I Blinked, You Grew...

Recognizing the gift.

A while back, almost 10 years ago, actually, I had a newly minted newborn son at home.  He was small, just four-and-a-half pounds, as he had arrived 11 weeks prematurely at just a touch over three pounds and had spent the first six weeks of his life in the neonatal intensive care unit trying to maintain respiration, his body temperature, and his body weight.  When the time came and those three things were handily checked off on the "what your baby should be able to do to survive" list, we were able to bring him home and try to live a normal life.

Except normal wasn't normal at all, and the meaning of life -- his life, most specifically, was soon up for grabs.  My baby boy was tiny and beautiful; however, no measure of size or loveliness could have prevented the respiratory virus that came calling when he had been home with us just 10 days.  He stopped breathing, my son did, on a night that had seemed like the nine before it but would instead be a nightmare come to life.  He stopped breathing, limbs stopped moving, eyes rolled back so far in his head that only slim slices of the whites remained visible.  My son, who had begun to develop the sweetest pinkness of a healthier-every-day baby, was now an other-worldly shade of gray that can't be recognized unless you yourself have cradled Death in your hands even as Life has ebbed slowly away.

My little son survived that virus, coming home from the NICU just prior to his four-month birthday.  When he was still critically ill, when his body was shutting down and only his compromised brain and his malfunctioning kidneys were even attempting to cooperate with the idea of Life, the nurses patted me on the shoulder and told me, "Well, even if he does survive, we can't know what kind of baby you'll be bringing home..."  I suppose, in hindsight, this was to prepare me for either his eventual death or his eventual descent into becoming what might be best described as "damaged," as painful as that is to type in plain letters.  The nurses were trying to be kind; it was clear my son had flirted a bit too long with Death and perhaps even shuffled unsteadily with the idea of filling his dance card with an awkward two-step or lengthy waltz.

My boy, he was fortunate.  No supplemental oxygen when he came home, no supplemental medications.  Just a monitor with which to terrify ourselves with the idea that apnea would take him away from us after all, a contraption we ditched once we had one too many false alarms that tempted us to toss our final shreds of sanity to the wind for the lure of staring into that blinking, beeping machine every minute of every day.  We decided instead to let our son determine his own fate as each of his breaths were drawn and then expelled, as only he could calculate.  The virus was finally gone; we had to know what of our son was left behind.

Today, some nearly 10 years later, I can tell you what of our son was left behind, what kind of baby we brought home that frigid February afternoon even as our toes curled in our boots and our relieved sighs belied our fear.  A son I'm proud to call my own simply because he's woken every morning since he returned home from the NICU that second time looking for me, for warmth.  A boy who throws a spiral that's too beautiful to truly come from preteen hands but does, anyway.  A boy who melts in eager joy when he sees his cats and his dog scampering about the house.  A boy who, though not fully comfortable with his own intense emotions, shares his frustrations and his worries more eloquently than I know how to respond to intelligently.  A boy who has been added to the Gifted and Talented program in his elementary school for the second year running due to his naturally strong math skills and ability to calculate numbers outside of typical equations.  A boy who tells me that he wonders each time he swallows if he's gulped down his latest loose tooth since things feel so strange inside his mouth, he knows something has changed. 

This boy...I know just one thing with this boy of mine.  He's the one, of all my five children, who taught me how to mother.  It's easy, you know, to parent the child who is instinctively brilliant, the one who willingly does his homework at school in minuscule pockets of time and not only brushes his teeth before my asking but flosses and does his fluoride rinse as well, and who is never seen without a three-inch book just a few inches from his nose.  Kids like that are tantalizingly tempting to boast about but truth be told, kids like that, kids like my eldest son, they're blissfully simple to raise.  They want to do the right thing, and they do do the right thing, gaining ego points and pleasure points all on their own.  Children like my second-born, those who struggle but achieve mightily in spite of their own stumbling blocks or those I mistakenly place in their way, those are the children that I admire with every breath.  Those are the kinds of children I toss and turn at night thinking about, the kinds of kids that challenge me to be a better me, a better mother.  That's the notch on my parenting belt I'm most proud of, and I thank my almost 10-year-old boy for that satisfaction.  He's gentle and loving yet easily bruised where his ego and his vulnerabilities are tucked.  He's obstinate and hard to read and oftentimes completely unwilling to open up.  He's also beautifully sensitive and eager and hopeful, his fears enormous but his desire to be soothed even greater.  He's complicated and yet so, so simple...more comfort is all he ever needs to get settled, to get strong.

