on the point of departure, a kink in the road

When I grow up, I'm going to marry the Toddles.
Really? Why?
Because that's what you do.
Why is that what you do?
Because you have to get married to have babies.
[strangled sound that tries to pass for a thoughtful pause] Oh. I see.

****************
Well, the bags are packed and the tickets are electronic, so I suppose we're heading out the door to San Diego in the morning, courtesy of Giant Drug Company XX that's been raking in the dough. See here if you like, but I'm sparing everybody the lecture on immunological misdemeanors. In this post, anyway. I miss Mary Jr right now - she'd know why I ran upstairs at 1 am wailing, Uno! Must have the Uno!

Giant Drug Company XX had promised to feed us marvellously and un-allergenically, but I suspect that this was before their lawyers heard about it. Still, this lovely lady has come to save the day! Bless Marilyn Kovach and her inability to faint from culinary fear, she has researched, cooked and is delivering in great style. Of course, I haven't eaten anything yet, but tonight I am flying high with hopes. Take that, o legal ones - it *can* be done!

Either that, or Marilyn needs a lawyer.

We're doing a lot of travel this summer, and I've just about had it. We've actually turned down a (free!) family trip to Israel for Succot (booth festival, quite chilly in the Northeast)...we've got family coming up most weekends, and are trying to meet the Eldest's schoolmates to be in every spare moment. Makes me tired just thinking about it, but it's all good stuff. Still, I booked three playdates for August this past week - August!! Criminy.

I'm glad to be going to this conference, though, because I so very much want to talk to other families about anxiety. The Eldest is just off the charts (his) with his anxieties right now, he's more explosive than ever, and I'm sure that the past two? three weeks of minor bleed after minor bleed has not helped at all. Yeah, because when you're afraid to trust your body or the big folk in charge of said body, having the damned thing go haywire on ya is really going to help.

Um, no.

It's gotten to the point that when he clutched his chest and panicked today, we all thought it was anxiety, and it wasn't until he did it again later AND HAD HIVES that I realized. Nope. Not anxiety. Allergy. Another motherfucking (and I use the term with a certain precision) allergy.

I'm not sure I even care what it's to, the point is that it freaked out my freaked out kid, and oh but he did not need that. Oh, my poor little love.

I put him to bed and told him a story about the boy with two pairs of ears, and tried very hard not to cry on him. Here is how it went:

Once upon a time, there was a boy with two pairs of ears.

One pair sat on either side of his head, where his face meets his hair, and it would listen to birds squawking, to people talking and to the sound that squirrels make when they realize you've caught them digging in your pots. (make a panicky scrapy, scrapy, scrapy noise with fingernails).

The other set of ears, though, was inside him, and he didn't know why. He asked his mother, and she said, Sweets, those ears are for listening to inside things, and someday they'll be very important to you.

Well, the boy thought, maybe. But he couldn't see how.

He went on with the business of being a boy, getting muddy, learning to kick a soccer ball, and writing letters to his aunties. Especially the honorary ones. One day, he was munching on some lunch when his stomach said to him, Stop! This is no good! The boy stopped. His throat said to him, Help! Something is wrong! And the boy listened.

The boy told his parents what his inside ears had heard, and they understood what to do to help his stomach and throat. Later, once all of the insides had settled down, the parents explained to the boy that, without his inside ears listening so well and his outside mouth explaining so carefully, he could have ended up feeling pretty nasty.

We are a team, they told the boy, working to keep you safe and strong. But we could not have kept you so without your inside ears. If we could reach them, we'd kiss them! The boy thought this over. I'm not sure the inside ears like kisses, he said, but I'll tell them you say thank you.

And he did.