When I was pregnant in 2008 I had the flu. I think wrote about it here. I'm too sick and tired to dig through archives to find it, but I remember I wrote about how I watched people on television and woefully thought to myself how badly I wanted to be them, because they did not have the flu. I went to the OB's office and cried and pleaded for some cough syrup stronger than the over the counter mix so I could please get some rest. (I was denied) I was coughing so much and my abdomen muscles were already so strained that I was afraid I would herniate myself. THAT, my friends, was the flu. Not only did I have it and survive, but I did so without a single perscprition drug. Pregnant too! Whoo am I tough.
So as news/hysteria/hype circled about H1N1 I balked. No vaccinations for us. Why? It's the flu. I have HAD the flu. I kept going back to 2008. THAT was rough. It couldn't possibly be as bad as that.
I'm writing this waiting for the cough medicine to slowly calm my lungs. My husband got it and now he has bronchitis. My youngest had it. I couldn't put him down for two days. My oldest boy has it now. His fever has lasted for five days, longer than any fever he's ever had, longer than I thought one could have a fever.
On day two or three of the illness I thought I am fit, healthy, I'll be over this soon. I haven't been to work in over a week. I can function but I'm not well. I can't wait for this to be over.
I couldn't have gotten a vaccine even if I had wanted one. They haven't been available. If I could have had one I probably wouldn't have.
Knowing what I know now, I absolutely would. My concerns over a new vaccine are not worth two weeks of my whole family being this sick. There's nothing left for me to do except pour two teaspoons of nasty medicine down my throat each night and hope I wake up feeling even a teensy bit better than I do right now.
Last year I bought him two race car driver costumes. The first one he is wearing on top, and the other, I picked up at 70% off sale in the weeks after Halloween. Please, he begged me at the time, please mom, I want to be a race car driver, he pleaded, pulling on the flimsy nylon bodysuit. I want to be a race car driver again next year.
Are you sure? I asked, how do you know?
I am! I just know! I always want to be a race car driver. Always! Every year!
He had no idea that whole new worlds and ideas and costumes and oh-my-gosh the Transformers were just waiting around the corner, speeding toward us faster than any stock car could. I knew, but I wanted to believe.
About a week ago I was looking at the baby and thought I saw something where the tooth used to be. It was after his bath, he wasn't exactly cooperative and the light wasn't perfect. Then there were a couple of nights waking up with screeches of "OWWWWIEEEEE". Sunday there was no mistaking it.
The tooth came back! Suck on THAT Tooth Fairy!
The most-grieved over front tooth never came out. Somehow, almost magically, according to the pediatric dentist I took him to yesterday, he fell at just the right angle to push that baby tooth directly up into the space in his gums. He did this without damaging any of his other teeth.
The dentist expects it will fall back into place naturally. She doesn't expect that it will fall out ceremoniously one day with absolutely no notice when I least expect it.
Can I get an up-high for all my gap-toothed polish relatives? Thanks a lot gene pool. I owe you one.
The stiches are out. The tooth is gone. I've mourned the passing of it, seriously and the fact that we were denied a story book, tooth-fairy experience. I'm still bitter, but less so. Inside my head I've snapped at every well-meaning friend and family member who told me about scars that faded on their children or bodies. It wasn't on his/her/your MOUTH I hiss to no one but me, in a very ugly way.
I've been quiet, here and everywhere. Honestly it's taken a couple of weeks for me to feel this and process it. Process what? I'm not sure. This.
I'm thrilled that scarves are the flavor of the day. I have a bright cobalt one that I wear now, everyday. I wrap it around me and loop it around. It brings me comfort and keeps the daydreams of cafes and long walks with no place to go close and warm.
Summer has disappeared and left me floundering, completely unprepared for the changing of seasons and of babies and little boys into little boys and little big boys. I'm stunned. I don't know how else to describe it.
Must remember. You don't need teeth to smile. You just have to want to.
We sit, tucked in a corner near the restroom. The blue vinyl chairs stick to the back of my legs. I hold his sweaty head to my shoulder and talk quietly to him, trying to keep his eyes away from the colorful decals on the windows and the toys on the floor, lest he want to go and manipulate every knob and turn every crank. Over and over I push my inner germaphobe, back off. I have no time for you now, can't you see I am far too busy trying not to look at child after child walking in the ER door, coughing and being promptly covered with a mask?
The admitting nurse, the triage nurse and the ER nurse all ask, when did he last eat or drink something? Routine, I assume. I didn't know that their trained minds were already whirling and processing and considering the options for sedation.
Children's Hospitals are a place of miracles. Being there still fills me with dread. I have to consciously make an effort to visualize white light, my attempt at keeping all of the anxiety and fear and grief that sneaks out from under the patients doors from seeping into my skin. I feel too much.
A tiny room provides false security and a binky covers up the gaping wound in my babies face. I can breathe in there. I turn on Dora and pull tricks out of my bag. A scarf for peek-a-boo. A book to read too many times in a row. A man knocks and enters. I think he's the doctor. He's the nurse. Right. It's 2009, men are nurses now. Try and keep up, I think. At Children's everyone is very soft and concerned about feelings. He writes his name and my name on the whiteboard. Beneath that is a question. What is important to you today? He asks me. It's obvious, isn't it? Isn't it?