Once upon a time I sat alongside an open warming table in the NICU, my little son struggling to allow his heart to beat one more time, and then one more time after that.  I didn't know what kind of baby I'd bring home; I did know I was scared he would live and I was scared he would die.  Ten years later, I can honestly say I stopped being scared a long time ago.  My young son, on the cusp of becoming a young man, remains my most extraordinary teacher and I remain his humble student.  His journey from within my troubled womb to his fourth-grade classroom has been nothing short of astonishing and though I still toss and turn from time to time wondering if I'm doing right by him, if he's getting what he needs from me, from his world, I can only ease my worried mind by seeing that tiny face in my memory's eye, the one that was bloated from intravenous lines and catheters that infused medications that paralyzed him, that tried to feed him, that tried to shoo away the septicemia flowing carelessly through his veins...the tiny face that was so swollen that his eyes would stay shut for days, one tired lid pried open by instinct but not seeing me peer intently at the baby I'd made, the boy I loved.  Now I walk by his room at night and am witness to what the past 10 years have brought: now a long, lean body flung out in disorder in and under his bed covers, a long arm tossed atop the down comforter, a socked foot peeking out at the bottom, his breathing deep and regular and his brain dreaming, it is my hope, of juicy watermelon and a hilarious game of freeze tag or perhaps standing at the plate, ready to swing and hit the ball into outer space for the most magnificent home run his Little League team has seen all year. Whatever his dreams, as a mother I confess mine have long since come true.

My boy came home.

Just...why?

Getting my 12-year-old, seventh-grade son ready for school this morning, I quickly checked his assignment notebook where All Important Papers tend to get stuffed and occasionally forgotten.  There was the usual assortment of completed homework, hastily graded by his teacher and returned to my boy, now found crumpled and folded within his notebook.  A few doodles and odd drawings that were instantly endearing to me, and a first mid-quarter progress report for his enriched math class waiting for my signature to acknowledge I had seen his solid A grade.  One other sheet of crisp paper was discovered as I rummaged in my matter-of-fact search-and-rescue mission; an 8-1/2 x 11 piece of photocopied information on the school's official letterhead that seemed to shout, "Read me!  I'm important and the principal signed me!"

It was important.  An eighth-grade student had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  The school had learned what happened while the boy was in the hospital, fighting for the life he thought wasn't worth saving.  It wasn't a fight that would be won; the child died in the foggy morning hours on what for many other people was Just Another Tuesday.  For this young man, for his family, this would never be an ordinary day again.  It's a day of heartbreak, of dark, deep anguish, and pain that will continue on each and every day that comes to pass.  No matter how bright the sun, no matter how crisp the autumn breeze, no matter how beautiful the freshly fallen snow, no matter how stunningly blue the rolling lake waves, the family and friends left behind will mourn this child. 

I mourn him too, though I didn't know him.  I grieve the way every parent grieves when something tragic feels intimately close, a brush against something scarily familiar and yet unknown.  The worry and the fear that this child's choice might someday, one day, be my child's choice.  The enormous struggle of wanting to raise a child in joy and harmony and yet understanding that our desire for controlling our sons' and daughters' environments cannot fully repel their unhappiness, sorrow, depression, their inner turmoil...nor should we want that for them.  Our children are entitled to experience the lightness of their world as well as the darkness of their emotions.  It's our hope, however, that the light will be their guiding force, and the darkness simply the contrast by which they can learn to appreciate their joy.

I'm so sad for this boy, this eighth-grade boy that surely has passed my son in the halls of their school, perhaps sat near one another once or twice during lunch, shared the gym during the all-school dance or waited outside as part of the throngs of kids looking for their parents when the final school bell rings at 2:48 p.m.

