So I was simultaneously loading the dishwasher, making two lunches, watching the toaster for smoke and listening to a mini reporter on my mini TV talking about the importance of keeping your kiddies’ vaccinations up-to-date. She said something like, “we have the vaccinations, but they’ll only work if we all keep our shots up to date, and some people aren’t!” in a chiding, thinly veiled, passive-aggressive strident tone. I nodded my head, switching to scouring the counter with baking soda (think green!) to remove any traces of chicken (think safety!) before slicing cucumbers (think healthy!) for said lunches.
Yes, those vaccinations and those people who don’t keep them up to date, I thought. Somewhere from the haze of real estate flyers, bills and offers to do the weeding and feeding of my lawn, I remembered opening and scanning a letter from the city in many, many languages. “Get someone to read this to you” it said. Ha! I’ll read it myself and then I tossed it. I knew exactly where I tossed it (in a file labelled READ). I fished it out, and yes, it’s a reminder to get Luka caught up on vaccines OR ELSE. The OR ELSE is suspension from school. I didn’t figure that would actually happen when I received the same letter regarding Tessa’s vaccines either.
IT DID. (more…)
This is an unauthorized photo of my birthday boy Graydon, dressed as an extra in an MTV shoot (more on that later). Graydon didn’t want a photo posted. If he sees it, I’ll have to honour his wishes. As it is, I’m his mother and I’m putting it up Because I Said So!
OK, so this is very personal, but it’s a parenting blog, and we celebrate parenting by drinking to excessive in the privacy of our homes and gardens—I jest—by celebrating the birthdays of our kids. My first son, Graydon, turns 15 today. I have no scanner at home, and no pictures of him as a baby in digi format, so I can’t post one here. But he had blond hair the colour of spun gold in a gentle marcel-like wave pattern all over his head, green eyes and the sweetest disposition. Everytime he had a fever and I took him to the ped, she’d look in his eyes and then demand of me: “Isn’t this little guy screaming at home?!?!?” I’d say no and she’d tell me about the raging ear infections—one after another, all awful, but he was asymptomatic through them all. His extremely attentive sister Tessa, a lover of the soother, would stick his soothers in his mouth and he would launch them right back at her—he needed no solace. He was a happy, happy baby. He stuck damp Cheerios all over his face as long as someone would laugh, and we did. He and Tessa were best friends. Now, he turns 15. He had three years of treatment for leukemia, from 8 to 11, and that disease has left a huge mark. My boy has gone through things no child should have to, and they hurt him. And he is still working on some of it, the late effects we know, and the ones we hope won’t crop up. But he loves all of us and we love him. So, tonight, it’s party time at our house. Pictures tomorrow, maybe.
