A Morning With Kinsley

Yesterday’s toys lie scattered about the house, and Genée resigns herself to the clutter. She knows that her thirteen-year-old daughter, Kinsley, needs her attention more than any household chore. At seven in the morning, warmly clothed in Disney patterned P.J.’s, Kinsley trails behind her mother through the clutter of toys and clothes. Every few seconds, Genée looks back at her little shadow, takes a deep breadth and heads into the kitchen. When Kinsley’s bare feet hit the cold kitchen tile, she moves to the table, sits and waits.

She stares blankly at her mother’s movements to and from the cereal cabinet, and her mouth opens slightly as if reaching for a sentence to begin a conversation, but she utters no sound. Involuntarily, her head, like a lightly touched bobble-head figurine, swings from side to side. Soon her hands and arms wiggle gently. She remains seated, her sole voluntary act, while tremors take over her body.

As her mother approaches the table with a bowl of Cheerios, Kinsley keeps her eyes on her mother’s face. She stares, transfixed and glossy-eyed. Genée dips her spoon in the cereal and “Oh”s as she airplanes it into Kinsley’s mouth. Kinsley almost forgets to chew her Cheerios. She has forgotten how to do most ordinary activities she once performed with ease. Although diagnosed as slightly overweight in the past, Kinsley has lost about a pound a week for the last seven months. As her mother dives back into the bowl, Kinsley still blankly peers at her mother, her body trembles and she awaits the next bite.

The simplest of daily rituals have become complicated and unpredictable with Kinsley. As Genée bathes, dresses, combs Kinsley’s hair and brushes her teeth she speaks nurturing words of encouragement, but on this morning, those words go unanswered. Whether unresponsive or articulate, Genée proceeds with as much normalcy as possible.

Once ready to head off to her school for children with special needs, Kinsley scurries to the family SUV parked in the driveway. She sits upright and buckled so that no matter how bad the shaking gets she won’t fall over. From the cell phone speaker comes the comforting greeting of her grandmother:
“Good morning, how are you Kinsley?”

Staring out the window, Kinsley stammers out a response, “Hi-I-I- Naaana…Good-biie,” her words are a flat operatic vibrato of strain. Even from the land of the lost, a place where a rare and undiagnosed affliction periodically sentences Kinsley, she returns to the comfort of a familiar voice.