For this child, there will be no more slamming of the lockers after tossing in his textbooks for the day, no more questions from his parents about if his homework got done on time.  No more hot lunches, rejoicing when it's "Pizza Hut day" and grimacing when it's another round of "fish nuggets."  No school dances, no looking around for his best buddy in the darkened gym or eyes setting on that one girl who flirts just enough he can't stop thinking about her.  No more hanging around the front of the school, seeking out his mom or dad's mini-van and catching their instant grin when they spy him.  Their child.  Their beloved son.  Their once-baby boy they expected to grow into a man.  They'll no longer empty the pockets of his blue jeans before doing laundry, finding notes and coins stuffed deeply into the well-worn cotton, they'll no longer sit around the dining room table laughing so hard they can't breathe because of a goofy joke he heard at school, they'll no longer make elaborate plans for his birthday party, they'll no longer linger by his door as they pass to go to bed, watching him sleep and remembering when he was a small boy and couldn't live without his favorite blankie.  No more soft touches on his shoulder just to let him know he's special, no more bear hugs after a Saturday football toss in the backyard, no more cups of hot chocolate made just the way he likes it after a freezing January morning shoveling snow together.  No more "I love you's" called out as he heads to the movies, no more "Be home by 5:00!" requests so he'll get home in time for dinner.  No more dreams of who he might become...just dreams of who he used to be.

I mourn for this boy's unhappiness, it hurts to imagine such loneliness and isolation.  It's heartbreaking to me to realize this newly teenage boy, though surely loved and cherished by others, felt he had but one option to end his pain, and I grieve for the family who must now live without him.  I cried as I held my own 12-year-old son this morning after reading the letter from the school, the plain words trying so gently to explain what had happened, what had been shared with the students about the incident.  It's so much more than an incident, it was the life of a child.  And now that life is gone.

"Just like He-Man!"

I fell in love today.  Hard and fast and in the way that takes what was once your breath and turns it into a stream of unconscious gasps of adoration and joy and light.

The subject of said love-falling was my 3-1/2 year-old boy.  He's my fourth born son and is at the age where everything that comes out of his mouth is either the loveliest set of syllables ever created or the most mind-blasting whine you can imagine.  Today it was all about the lovely, and I was putty by night's end.

Because he's 3-1/2 and he's all about search and rescue, he found himself a pair of stored-away snow boots in the utility portion of our basement.  It's where we store every- and anything we even remotely consider might have value.  One day, any day, it doesn't matter.  If it smacks of "we-might-possibly-occasionally-in-the-near-or-far-or-somewhere-in-between-future-need-it-we-should-keep-it" kind of thing.  And so goes these little Land's End suede boots, size 10m in toddler boys, purchased eons ago for siblings who have long since outgrown them and instead now war with my husband at who gets to wear which pair of foot-long Nikes.

He found the boots and dragged them upstairs among other bits and pieces that helped created the persona he had in mind for himself.  A length of gray, spongy sword made by Disney that looks so, well, cute and non-threatening that I could probably serve crackers and cheese on it without causing anyone to cringe, an action figure stuffed into his light blue cotton shorts and the scuffed, rubber-soled boots.  He was ready. 

"Mommy, put 'em on!  Put 'em ON ME, I said!" came the tyrannical voice of my boisterous, must-be-heard little boy.  "I said, PUT 'EM ON ME!"

I did get a "Please?" in combination with a shy smile after requesting as such, and peeked quickly at the tag sewn carefully inside. 

"Um, honey," I began, my voice wobbling as I mentally played out the scenario that was likely to come after I finished what had to be clearly stated, "Honey, these are your boots from two winters ago!  I don't think they'll fit you anymore..."  My voice trailed off, wondering if he was even listening, knowing I was sunk as his toes tried to begin independently stuffing themselves - even without my assistance - into the obviously too-small boots.

"No mom, they fit me, see? Come on, put 'em ON!"

We managed to somehow stuff the right foot in.  I knew there was no going back, and how could I stop now with his smile revealing 6000 watts of pure bliss?  This glowing grin from the face that I have adored for 3-1/2 years and even before, when he used to wink at me in utero...this proud, satisfied face needed me to back him 100%.  And then some.  I'd have given anything to get both of these boots on; Prince Charming with his one glass slipper had nothing on my motivation.

His little left foot, of which a more determined appendage I've never witnessed, got itself tucked and happy inside the other suede boot.  My boy, fully engaged in the role-play he'd created for himself, now a character that needed no introduction, stuffed the Disney sword down the back of his shirt, the handle sticking out as though ready to be grabbed in case of sudden battle.  He jumped off the couch, his pair of suede boots looking awfully small to me for the length of feet I knew existed within them but clearly giving a sense of awesome power and magic to my son.

