Top Ten Things I Haven't Mentioned: #10, Gliding

Quinn, the one we used to call "clumsy" and "slow" is apparently the only one with any natural athletic ability or grace around here. Months ago we finally bought a bike with training wheels for Bryce, knowing full well that it would sit in our garage and collect dust after one or two frustrating attempts at faking patience and forcing gleeful "you can do it!"s during Bryce's shrieks and spasms resulting from his illogical in-born fear of movement not completely, 100% within his physical control. When we moved the cob-web covered bike to the new house a few months ago, though, Bryce became interested in riding it as we'd walk by our neighbors' five-year-old boys zooming through each other's driveways with unbridled joy. After a few weeks of only slightly less frustrating walks than we'd experienced before, with slightly less blood-curdling shrieks and less humiliating spasms over the fact that the bike was GOING DOWNHILL AT A SLIGHT ANGLE AND HE MIGHT CRASH INTO THAT HOUSE FOUR MILES AWAY OH MY GOD PEOPLE HELLOOOO!!!, Quinn was demanding a bike of his own. He'd try to ride Bryce's during the times Bryce would be cowering in the corner and nursing the latest imagined bike-wound, but it was too big for him and his stubby little four-year-old legs couldn't produce the speed Quinn was obviously harboring.

John came home with a smaller bike one day and was beaming about how Quinn rode it happily throughout the grocery section of Wal-Mart and charmed everyone in his path. I assumed this was just John's typical over-zealous optimism coating the truth, but when I looked out the window and saw the blurry, zippy mass on the back patio, I was shocked at how well he handled the bike around the tight corners of the patio beams and the ridiculous amount of outdoor toys that littered concrete surface. Never one to shy away from competition, Bryce hopped on his own bike in a sudden change of heart about how terrifying it should be. On the flat surface of our back patio, he was fine. On the 10-degree death-defying angles of our suburban neighborhood streets, though, the shrieking re-commenced while his little "clumsy" brother -- quite literally -- rode circles around him. Bryce would not stand for this, and taking his next cue from the neighbor kids once again, asked strategically for a scooter.

When I came home the day of the scooter purchases, I didn't know what to expect. "Oh sure," I thought, "Quinn was fine on a bike with training wheels, but this, THIS is a two-wheeled scooter! It takes balance, precision, timing, SKILL! These kids can't handle this!" They strapped on their helmets and prepared for the launch. Bryce was giddy with excitement and raring to go, ready to prove that Quinn, the measley four-year-old, could never out-do him. His left foot on the scooter, his right foot on the ground, he lunged forward and jerked ahead; his hands clutched the foam handles and the sensitive steering equipment caused him to lurch suddenly to the left, then the right. Commence shrieking, commence spasms. While John and I started our fake encouraging tones and resisted offering shallow, teeth-clenching "you're okay"s, Quinn's scooter passed us by like a sailboat gliding on the sea. We all stopped, breathless, to take in the beauty of this formerly galumping bull-in-a-china-shop kid, now gingerly holding his right foot over the ground floating smoothly, evenly beneath him, eyes straight ahead, head held high, fine blonde hair wisping over the tops of his ears, perfectly at ease. "That's a story worth telling," I thought -- and I think so every time I see it.

Out

Here I am again, with nothing substantial or intelligent to say. I think back to a year ago and am shocked over how drastically my perception of time has changed. I used to sit with my laptop and wail over how my only time to write was scrunched into a mere two to three hours in the evenings after the kids were in bed. Now, I barely touch my laptop at home. Just as I reached the point of comfort with a transition to a busier work life, we bought a house and moved, and entered a whole new reality to which we're actually still adjusting. In the midst of that, I discovered unhappily that I'd be undergoing two surgeries (both requiring general anesthesia), which took me from the category of "busy, tired, and frazzled" to "rocking back and forth in corner while drooling."

Last week I had the second and worst of the two surgeries, and the recovery was, to put it mildly, pure and utter misery in the form of large facial incision pain, bad anesthesia reactions, and near-narcolepsy. My dad drove twelve hours to help take care of the kids while John worked on the annual pile of wedding photo edits and I involuntarily slept. I woke up every few hours and shuffled out in dirty pajamas, mumbling and groaning and grabbing pill bottles and referring to myself as a homeless person. Occasionally as the days have worn on, I've slept less and done more laundry, spoken in complete sentences, and even started yelling at the kids again to keep it down and stop quoting T.V. commercials to me (although it did give me a genuine laugh when I was smearing Neosporin on the incision down my jaw and Bryce walked in and said, "oh good, mom, you're using Neosporin: Cuts Heal Four Times Faster!"). As I've started coming out of the fog, I've become aware of the fog's breadth and density; it's hovered over me for months as I've juggled more and more china dishes in the air, sweat pouring down my face, eyes always darting from one fragile trinket to the next, thinking at any minute failure would strike and shatter them all, and in my stupid constant worry I'd look up blindly into the gray and try to catch the china shards in my weak, small hands, finalizing my tragic failure in a painful, preventable, and ugly mess.

When I woke up last week from the surgery that removed a benign tumor from a large salivary gland, I looked at the clock in the recovery room and noticed that only an hour had passed since I'd been wheeled into the operating room and had panicked over the feeling of not being able to breathe through the brand new plastic odor of the oxygen mask ("you're 100% oxygenated" they'd said, "just keep taking deep breaths," which sounds very simple to people who feel like they can breathe - but - note to the medical community - to people who feel like they can not breathe, these instructions only incite panic). I'd been told the surgery would take three hours, but somehow I knew this was a good sign. I could feel the left side of my face, and I was able to speak, despite the pain and swelling around my jaw, and asked the nearest recovery nurse what had happened. Her answer was generic and non-informative, but it really didn't matter. The fact that I'd been able to speak normally told me I didn't have any nerve damage, which was the big risk of the surgery, and the sense of relief and gratitude I felt rivaled all the ensuing days of physical turmoil. My most prevalent thoughts on the recovery bed as I waited to be wheeled in to my own room where John was waiting for me had to do with being better, coming out of the fog, and coming back to my life. I might have forgotten that if the following week had been an easy one for me, and so I guess in that sense, I'm glad it wasn't.