Solstice

Mostly, the specialists give names to Justin’s symptoms with words of Latin or Greek origin and send us on our way. Vertigo. Neuralgia. Nystagmus. Oscillopsia. Nathaniel is of Latin origin too, meaning gift. We conceived him in defiance of the possible brain tumor in 2014. The rushed MRI for Justin, the positive pregnancy test. And so we named our baby Gift, the little beating heart poppy seed inside my body was a belief in the future as we waited to hear if Justin’s brain stem harbored something growing.

They told us possible neuroma on the brainstem. Neuro-, from Greek, originally “sinew, tendon, cord, bowstring,” also “strength, vigor.” I think of strength, of vigor, as he stumbles in the darkened hallway, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” -Oma, from Greek, meaning “morbid growth, swelling,” a gentle and beautiful sound, a sound that lies.

He turns to me and says, “I’m a lemon.” The origin of the idiom is unclear, lemon meaning a product found to be defective only after it has been bought. My mom asks, are you still trying for another child? Is this wise, she asks, maybe you shouldn’t?

Now two years later, around every corner is a new anxiety, a new tremor. My husband tells me off handedly, I can’t feel my left pinky right now, or my tremors are so bad today, I can’t lift a mug of coffee to my lips. Ok, that’s fine. MS is weird that way, a diagnosis we've mostly settled on, a diagnosis of exclusion.

And this is Nathaniel at two: the vulnerability, the underlip trembling, the tiny sleep hoarse voice, whispering “nurse me, please” at two a.m. Yet also the child, asking for chocolate milk and telling on his brother: “Me-Me is mean to me” and “Me-Me kicked me.” The two-year-old hides sticks behind his back as he runs up the hill and away, the child emerging from the baby like a wet, crumpled butterfly.

His hands are sticky with lollipop and his little legs pump down the hill, but he tumbles at the bottom and lands on his stomach and starts to cry. He stays there until I scoop him up and hold onto him. Nonverbal again, he holds his scraped hands to the sky, wailing. There’s a balance of watching him leave and waiting to see if he needs to come back.

There are ketchup stains on the kitchen table and marker on the windows, there is paint on the hardwood floor, glitter glue on the dishwasher and a Paw Patrol sticker that is very important to somebody on the bathroom mirror. There are weak, warm, gentle fingers of light under the bedroom curtain in the morning on the shortest day of the year.

We’re all still sleeping in the same bed; that started in the spring with nightmares and stretched through the seasons, sweaty tangled sheets in the summer, warmth in the fall’s gathering darkness and cold just outside the windows, heavy blankets and children like hot water bottles in the winter.

Four-year-old Shea is awake beside me on this morning, the shortest day of the year, waiting patiently. He says, “I’d like to leave this room of darkness.” And Nat says, “Morning outside!” and they both are wearing footy pajamas and I watch them walk into the living room on padded feet, sunlight streaming through the windows. They pad into the living room with optimism and hope and I watch them go.

#mothering #breastfeeding