"Just like He-Man!" my little boy shouted, glee and purpose radiating from his sturdy, olive-skinned body like some golden shield, protecting him from anything adult or grown-up or mature or responsible.

So what if his boots were too small?  So what if his dangerous, dastardly sword was made of gray sponge?  So what if the person he believed himself to be was an outdated, make-believe hero?  With every breath I had in me, each small pocket of air typically reserved for muddling through washing dishes or tidying up endlessly spilling-over little-boy bookcases or chasing down a fussing and tantrum-filled preschooler...every breath I had in me became suddenly crystallized and frozen, a series of ice-hot inhalations that flooded my body, my mind, my heart...five seconds became my entire world in an instant and I knew just one thing, and I knew it better than anything else I'd ever known:

In that moment, those boots were the perfect size for my little boy.  His sword was as majestic as Excalibur.  The action figure in his pocket was as much as a follower or mystic guide as anyone might be.

In that moment, my son was He-Man!

And I fell in love.

It's all in how you look at it. Or him.

My 16th wedding anniversary came and went.  Husband and I went to the movies and then out to dinner at one of our favorite downtown pubs to eat outdoors in the garden dining room.  It was very romantic, and then it was back to business raising five kids together.  One brief, four-hour foray into a "just-us" scenario and then reality hit again: two of our kids needed diaper changes, two of them needed showers, and they all needed pajamas and to be put to bed.  I was glad to let my babysitter go, it's always a bit of an odd transition coming back after having someone else watch my kids, rare an event it may be.  Things are out of place; games are missing parts, books I haven't looked at in years are out of their carefully chosen homes on the bookcase and scattered instead on various table tops throughout my living room, the brand new 24-pack of Aquafina waters are down to an interesting 1-1/2 bottles.  In addition, while we were gone, our babysitter walked the kids to the park that's directly across the street; afterward, she took off all their shoes inside my house, right on my huge braided rug that sits under everything in my family room.  Multiple little sand piles can be seen in all directions, and I have to wonder:

Why doesn't she know to take kids' shoes off outside?  Was I supposed to tell her I don't like miniature sand dunes in my house?  Should I have mentioned that sand is nearly impossible to shake out of my 80-lb rug or that our dog will scheme to nibble and swallow any small sock left behind?  Even so, $40 and she was on her way, hugs and kisses all around.  She's my sister, after all, the only person both available and willing to watch my children, and the doting aunt that she is makes her a favorite anyway.  Sand piles be damned.  Like the kids care!

Ah, the price of a few hours away...an unkempt house upon my return, $40 lighter in the wallet, and more than a few mesmerizing minutes spent looking only into my husband's eyes as we relived the hours before, during and after our wedding...

I would absolutely do it all again.  All of it.

Good thing we have a Shop-Vac for all the other stuff.

"I'd miss you even if..."

I watched "The Wedding Date" tonight.  Friday nights are date nights for us, but Saturday nights are when my husband burrows himself in his music studio and muddles through his recording.  Tonight it was drums for him, so it was a DVD for me.  I stayed upstairs and watched "The Wedding Date" with my yummy, almost-two-year-old daughter as company.  It was pretty much a chick flick anyway, and she just giggled through it and wanted to play "Motorboat, Motorboat" all the way through (what, your child didn't watch 47 sessions of "Whales" preschool swimming lessons last summer?).  And to my parental credit, my girl didn't understand a single word of the more nuanced innuendo.  But she did smile whenever there was kissing.  I thought that was nice.

But I digress.

When Nick, the romantic lead, says "I'd miss you even if we never met," as the female lead holds his hand next to him as they lie on a bed, my heart sighed.  And then I sighed.  That's how I feel about my husband.  We've been married almost 16 years.  Of course we're individuals, of course we have our unique interests and peculiarities.  But beginning the very night we met (and this is truly true, truly), we belonged together, to one another.  And when I'm without him, I cannot wait to be with him again.  When we're together, I hate the thought we might be apart.  Even for a trip to the grocery store.  Or to Target.  Except that Target's pretty fun no matter what.  My husband?  Well, he watches the clock so he can get home to me, sometimes, roses in hand.  For no reason.  Just because.  Well, just because he's happy, I guess.

I'm six days away from my 16th wedding anniversary.  And when I look over at my husband, who has just now wandered into our eat-in kitchen a.k.a. home office as I write this, and he says to me, "I lump you, fishie...I'm imagining you naked," I know my life is just as it should be.

