- Female
- Blond
- Has huge blue eyes
- Is very tiny for her age
- Was born four weeks prematurely and we had to really work to find clothes small enough for her because newborn stuff was too big
- Laughs a lot
- Is Scorpio, like me
- Is pretty and popular
- Sparkles when she moves, as though each inch of her trails a special fairy dust trail behind her
- Is fun to be with, a joy to have around.
- Broods
- Rarely loses her temper, but when she does, has a real temper
- Is wildly creative, a good artist, into crafting
- Loves cats
- Whines too much
- Plays with me, and is little with me
My middle child is playing with the bead curtain. We just figured out that her bellybutton is where all the food I ate when I was pregnant went, and that once the bellybutton is closed, you can't re-open it to get the food back, even if you're hungry. We figured out that though Eevee can fly, it isn't supposed to. That the little tiny ends of pencils left after a year of sharpening are really baby pencils and new ones are Mommy pencils. That her cocoa is, in fact, mine to drink out from under her. That you aren't allowed to check to see if the pen works by writing on the shelf it was sitting on.
We figured out that smart is more important than beautiful, even when you are as beautiful as she is. After a year of focusing on her academics, we figured out she was brilliant beyond words. We figured out she adapts better and faster than anyone else in the house.
My middle child is why people have kids. She bounces, and skips and dances and delights at just about every possible turn.
I myself never quite figured out where I am in the birth order totem. I am my mothers third child, but my fathers first. That makes me the youngest middle oldest, I think. I probably should have bought a birth order book in the parenting aisle of the self abuse section at Barnes and Noble so I could get valuable insight into who the kids will be from people who have never had children and in fact have never been in a room with a child and who, in further fact, deep down believe that 'children' don't exist at all and are part of a Right Wing plot to overthrow the government through daycare tax breaks and so, in an unconscious attempt to save the world, they write parenting books that give so many useless gobbledygook answers your child is certain to die or become brain damaged in their first year should you follow the advice.
No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm a victim of parenting books. I have dozens of them, and they all vary on every possible issue involving actual parenting. I think they would have done much better writing about something less fluid than a child. Something like tractor repair. Or instead of books, it might have been better for them to go on the net and start a board where people could discuss the issues involved in parenting, where they could fulfill their secret need to argue and confuse anyone who should happen by.
I wrote to T. Berry Brazelton once, and he was kind enough to not only answer my letter personally, but on his own stationary, giving me his home address. He suggested, when I detailed my concerns, that I get therapy.
I hear that a lot, so that seems to be one thing the experts can agree on.
Three hours ago, my son had another seizure. He went almost a year without them, and then bam, two in a month or so. No one knows why. We had thought it was because he was being overdosed on his meds, and when we switched doses the seizures stopped for almost a year. Nothing has changed med wise so I don't get it. I keep thinking, could it be the Nintendo? Could that be doing weird things with his brain waves? They always hit just as he is falling asleep though, not when he is playing, and when they did the EEG they tested him for response to flashing lights and he was fine.
It takes him longer to come out of it every time he has one. Not the seizure itself. He has grand mal seizures, and that only lasts a minute or so. I mean the aphasia...the way he talks. It takes him a minute or so more to come back to where he can look at you, focus on you, and then it is ten minutes or more before he can talk clearly. He can hear me in the middle of them....it used to be, I could like, see him in there, you know? Trying to communicate, but unable. I could see it, I could feel him inside me.
The doctors said it is very rare for someone in a seizure to hear people, but my son can. He repeated what I said. I have always just stayed with him, told him I loved him, told him it would be alright, told him not to be scared. This last one, he didn't seem so frightened, you know? But...oh, they are scary things. And at the end, you get a frighteningly real glimpse of what your child would be like if they had, say Cerebral Palsy, or one of those hideous diseases that turns your child into a vegetable just before it kills them. And all you want to do, every instinct in your body screams at you, tears at you to hold him, to cuddle him close, to wrap yourself around him so nothing can get at him, but you can't because that would freak him out, and deep down you know that that way lies madness...that giving into that need would be blowing yourself just over the gate-line into insanity, and they might find you, wrapped irrevocably around the boy, drooling and bleeding from your bitten lips. But god, how I want to keep him safe, and I hate this because it isn't something tangible, you know? Same with my oldest daughter...they have these problems I can't grab onto to fix, to get rid of, to change, to make all better just by being mom. It really is enough to make you nuts.
The last time he was in the emergency room, the doctor told me how lucky we were, because he had had a kid in whose seizures lasted for a couple of hours, and would definitely leave him brain damaged. Shit. Fuck shit.
Fuck shit.
I didn't take him to the ER tonight. Last time they just watched him for an hour and sent him home. I am grateful that his seizures are so minor that they are so blase. But I figured, I can watch him here and 911 can have someone here in a heartbeat if something else happens...and deep down, I'm pissed at these med school assholes who tell me there is no reason for this. Of course there is a REASON. SOMETHING has to be happening to cause them. What they really mean is we don't KNOW what the reason is, and he isn't in dire enough shape for us to look closer.
He's sleeping now. I keep checking him, to make sure he is breathing. I won't send him to school today. I'll miniaturize him and put him in a locket around my neck where he'll stay safe.
I wish I could be sure that the doctors knew what they were talking about, for my son and my oldest daughter. I thought, when my daughter was in the hospital, no way are these bozos going to try to do a good job. Not with my crappy insurance, so I tried to sell a kidney. I thought, I bet I could get a FORTUNE for a kidney, and I could pay for decent doctors....but the blood donor places tell me it's against the law. I thought about EBay, but Lyle told me some guy got put in jail for that.
I have nothing else of value though. How much money would be enough to buy a doctor's soul and make sure he would do his best?
I'm tired. I'm tired and I want to take a bath but I promised my son I would stay with him in the living room, and I'm afraid to go to sleep.
