CAN'T SLEEP. PARK

    

      It's six thirty in the morning. I am up since 5. I did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, but too many thoughts are still racing through my mind: memories and impressions from yesterday.
     Sometimes I think that I am too hard on Park. After all, he is my elder and deserves to be treated with respect. Then he goes and does something like what he's done last night!
     Katya and Hyosha were watching TV for a long time. I turned it off, to their sorrow, and tried to initiate a conversation. It worked. Hyosha, finally, opened up and excitedly told me how much he is waiting for his little brother to be born. Katya, the sassy red headed five year old, told me that she is three years old and hates school.
     I let children take their time playing before turning the TV  back on. They settled on pushing a wheelchair around. We have two of them standing in the living room, the one that kids used for their amusement is supposed to be picked up by a medical supply company.
  First Katya pulled Hyosha in the wheelchair up the ramp into the dining room and then pushed the chair and her brother in it down the ramp to roll into the living room. The chair safely bumped into the couch and stopped. It was great fun, and I was watching all the time for any danger to the kids or the furniture. They alternated in pushing each other up and down the ramp, laughing 'til they got hick-ups. Suddenly, the door to Roberta's and Park's room burst open, Park ran out of there, grabbed the wheelchair by the handles and began to pull it from Hyosha's grip. The kid resisted for a few seconds, surprised by this new development. Park yelled at him - loudly and scarily, like he yelled at me - "Stop that! You must have respect! What if something gets hurt?" I tried to stop him, saying that it's not Roberta's chair anymore, she has another one, but, of course, he didn't even try to listen. He wrested the chair out of Hyosha's hands, roughly folded it and disappeared into his room again, like a pop-up devil. Hyosha came to the couch, looking hurt and mortified, with tears standing in his eyes. I could've told him to go and resume playing with the wheelchair, but an additional confrontation with Park would only have frightened him and Katya.
     Park is 73 years old. He should know better than scaring little children into obeying him! The reason that he have behaved that way is because the Little Red Headed Monster and her sibling want nothing to do with him, when he tries to talk or play with them. It took me a year to figure out that behind Park's smile and his offers of service is a black, envious heart. Kids are better judges of character, after all!