And I'm just so glad there's no missing involved, and there's no such thing as having never met.

I think that's nice.  More than nice, of course.  It's kismet or fate or destiny or whatever you might believe in.  My husband and I tend to stick to the theory that we were just pretty damn fortunate the night we met.  Circumstance and coincidence and all that.

We're six days away from our wedding anniversary, which is a particularly romantic, sentimental time.  Nowadays, of course, we have our five silly kids who tend to roll their collective eyes at our smooching and carrying on.  But that's okay.  Because for them, there's no missing either.  My husband and I have each other, and together we have our intoxicatingly beautiful children.  No "even if's" around here.  Just gratitude for another day to be together, to be a family.

Isn't that the best thing ever?

Milestones That Built A Mom

Once upon a time, I wrote an essay that described my eldest son's rite of passage into kindergarten.  He was only four years old then, on the cusp of turning five just as the leaves were on the cusp of turning from the greens of summer to the reds and golds of autumn.  It was the first of what was to be a full collection that I aptly titled, "Milestones That Built a Boy."  As it happened, it ended up being an essay collection of one.  Still, when I read those the seven-year-old paragraphs, they make me smile in the bittersweet way that parents do when they discover - much to their surprise and delight and regret - that their child has gone from a very small boy to a lean young man.  The years pass, don't they, no matter how we fill the days in between.

As fall teases me, just a few flirtatious flips of the calendar away, I'm readying my kids for the start of another school year.  I have a new kindergartner this year, the third I'll have tossed with much excitement and nervous butterflies into our well-respected public school system.  My dining room table is groaning with the weight of folders, crayons, protractors, rest mats, highlighters, book covers and countless other must-haves.  I have three school-age boys rallying around me, saying "Cool!" and "Ooh!" and "Is that mine?" as the bags get emptied, one by one by one.  Autumn is underfoot in a big way at my house, and not only do I have a seventh-grader ready to go, but a fourth grader and a sparkley new kindergartner as well.  When school begins next week with a palatable half-day session for the older three children, I'll have two smaller ones still at home with me to garner comfort from our revamped weekday scenario, replete with cookie-baking, Duplo-building and (it's my wish) dependable, daily naptime.  One of these autumns, I'll find that I'll have sent the last one off to her kindergarten class, rest mat at the ready, and perhaps that day I'll wander aimlessly in my house, haunted by the years spent with five children clamoring for me, needing me, wanting me.  On that day, all five of my beautiful children will be sitting behind desks, listening to teachers, waiting for recess, wondering what I've packed in their lunches, imagining their after-school baseball game or trying to hurriedly finish their math homework before it has to be turned in.  For now, I'm in the middle of my own milestone as a mom to fast-growing kids that I'm both sending off to the big-kid world and keeping home with me.  I'm not sure which is better; knowing I've done something right to have bright, lovely children sitting quietly during circle time or taking good notes in history class, or looking across the dining room table for an after-carpool breakfast with my two youngest babies and offering scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast as we watch the autumn rains begin to drench our flowers.

I guess when it comes down to it, I know only one thing.  Each day that I awake and there's a child who knocks softly at my door or perhaps stumbles softly to my bedside, I'm grateful.  I have been awarded another day to make a difference in my child's life, to offer something new or special or even just the very same as the day before: love.  As my children grow, all too quickly, it seems, in size, in spirit, in ability, to become independent, I grow as well.  I grow able to one day, let them go.

I'm not sure if that's a milestone I ever want to reach...but as a mom, there's no turning back.  Everything I do, I do to prepare those small bodies, those sharp minds, for their own blossoming worlds.  One day, they'll prepare their own children in kind...now that's a milestone.  It's all about how we fill the days...

A name...by any other name...

Tonight I spent a little time surfing a favorite infertility website I frequented while trying to achieve and subsequently maintain my most recent three pregnancies.  I'm still familiar with many of the participants and because several of those wonderful ladies are expecting again, I was enjoying my voyeuristic peek at the progress of their pregnancies.

Until I happened upon a subject line that caught my interest, and when I read through the message, my breath caught in my throat.

A woman, unknown to me before today, was sharing a 3D ultrasound photograph of the daughter she's carrying.  She has another child, a four-year-old girl, and delighted in sharing a photograph of her as well.

