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Today a book came in the mail that my 6 year old had ordered and paid for with his own money: a used copy of A Light In The Attic that came complete with an inscription written in decidedly British handwriting, down to the crossed numeral seven-


Gloriously coincidentally our nickname for our 6 year old is Jack.  So he wondered why I signed my name Mum because he calls me Mutti, which is another long story in and of itself.  I found the inscription delightful, though I have decided to ignore the fact that the first recipient decided to heartlessly sell off his books online.  In a good spin, mayhaps the original owner found life so very full of personal poetry that he decided to sell his books cheaply in order to give back to the population at large. Um?  O.K. so that's a stretch.

1.  That my son got money and first thought of buying a copy of Shel Silverstein poetry and only later decided to buy another Bionicle with his leftover money.
2. That after ripping open the package my son couldn't do anything else but sit with me and read.
3. The fact that he loves poetry at all.  And he does, his favorites besides Silverstein are- Robert Louis Stevenson,  Karla Kuskin, and A. A. Milne.  
4. That possibly, at some distant point in the future, my home will no longer be overrun with legos.

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I heard muffled thumps and bumps but as they were unaccompanied by screams or squeals of indignation I pretended all was quiet.  My intentional deafness rewarded me with alone time in which I was able to return several phone calls and pay bills and have a few coherent thoughts in my head for longer than 5 seconds.  Quite a mommy feat on day number four of freezy, rainy, muddy, miserable weather.

A door opened and footsteps signaled the approach of a noisy, happy 6 year old.  "We're hungry.  Can we have a snack?"  I looked up.  My beaming happy 6 year old is standing there with carpet burn on his chin and left check, his face is bright read with heat and his left temple has a brand new bumpy lump and abrasion.

"What happened to you!"

"Nothing.  But we made up a great new game.  We [we being he and his 5 year old brother] had to keep our big brother from getting on the top of my bunk bed.  It was great, we kept throwing him off the bunk bed."

Suddenly I realize I am a terrible mother.  Imagine my voice rising to a squeak at the end of this sentence: "You played King of the Mountain on the bunk beds?"

"No, we just threw Ben off every time he tried to get on."

Oh, that wouldn't be anything like King of the Mountain.

"Did Ben throw you off too and that's how you got hurt? "  I asked, trying to figure out how the thrower can look so damaged and readying a mental lecture for the 11 year old for tossing his brothers off a bunk bed.

He looked at me with total bewilderment, "No and I'm not hurt."

O.K. then.  Pain is obviously mitigated by the amount of fun one is having.

Mothering Quandary #473 lecture time or snack time first, and should the answer really just depend on the extended weather forecast?



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As usual, after my son has a hospitalization triggered by his Fatty Acid Oxidation Disorder, I process things in writing and by doing a little extra research.  It's how I'm built.

I found Chronic Illness and Disability Through the Life Span, edited by Eisenberg, Sutkin and Jansen and perused it.  This startling insight made by a team of researchers made me laugh:

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We've been in our current home almost 10 years.  When we first moved here a neighbor warned us, in earshot of our children, "Don't let them play in the gatehouses, they are full of black widow spiders."



The neighbor's words were evidently taken at full value by my listening children.  Fine by me- sending my children off to play in the entrance of the neighborhood by a busy street was never on my to-do list anyway.  Fast forward 10 years.  10 years of which I've never had to tell a child to avoid the gatehouses.  I'm taking littlest man, all of 5 years old, walking with the dog.  On a whim I turn down into the entrance instead of our normal walk.

Halfway to the gatehouses Littlest becomes agitated.  "We are not allowed!"

Um, "You are not allowed without Mommy- but I'm taking you this way so it's fine."

"But the dog!"

"The dog is allowed with me too."

"But the spider!"

"What spider?"

"The spider what lives in the entrance and will eat us."

"What? Do you mean the spiders that are sometimes in the gatehouse?"

"No."  Whereupon he grabbed the leash and pulled me to a stop and pointed.




"It lives in there and if the dog, or someone little walks too close the spider will jump out and grab it and drag it in."



I've always wondered how long the phrase, "it's origins are lost in the mists of time," implies... now I know it means 10 years.



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As a mature woman is wont to do, I spent time while in the hospital with my son mentally designing the superpower I would like to have.

What?  Mature women don't daydream like that?

Yes they do.  And sometimes they even ponder what they would do if they won a lottery, even though they never have and never will buy a ticket.

My superpower would be instantly transporting myself and anything I touch with my bare hands.  What mom couldn't use the ability to instantaneously arrive with a child at a Karate class across town?  There would be no need to schlep all the children; take your cell phone along and if your kids at home need you, poof- you're back home.

The homeschooling opportunities abound.  I could take both my littles to a park in Mödling, Austria each day for German language practice.  Field trips to the Parthenon, the Chagall museum in Nice, France would be just afternoon visits with no passports required.

I could visit my sisters, both of whom live over a thousand miles away, for tea.  I even briefly imagined transporting one sister to visit her son- but he's stationed in South Korea and my daydream was sidetracked by being arrested by military police and being held as possible spies.  Daydream gone bad.

Which led to the conclusion that a transporting ability needs to be coupled with some sort of slow morph into visibility so as not to attract undue attention.  Super-powers are very complicated things, I know because I watched Smallville.

Powers are also enticing things.  Especially when one feels relatively powerless.  I didn't daydream about being able to heal sickness and disease.  Why?  Because the very idea hurts and makes me admit that I don't have any hope for my chronically ill son ever being totally healed.

I wonder if it is universal that we don't skirt too near the aches of life when we are daydreaming? Perhaps daydreaming is a power, a power to be thankful to God for?

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I was crazy busy over the Fall semester.  I started having free brain space as 6 months worth of being able to sleep a full night without having to get up to administer meds. to my 6 year old son started to accrue and payoff dividends.

My hair even got thicker.

I lost some weight gained in many E.R. visits and hospital stays from the last 4 years...

We marked 21 months without a metabolic crisis.



I started thinking that this blog, this blog I started as an escape valve for all my stressed-out thoughts on the topic of childhood chronic illness seemed a bit, well, superfluous as well as a time gobbler.

Then the flu hit my house.  The flu doesn't play well with inborn metabolic disorders.  My 6 year old had to go to the E.R. on New Year's Eve and ended up admitted to the hospital for several days until the flu ran it's course.

I now feel sorry for security guards nationwide- I'm sure they are praying for the gods of fashion to bring back simple leather flats; every woman entering the hospital (including me) set off the metal detector  because of buckles and/or large zippers on their boots.  Beep, beep, beep....

My 18 year old daughter had accompanied us to the ER; she set off the metal detectors once with her boots and once with the folding knife she got for christmas.  Beep, beep.

We got to watch the Times Square celebration.  Right as the ball dropped and the crowds cheered my son's IV occluded, BEEP, Beep, beep....

Strange times.  But, we left the hospital a few days later.  I left with the same number of children I went in with and that's what really counts.  I don't mind beeping in the New Year after all.



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