Science facts

"Hey, mom - did you know that most birth defects are caused by something the mom ate or did during pregnancy?"

I am helping him get his compression stocking on, something we do every day.  It's too tight for him to be able to do it himself, even though this week he will be twelve years old, and he is nearly as tall as I am, and weighs almost as much, too.  I have just pulled it up past his knee, and I'm looking at him as he is talking, smiling.  But I was caught off guard, and for the split second it took for me to register what he'd said, he saw my secret, the thing I've battled every day since he was born and we discovered that he had Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome.  The fear that it was my fault, that I had done something wrong, even though I've had specialists tell me it's just something that happens sometimes, just a quirk of nature brought about by a wrong turn on a strand of genetic material.

I recover as quickly as it registers, but I'm caught and he...he is mortified, horrified that he has hurt me.

"But I'm not blaming you, I just have K-T, and I was born that way and I wouldn't want to be any different!  I love you and I know you didn't do anything wrong, and I only think it's sometimes that it happens, maybe most of the time, but it doesn't MATTER because I LOVE who I am and I love YOU, and if I didn't have K-T I wouldn't be me..."  He is in danger of running out of air, and I stop him.

"Sweetheart - it's okay.  I know you were just telling me something interesting that you learned, and it's just science.  Sometimes even in science there are variables.  I know you aren't blaming me.  I love you just as you are, and I know you love me too.  Please don't worry, I'm okay."

We have a ritual after his stocking is on - we have a big hug.  Today's hug is tighter than normal, and lasts twice as long.

"Thanks for helping me with my stocking, mom.  I love you."

"You bet.  I love you too."

Reasons why...

There are a few reasons I haven't blogged:  limited time is one, reconsidering my son's privacy is another.  He's getting to an age (TEN if his birth certificate is to be believed) where my writing about his antics, or my reaction to them needs more consideration.  A need for more, well, not privacy necessarily, just keeping my cards, my life, closer to my chest.

The main reason, though, I think is that this sense of time speeding past, like a bullet train, has me straining and squinting to trick myself into seeing it in slow motion.  Or at least slower motion.  Writing doesn't slow it down any, I need to watch closely, enjoy the view.

I ran across this poem today that sort of sums it up nicely:

The Size Of Spokane
The baby isn't cute.  In fact he's
a homely little pale and headlong
stumbler.  Still, he's one
of us _ the human beings
stuck on flight 295 (Chicago to Spokane);
and when he passes my seat twice
at full tilt this then that direction,
I look down from Lethal Weapon 3 to see
just why.  He's

running back andforth
across a sunblazed circle on
the carpet - something brilliant, fallen
from a porthole.  So! it's light
amazing him, it's only light, despite
some three and one
half hundred
people, propped in rows
for him to wonder at/ it's light
he can't get over, light he can't
investigate enough, however many
zones he runs across it,
flickering himself.

The umpteenth time
I see him coming, I've had
just about enough; but then
he notices me noticing and stops -
one fat hand on my armrest - to
inspect the oddities of me.

Some people cannot hear.
Some people cannot walk.
But everyone was
sunstruck once,and set adrift.
Have we forgotten how
astonishing this is? so practiced all our senses
we cannot imagine them? foreseen instead of seeing
all the all there is?  Each spectral port,
each human eye

is shot through with a hole, and everything we know
goes in there, where it feeds a blaze.  In a flash

the baby's old; Mel Gibson's hundredth comeback seems
less clever; all his chases and embraces
narrow down, while we
fly on (in our
plain radiance of vehicle)

toward what cannot stay small forever.

Heather McHugh


I'll be around once in a while.  You just might have to knock a little louder for me to hear you.

Simple Gifts

Sunday morning. Music, NY Times, good coffee.

My camera, the garden the rain.

But mostly this. I'm just so grateful for this.

Walt Whitman - Laws for Creations

I have never read Walt Whitman, but I'm going to change that. I have read bits and pieces. But sometimes I think we find what we need when we need it.

Found this today:

LAWS for Creations,
For strong artists and leaders—for fresh broods of teachers, and perfect literats for America,
For noble savans, and coming musicians.

All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world;
And no coward or copyist shall be allowed;
There shall be no subject too pronounced—All works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections;
There they stand—I see them already, each poised and in its place,
Statements, models, censuses, poems, dictionaries, biographies, essays, theories—How complete! How relative and interfused! No one supersedes another;
They do not seem to me like the old specimens,
They seem to me like Nature at last, (America has given birth to them, and I have also;)
They seem to me at last as perfect as the animals, and as the rocks and weeds—fitted to them,
Fitted to the sky, to float with floating clouds—to rustle among the trees with rustling leaves,
To stretch with stretched and level waters, where ships silently sail in the distance.”

What do you suppose Creation is?
What do you suppose will satisfy the Soul, except to walk free, and own no superior?
What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God?
And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?
And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?
And that you or any one must approach Creations through such laws?