But it was the 3D sonogram that tossed me back to a place I try to keep tucked neatly, sweetly, and tidily into a softly wrapped package of love, grief and longing.  As this woman, anxious yet excited about this new life she has dreamed of, shared the beauty of her ultrasound photo, of the very baby she is growing in her belly even as I write this, she noted her daughter-to-be's name...

It was the very same as my own daughter's name, my firstborn child, so gently carried within my womb until 37 weeks when something so climactic happened that my innocent baby girl's life was extinguished - fully and completely.  She died sometime in the darkness of one night in December, going quickly from my most blessed dream to my most somber heartache.

My daughter's name had been chosen carefully, a first name regal and beautiful, a middle name delightfully simple and charming.  Her first name, shortened and then forever linked to her middle name -- that was our daughter's special moniker, one that I've never heard of before or since my own beloved child.  I thought she must be the only one, surely she was the only one.

Life is somehow bigger when you see your child's name in stark print, the child you lost and will never see again except in delivery room photographs or velvety dreams in which things always turn out differently and your baby didn't die at all but instead prances around the living room in your husband's joyfully outstretched arms.

My own girl died; this other woman's daughter, the daughter she waits for in earnest anticipation and hope, still lives.  One day, a few months from now, this baby girl will burst into the world with the same noisy wail and lusty cry that I had hoped to hear from my own robust yet utterly silent newborn, the one I labored and pushed into the waiting, gloved hands of my obstetrician and then hungrily cradled, even as her motionless body cooled on my newly empty belly.  This other little baby's parents will exclaim over her tiny, perfect fingers, her lovely, rounded limbs, her impossibly darling expression, and they will call her by name.  Her name, of course, but even before, even before this new baby comes into the world, it was my baby's name, the name for my pretty little girl. 

My own daughter's name...it will always be my own daughter's name.  I wish I could say it now and see her bounding around the corner, brown hair shining, eyes laughing, hands shifting and dancing as they tell a story of what happened at the mall or at school or with one of her now-five siblings...she doesn't answer to my plaintive call, my own little girl, but it will always be her name.

Oh happy day.

Last week's Big Teaching Hospital Appointment Circus, also known as The Day My Little Boy Had His Echo Done, went well.

Very well.

"His heart abnormalities are stable," she said.  She, of course, being the only voice that mattered in a room that included one clinician, two cardiology nurses and five medical students, all whom jockeyed for position near my son, each of their shiny new stethoscopes getting the famous shirt rub before application to my worn-out child's chest.  Because I'm not very good at disguising my flirtation with condescension due to my appreciation-mixed-indelicately-with-indignation at our teaching hospital's streaming supply of students, interns, residents and attending physicians, I tell my three-and-a-half year-old son in an overly bright tone of voice, "Hey!  You get to choose which person you think is doing the most awesome job with their stethoscope!  When all these folks are done listening to your heart, you can decide who you like the best!"  The group of students shifts their feet and smile at me in an awkward attempt to gain my trust so they can gain access to my boy's murmur, evidently more noticeable today than ever before.  It's not necessarily an alarming finding; after all, I had just gotten the official word from my son's doc that "stable" is the phrase o'day (his multiple structural abnormalities are monitored by echocardiogram, EKG and MRI, and typically cannot be detected audibly), but anything even remotely interesting is discussed ad nauseam by each of the five students individually after they've had their turn with their ears cocked and their eyes focused on some minuscule spot on the wall as the rush of blood circulating through my child's heart continues to give new insight and lessons to an entry-level physician-to-be, and then discussed collectively again when all five turn eagerly toward the cardiac specialist that I've known since my son was barely past his embryonic stage.  At that point, I just want out.  The testing is done, the exams are over, the diagnoses are in, I've gotten my paperwork for next year's follow-up studies.  Let the six docs talk about my little boy as if he isn't even in the room after we've gone and aren't even in the room.  Yeah.  That'd be good.

Anyway.  My son never did choose which student he liked the best.  I thought they were all very nice, truth be told, each of them gentle and respectful of the small patient sitting before them, dressed only in an ancient pair of toddler size 4 navy cotton shorts and his favorite pair of canary yellow-rimmed blue cotton socks, one small tear in the right toe that I hoped would be overlooked.  Favorites mean everything when you are walking into a Really Big Building where your mum has told you that a Very Nice Lady will first make a Super Fancy Movie about your heart and then A Bunch More People will talk and talk and talk.  My darling's bare chest, tanned from his afternoons at the local aquatic center, was the object of everyone's attention and affection.  And thanks to the reassuring diagnostic studies performed, said chest was the proud protector of one spectacularly stable heart.