I draw a blank. I want to say; my baby and his lip you know he's just a baby and I don't want to be here and isn't that horrible when there are so many worse things that people have to come here for and I don't want him to be scared or in pain or scarred for life and I hate not knowing what's going to happen next and his tooth you know, it's gone and when I dropped him off this morning he had two front teeth and now he only has one and I am FREAKING OUT on this inside right this minute even though I am trying to appear very zen on the outside so as not to upset the baby. He's just a baby. My baby. My baby who is still bleeding.
I blink a couple of times and say "his health" so he doesn't think I am an unfeeling robot. Ugh. What a stupid answer. He leaves and I hear people outside our cocoon talking of ambulances and pulse-ox and the baby is now on the floor playing with a telephone that beeps and rings and talks to him. I wonder who was in the room before us. I watch the clock, I watch my bloody baby and I wait.
Two weeks ago, my cell phone rang and it was the dreaded day care call, arriving only forty-five minutes after I arrived to work (which was admittedly, almost forty-five minutes later than it should have been.)
The baby fell down on the sidewalk, he cut his lip, it's bleeding pretty bad, I think you'll want to get it checked out, they told me. I've been though a split lip before, I told them, not much can be done. I think you'll want to get this checked, the site director repeated. Ok *BIG SIGH* I'm on my way.
Forty-five minutes after, that my hands were shaking as I drove to the pediatrician's office, calling a good friend who was married to a plastic surgeon. It wasn't just a cut. I was afraid he had lost a large chunk of his lower lip. From the back seat he moaned a woeful cry, too tired to scream anymore. His shirt was covered in blood. I was too afraid of disturbing his lower lip which had swollen to twice it's normal size to try and remove it.
The school mentioned his tooth as well. I should have asked them, but I assumed it was cracked, broken, maybe it had shifted. I was sitting in the pediatrician's waiting area after showing up pale and without an appointment when I was able to hold him and calm him enough to even allow me to peer into his mouth. That's when I saw it was gone. Top right tooth. Gone.
I scooped him up, stopped at the receptionist to tell her thank you very much but I've decided to take him to Children's Hospital right away and found some soft music to plug into the car stereo as I lumbered him back into the car seat, both to sooth him and me as I hightailed it for the freeway.
I knew that no matter what, he would be alright. This could be fixed and would be fixed. My mother armor was strong and I would see to it. I took deep breaths during the long ride and listened to him thankfully, drift off to sleep. It was only when the initial shock wore off that I felt a thump in my chest with the realization that he was hurt and the evidence of that hurt, that little baby tooth was no where to be found.
His first tooth, no more. It physically pained me to realize that we found ourselves in this place of milestones and growing up much too soon. It wasn't supposed to be like this. We wouldn't even get to have the tooth fairy.
While on vacation this past summer, we spent many lazy mornings and some evenings as well sprawled across couches in the house we rented watching the Tour de France. At the same time I was marvelling at the strength and spirit of the riders, Lance and the rest of them, I was following Lance elsewhere as well.
I don't know Jeff Castelaz. I met him once, in a dark club one winter night years and years ago. He was the manager for a band I went to see in a dark club somewhere. His brother introduced me. A few months ago I learned that Jeff's six year old son was battling cancer. I found Jeff's blog. I've linked to it before. Jeff wrote about how Lance (Armstrong) called him up one day to offer support and guidance and vsited the hospital to see Pablo and other children. He talked about how Lance's foundation inspired him to start one in honor of Pablo for Pediatric Cancer research. All of this was turning around in my mind while I watched Lance's wheels circle along the pavement. Cancer. Loss. Survial. Fighting. Love. Loss. Love. Around and around.
I follow Pablo's story. I could say followed, in past tense, because Pablo is no longer with us, but the extroardinary thing is that he is. The spirit of this little boy is remarkable and I really do think it's still here, somewhere. I am choosing to believe that these beautiful children, the Pablos and the Madelines of this world had a light too bright to be contained. That something good can come from something, so, very, inexplicably bad.
September is Children's Cancer Awareness month, as if any parent needs a month to be aware of such a thing. When I first read about Pablo's passing I wished there was something I could do. Today I received word of this.
Please watch, give if you can and share with someone important to you.
I am the drop off mom. I like to slowly get ready in the morning and have that time with the kids before I go to work and they go to school. I'm fortunate that I don't have a job that requires me to punch a clock or start meetings in the early hours of the day. Twice a week I also take over pick up duty as well.
It's always been our thing, since before he could even talk. The teachers would tell me he would know I was there by the click of my heels and the jingling of my keys. My keys do rattle. I keep adding things to my key chain, never removing them, because that's my method for finding them. I can hear them rattling in my big bag or feel them jabbing me in my pockets. I have keys from places I lived three houses ago along with a little bling I've picked up along the way. Among other things I have a fancy shoe brand key chain actually attached to my keychain with charms; a little shoe and a heart.
