortcuts. School trousers on. Then the transfer... hands under the armpits, wheelchair waiting and it's already less foreign than it was yesterday. Muscles remember faster than nerves settle. Shirt, jumper, socks. Wheeled him out to the table for breakfast.

His mother had it prepped and handled the first few mouthfuls herself because there's medication folded into food, and that's not something you hand off to the new guy on his second day. Once that part's done, I take over the feeding. We get through the whole serving without a fuss, which apparently is its own small victory in this house. Something in him seems to be loosening up around me. I talked to him right through the process. Joking. Laughing. I think he smiled too. Maybe the beginning of some trust.

Then it happens... he put his arm on me... around my neck. At first I thought h was trying to pull my hair as he is won't to do. I don't have hair for pulling... haha.. but he didn't. His hand rested on my shoulder for a bit. His dad was excited... "He likes you a lot!".

I was floored. This is what it's all about.

Shoes on. His mother walks me through securing him properly for the bus. Straps, positioning, the difference between "seated" and "safe." Then out the front door, his father alongside us, and I take Steve for a couple of short walks up and down the sidewalk while his dad watches on.

There's a rainbow out, so I point it out to him. No idea what lands and what doesn't. You do it anyway.

The van shows up at 8:10. I wheel him right up to the back and the driver takes it from there... a whole system of hands and routines this family has built long before I entered the picture, and will keep running long after.

Back inside, it's a different kind of work. His mother runs me through the cleaning routine... dishwasher emptied, everything stowed exactly where it belongs. Coffee. Then vacuuming and mopping. Walkways, living area, kitchen, laundry. Everywhere except the bedrooms. The parents simply cannot do much and they need all the support they can get.

Shift's done by ten. I let myself out.

Two mornings in, and the job's already stopped being about proving I can do the physical parts right. It's turning into something else. Learning the shape of a family's morning, the choreography that keeps a kid like Steve fed, dressed, medicated, out the door and safely delivered, every single day, whether or not anyone ever stops to notice how much precision that actually takes.