the gravity of it all

The gravity of the sun and moon makes tides ebb and rise, makes spells befall my son. At least it seems so. Twice he seized this weekend, on the brink of a new moon. The arrival of both fits was stealthy, no major ramp ups, no mania, no marked malaise, just his usual restlessness on what has become—because of coronavirus—an ever-shorter tether.

In the wake of last night's grand mal, Michael and I sat in the dark with Calvin, I on a step stool next to his bed, Michael in a chair he brought in from another room. Plates in our laps, we ate dinner in silence as our boy drifted back to sleep. Occasionally, I put my face next to Calvin's, or licked a finger and held it under his nose to make sure he was still breathing; it's the twenty minutes, or so, after a grand mal when the risk is highest of succumbing to SUDEP (sudden unexpected death in epilepsy) particularly for someone like our son.

Just before midnight, I woke myself crying out in a dream about my late father, though not the one in which he is whisked helplessly into space by a roped bundle of helium balloons caught around his ankle. As I came to, gale force winds were hammering the house and rocking the pines in their foundations. Rain and debris from nearby trees pelted the windows. Along with the new moon, I wondered if the approaching torrent had weakened Calvin's fragile seizure threshold. I padded into his room and slipped him a little extra THCA cannabis oil hoping to prevent another seizure from gathering momentum.

For over three hours I laid awake listening to the storm. I tossed and turned: worrying about my loved ones who got Covid and wondering if they'll fully recover; exhausted from nine months of caring for Calvin six to eight hours most days by myself; grumbling about another of Calvin's IEP meetings in which his one-on-one therapies continue to be whittled away despite the absence of any in-person or remote schooling since March. Just after I heard the clock chime three, I finally fell asleep.

Today, Calvin has been cat-napping on the green couch. He sleeps for minutes at a time, wakes, gets off the couch—or me—then on again and rests some more. We will likely spend the entire day this way as he recovers from the grand mals.

As I sit here considering options for a title of this post—gravity, new moon, life storms—I search my blog to ensure I haven't used any before. I type in the word gravity and find this one. I read and mull over each word, nodding my head slightly as I go. Then I watch the attached video, which gives me the chills. At the end my eyes and nose are stinging, my face crumpling up as I begin to weep. It's so hard, this life with Calvin, made worse because of coronavirus and the absence of school or nurses to help ease the load. If not for my husband, the weight of it would be colossal—the seizures, the sleep deprivation, the angst, grief, loss, frustration, anger, inertia—the immense gravity of it all.