The other night I was walking up the driveway. I had gone for a run after work and my husband picked up the kids. My little man was walking down the driveway, having just gotten out of the car in the garage and was headed to the house. We met in the middle. Something that is not always easy for us to do.
He usually greets me with something he made that day or a tidbit he's been waiting all day to tell me about Transformers. That afternoon he set down his lunchbox and his backpack and said he had something for me. He reached into the cargo pocket of his shorts and pulled out a small silver heart.
The silver heart had fallen off my keychain. I thought he recognized it and collected it for me. How nice of him, I thought. Then he told me this.
I found this on the group rug and I picked it up when no one was looking.
I kept it in my pocket all day. I kept checking to make sure it didn't get lost.
I wanted you to have it because it reminds me of you.
We went into the house and set it on the windowsill. I told him I wanted it there so I would see it every day because it made me so very happy. I thanked him. I squeezed him.
Before he was born, at my baby shower, a friend of my mother's gave me a soft, plush Beany-Baby-type turtle. Baby Turtle, as he was called, lived a very comfortable life in my son's room. Little man wasn't much into stuffed animals and the few he had were mostly untouched until about a year ago, when he decided he needed to take Baby Turtle to school every day for naptime.
Every morning his lunchbox, shoes, hat, cars, sunglasses and Baby Turtle got loaded into his backpack and every evening they all came back out. I had done a smash up job of not losing Baby Turtle in the shuffle, which was not an easy task, considering the chaos that is my house in the morning and my very foggy state of mind. But I tried really hard. I wanted him to have Baby Turtle with him. He never had a security blanket or any other thing that he was attached to for very long. His interests burn passionately and hard for a few weeks at a time before they are replaced with something new and different, but Baby Turtle was a constant. I wanted to take good care of him.
At the end of last week as I gathered up his things I noticed Baby Turtle wasn't on top of his locker. I asked him where he was? His eyes shot to his locker and then darted to his backpack and back to the locker again. Then he completely fell apart. He sobbed and sobbed as he tried to tell me that he put him there after nap time. He knew he did. Really, he did. His teacher and I looked everywhere. Baby Turtle was gone.
All the way home I kept flashing back to that morning. There had been a brou-ha-ha about his shoes, when he got to school he didn't have the ones he wanted. I took things out of the backpack. I put things back in. I ran home and came back. Was Baby Turtle in his backpack that morning? I honestly didn't know. Which lead me to believe I had not packed him. Sure we would find him at home, I did my best to console him and re-assure him that things do get lost. That happens sometimes. Usually we find them again.
Only we didn't. He wasn't at home, in our cars, he wasn't anywhere. Then he had to be at school, I reasoned. Turtles don't up and walk away. But he wasn't. No block was unturned. Baby Turtle vanished.
Surprisingly, the following Monday came and went without a mention of Baby Turtle. As did Tuesday. Not a word. Although I found that while he didn't really seem to miss Baby Turtle very much, I still did. Not the toy, itself, but I missed the two of them together. I felt, I feel terrible because I think it's entirely possible that I set Baby Turtle down someplace and left him. I still don't get much sleep and my brain is cloudy most of the time. He wept and he wailed and he was so sad and I think it could have been my fault. (Yes the possibility exists that he was turtle-napped by some trouble-making, roaming gang of four year olds, but I have no proof.)
I googled Baby Turtle and I found one. I ordered it. It is scheduled to arrive today. I am torn between a shell and a hard place here; Part of me wants to give him back something that he treasured. He's growing up. Fast. At least once a day I look, expecting to see my little man but am smacked in the face by the fact that he's a big boy now. Big Boys need to learn life lessons. About how sometimes things happen that make you feel angry or sad or angry and sad and that you have to find a way to move through it and then past it.
Would you give him Baby Turtle 2.0? On the upside? He would be happy and I would feel less guilty. On the downside, he may lose other things that I can't replace down the road and I don't want to set this expectation. The other downside is if one day Baby Turtle magically appears? Boy am I going to have to work to explain that one. (Can you clone turtles? Like sheep? He just might buy that.) Please take the poll. Baby turtle is depending on you.
Him: Excited and very proud and talking very fast: Mom! Guess what!? Today I was at school and I stuck a bean up my nose, really far up there and I coudln't get it out and so I was trying to use my finger.
Me: Hold the phone. Did I just hear him say he stuck a bean up his nose? Wait. What did you stick up your nose?
Him: A bean.
Me: A bean?
Him: A BEAN (duh)
Me: You put a bean up your nose?
Him: YES. Up my nose but I couldn't get it out so I blew really hard and it shot out.
Me: What did you do with it?
Him: Put it back in the sensory table.
~~~~~~~~~
Him: I want to go to the Haircut shop every weekend. (Because he gets a prize there)
Me: That's nice. Also not going to happen.
Him: You never get your hair cut.
Me: I do, I just do it before I pick you up from school.
Him: Dad doesn't get haircuts either. He has no hair.
