Symptoms

We had such a nice weekend!  Good company, good food, good weather, good boating on good water, good garage sale find that the kids have not stopped arguing over and playing with from the very second we got it home.... This was a good, GOOD weekend.

The only problem is my mind.  Things are going along great, I am having an ok time forgetting our reality and BOOM, Caden says he's not feeling well, that his stomach is hurting, that it is different pain than he's felt before, and my mind careens down the Is This the Beginning of the End? slippery slope.  No matter that two Tums and Ibuprofen took care of the pain, that it could possibly be a radiation side effect, I can't shake the gripping fear in my heart, or the shallow breaths that make me dizzy.  He tells me that he's feeling more fatigued than normal, but it can't just be that he's had crazy insane allergies like everyone else in this house town, that we're all feeling more sluggish, oh no, it's fatigue because This is the Beginning of the End.  Oh, you stayed up until Midnight and feel exhausted today?  You must have Cancer raging through your body right now!  I'm back to symptom-diagnosing Caden at a molecular level, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop, for the last beating that is going to name freaking cancer champion over Caden's physical body.

I am sick to death of clocks and minutes and counting.  I used to be so excited for my kids to go back to school.  I remember the days where I was ready to basically drop them off at 6:00am on the first day, making that the only day where waking up that early sounded like fun!  Disneyland Fun, I tell you.  But not this year.  This year I feel like the School Clock and the End Clock are ticking, ticking, ticking, stealing my time with my little family.  I am not ready, dang it!  I. Am. Not. Ready!  But I am not going to be the one that tells him that the reality for him is that school doesn't matter one bit, so stay home with your mom while you can.  I feel like the mother hen from the story I heard a few years ago.  After a massive fire, firefighters found a mother hen charred and burned, with her sweet chicks alive and safe under her.  I am the mother that knows the fire is coming, that wants to hide and protect her chicks at the expense of all that she is.  My son is dying and I have to let him attend hours and hours of school each day, for as long as he is healthy, because that is what will make him feel most normal, make him most happy.   Who am I to shove reality in his face?  I know how it feels.

I think Jerry Spinelli got it right in his book Love, Stargirl:

Who came up with minutes, anyway?  Who needs them?  Name one good thing a minute's ever done.  They shorten fun and measure misery.  Get rid of them, I say.

Clocks- that's the problem.  Every clock is a nest of minutes and hours.  Clocks strap us into their shape....  Clocks lock us into minutes, make Ferris wheel riders of us all, lug us round and round from number to number, dice the time of our lives into tiny bits until the bits are all we know and the only question we care to ask is, "What time is it?"  As if minutes could tell.

What time is it?  It's Back to School time.  And it breaks my heart.  I wish we could just play with abandon until...