CHII & TAKU Outside of the store Page 2
Somebody was backing a van into the parking lot. The car stopped and the driver got out.
"Hello." he said to them and opened the back door. A few seniors in wheelchairs were inside the van. He told them, "OK. We're here.
This will take just a minute."
He moved to the back of the van, lowered a folded platform, and rolled a senior in his wheelchair onto it.
"Ready?" he said and flicked the switch. The platform started to descend with the wheelchair on it . It stopped when it reached ground level.
"Thank you."
The elderly man went into the store, pushing his wheelchair. Taku was again staring in surprise at a wonderful device for including "other" people in society.
"Taku, that is called a life car. You can get in without getting out of a wheelchair. Is it your first time to see one?"
"Yes. It's great. You can go anywhere with that. Where are they coming from?"
"They are people living at a special nursing home for the aged. I think they often come to town to do some shopping."
"Seniors from a home for the aged? I've been to one once with my school....but they did not go shopping outside. As far as I know, they were usually in bed and only took walks in their wheelchairs once in a while."
"Everybody wants to go into town sometimes, whether people are disabled or not. If I had only stayed home for months and months, I could not have made many friends. It is frightening to think about staying indoors alone. It is quite natural for anybody to go into town...to go to libraries, to play in parks, to go to movie theaters, to have a cold ice cream under the hot sun...or go shopping."
Watching the seniors get out of the van, Taku thought that it would be nice for then to roll around the town freely just like Chii had been doing all that day. He started to think about the simple things that kids like him do every day. He knew they were simple but suddenly he saw them as wonderful moments of living free.
Chii's words broke into his day dreaming. "Why are you staring into space like that? Let's go home! My mom is waiting for us with some tasty shake onigiri (salmon and rice balls)
Chii's voice, too, hinted at the joy of the simple things.
Special nursing homes for the aged
Special nursing homes for the aged are facilities for seniors who are incapable of living at home and need on-call nursing. As of April, 1998, there were 237 special nursing homes for the aged in Hokkaido.