I just hope the clinic staff doesn't get mad when they realize we stole the exam room's Scooby Doo toy.  It seemed a fitting reward for a boy who had so willingly given up his heart for the afternoon so that others could learn.

"Ruby-Doo!"  That means "stable," my current favorite word, in Scooby-speak. 

Stable rocks.

Why do the years fly as they do?

I mean, I'm all for the passing of the seasons; the excitement that goes along with the anticipation and then fulfillment of spring, summer, winter or fall, or perhaps the enjoyment of a long-awaited event like a birthday or special holiday.  That's dandy and fine.  Really.  Time has to move along and move along it does.

But does it have to fly?

My youngest boy, my fourth-born son who challenged everyone during my pregnancy with early test results that seemed to indicate to everyone -- except for him, of course -- that something was terribly wrong.  Probably chromosomal, probably structural, probably life-altering at best, life-snuffing at worst.  They didn't think he'd survive the pregnancy...and if he did, it would be only to live a little while in a lousy state of being until Death came and crashed his little party.

Death was stood up.  My little boy, now three and a half and headstrong beyond words, struts around his world like he owns the place.  He does, of course, as all kids this age do.  My boy wakes up and makes his daily demands:  "You cozy me!" "I see 'Credibles!"  "More choc-lit milk!"  I comply, encouraging him to be gentle in his requests, soft with his voice and kind with his eyes.  In typical toddler-esque fashion, he is spunky with his response to me, providing impish grins so wide they nearly encompass the rosy, dimpled cheeks that I find myself smooshing and kissing as often as I can.  Because he's growing up, my boy is, faster and faster and faster.

Today, he went to the swimming lessons he shares with his five-year-old brother.  My older boy is bold and cheerful when facing the huge pool of shimmering blue water.  My youngest boy is less eager, worried about water in his eyes and scared of being splashed.  He asks me earnestly as we drive to the city pool, "You gonna help me?"  Of course I will, I say, my words cloaking him, it is my hope, in comfort and courage. 

In one week, he goes back to the enormous teaching hospital that graces our capitol city for another echocardiogram.  Last year, I had butterflies deep in my belly dancing and smashing about in confusion and discordance.  I was nearly nauseous when it came time for the transducer to float on my little son's chest, the sonogram jelly offering a bizarrely blurry, shiny layer between what lay inside my boy and what we needed to see pop up on the computer screen.  This year, the butterflies have come back, the confidence of last year's exam results having faded into the background of what we might see now that my boy is bigger.  Did his abnormal, candy cane-shaped vessels grow alongside the rest of him?  Are his wrongly-made valves still coping with the demands of his body's blood supply?  Is his heart okay?  Most of all, I wonder:  Is his heart okay?

I suppose the only person I can ask is my sweet hero's pediatric cardiologist, and though I'll phrase it differently, more civilized and hopefully without tears, my bottom line when offering up my small son's body for testing and evaluation is this:

"You gonna help me?" 

Because I really need to know.  Time can fly like the wind until next Wednesday @ 1:30 when we'll sit inside the darkened room and my small child will lay quietly and a bit reluctantly as he watches "Pinocchio" or "Dumbo."  Time needs to race forward until I'm able to hear the specialist tell me that my boy is doing fine, that he's still healthy, that we can make plans for another birthday, another Christmas.  Once I can hear her say all is well, I'll want time to slow back down again, a bit less rushed, less hectic, less frantic.  Because I need time with my son, I need so much more time.  I don't want to miss a thing, not a single beat of his beautiful, courageous heart.

And when next he goes to the pool for his lessons, if I should hear him ask me, "You gonna help me?" my words will be the same.  "Of course, my darling, of course I'm going to help you.  I'll always be here to help you, I'll be right here whenever you need me.  You're safe, sweetheart, I promise..you're safe." 

I just hope I'll be right.

How do you spell s-u-m-m-e-r?

My 3-1/2 year old boy likes to say:

"Mem-o-lade please, Mom!"

when requesting his favorite cool drink on a hot summer's day.

Memolade...I always know exactly what he means.  I can't imagine I'll ever think of it called by any other name...