The thing about the sick kids is that I seem to process it as static. We're going along and doing okay and I even make some strides being more present or gentle with them, and then we have a week like last week, where we had a severe croup and a cold and vomiting and ear infection with draining pus, and it's like there's this buzz in the back of my head. Before I know it I'm crying and up at all hours worrying that it's some hidden illness we haven't identified yet and that it's all going to end badly, badly, and it will be my fault for not standing up for my children and their health!
Addie's okay. True, there is a peanut butter-like substance leaking from her left ear, and she can't hear a thing from it. But the ENT says the infection is not anything to be too worried about, that the tubes are doing their job because at least that crud isn't impacting in there, and use these antibiotic drops and it will clear up in no time. "You're kidding," I said. He looks at me like, what? You were expecting a death sentence?
Well, maybe. Maybe my sleep-deprived catastrophizing side got the better of me.
As I was falling asleep last night, sniffling and crying, I saw a blurry star dance across the night sky. A plane, with its light blinking, but soft and twinkly because I'm near detail-blind without my glasses on. It passed across the horizon and blinked out. Come back, I thought. Come back.
Then, today, after dropping the kids off at school and racing home to make the doctor's appointment, I swear a hundred blackbirds dropped from the trees above my car and dashed into the road in front of me, disappearing. How could I have seen them and yet they weren't there? But that's what happened, and didn't happen.
Things happening, and not happening. That's how it works.
Addie's okay. True, there is a peanut butter-like substance leaking from her left ear, and she can't hear a thing from it. But the ENT says the infection is not anything to be too worried about, that the tubes are doing their job because at least that crud isn't impacting in there, and use these antibiotic drops and it will clear up in no time. "You're kidding," I said. He looks at me like, what? You were expecting a death sentence?
Well, maybe. Maybe my sleep-deprived catastrophizing side got the better of me.
As I was falling asleep last night, sniffling and crying, I saw a blurry star dance across the night sky. A plane, with its light blinking, but soft and twinkly because I'm near detail-blind without my glasses on. It passed across the horizon and blinked out. Come back, I thought. Come back.
Then, today, after dropping the kids off at school and racing home to make the doctor's appointment, I swear a hundred blackbirds dropped from the trees above my car and dashed into the road in front of me, disappearing. How could I have seen them and yet they weren't there? But that's what happened, and didn't happen.
Things happening, and not happening. That's how it works.
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