contemplations

What the hell went wrong? I sometimes think, looking down upon my son’s thick head of hair and stroking it. We painted his room when I was pregnant, but I wore a respirator. I swam a mile almost every day. Was it the chlorine that soaked into my body, my lungs? I drank bits of wine here and there, like the Europeans, but not enough to dizzy a mouse. I ate well—not too much—slept well, relaxed, moved my body and felt happy. How did that one sperm, strong enough to break into that one egg, turn into Calvin, into a boy so weak and compromised who lacks the balance to walk completely by himself, the coordination to manipulate objects, the ability to understand the abstract, the words to tell us how he feels or the capacity to do most anything?

Then came the seizures. All that was before the seizures and the drugs. How does he withstand it? How do I? Do I? Barely, it would seem of late.

From all of this—and what accompanies—I seethe, at times loathing more than just my life, wondering where I am going, pondering my mortality and Calvin’s. Will I be taking care of him for the remainder of my life? What will happen to him after I die? What if he dies before I do? Will his seizures ever stop? Will I ever be able to literally let go of him and walk unencumbered by his side? Will I be able to get the hell out of here and do the things that I want to do, go where I want to go?

But, like so many things, there are no answers, only slow time. So, instead of thinking of tomorrow or next year or five, ten, fifteen years from now, I think only of tonight, of the glass of wine and the bit of sushi I’ll be nibbling with my friend Vivian, which is a long overdue and most thrilling engagement to contemplate.

photo by Michael Kolster