So I never really told you about Kai's birthday, due in part to my giant preoccupation with Kai's annual IEP meeting which snuck up on me like, uh, something that sneaks up on you. A snake, say. Or middle age. Whatever, I don't know.
I'm too tired for a decent analogy because Kai was up super early again, though
I slept through the worst of it. He climbed into bed with me sometime before my
alarm went off. He was carrying a bag of microwave popcorn which he had popped
himself, and he snuggled next to me while he ate it. And such a sad sack am I that
I let him do it, partially because I was too tired to tell him to eat popcorn
in his own damn bed, and partially because he doesn't voluntarily snuggle with
me much anymore.
Later, when my alarm finally went off and I'd hit
snooze as many times as was I could before it counted as oversleeping, I sat up
and realized that he was covered in blue paint.
I never did figured out what he'd been painting in the pre-dawn darkness, before he'd decided to make himself a popcorn breakfast and eat it in my bed.
:::
“Is it my turn yet?” he asked me as we walked to
the kitchen together.
I wasn't sure, but I had a sneaking suspicion that
he was asking if it was time to go sledding, something that he's wanted to do
all week.
Kai loves the snow. Like loves it, loves it, like
a child born in February. He eats it, he throws it, he lays down in it and just
wallows.
Wallowing.
“Can we play in the snow?” he asked me after
school on Tuesday, as the storm dropped inch after inch of heavy March snow.
“No, honey,” I said. “We have speech. Kelly's
waiting for us.”
“Can we go sledding?” he asked on Wednesday morning.
“We have school today,” I replied.
Kai shrugged like my argument didn't hold a lot of
water.
I picked him up early that afternoon.
“Can we go sledding now?” he asked.
“No, honey,” I said. “We have to go to OT.”
“Oh,” he said with an air of resignation.
Kai likes speech and OT, and participates in both
without much protest, but I feel bad that he has to do that instead
of say, basketball or going to the playground or whatever else he'd do if he
had the chance.
Our neurologist and neuropsychologist both
recommended more extracurricular activities for him, and I'm all about it in
theory. In practice, however, it's not so easy. Between school and therapies,
there's not a lot of juice left in the tank for either one of us.
“By all means,” I said to the neurologist. “Come
to my house, pick him up and take him to soccer. It would give me time to do
some laundry.”
I decided right there in the kitchen that we'd go
sledding after school, and told him as much. I made a big show of packing his
sled into the car on the way to school.
This was going to happen, you guys.
I watched all day as the temperature soared above
freezing and water dripped from every roof and drainpipe and tree, willing the
snow not to melt before 3:30.
I made arrangements to unload Ryan, who has zero
interest in sledding and who was also a crabby mess, at a friend's house so
that she couldn't sabotage the fun.
When we got to the sledding hill, I was relieved
to see plenty of snow left for us, and I felt a moment of triumph. I'd done it. I'd
taken the kid sledding. We had nothing but time in front of us–time and a
snowy hill.
I turned around to see his face. It looked like
this:
“Kai?” I said.
He didn't move.
I got out of the car and went around to his side.
I unbuckled his belt and gave him a little shake.
“Kai, honey, let's go sledding!”
Kai didn't so much as flutter a lash.
A rational person might have decided to get back
in the car and cruise around or just play with her phone. I mean, one kid asleep and one kid at
a friend's house, am I right? But NPR was having their pledge drive, which
sucks and precludes driving around, and Kai really wanted to go sledding. At
least he did earlier.
So I gathered him into my arms and stood him on
the pavement next to the car, where he promptly crumpled to the ground and lay
there with his head resting on a Goodyear.
:::
By the time I got his sled out of the car, he hadn't moved, but at least his eyes were open.
“Come on, kid,” I said.
He climbed onto the sled and I dragged him up the
hill. When we got to the top, I realized that he'd ridden the whole way like
this:
Nonetheless, he counted of “One, two, three!”
before I pushed him from the top of the hill. I chased his sled on foot and when I got to the bottom, he
stood up.
“Let's go home,” he said.
:::
As I was buckling his seat belt he asked me if we
could make some hot cocoa.
“Sure,” I said, “but we're out of marshmallows.
Can we stop at the store?”
Kai nodded. “We need big, fresh marshmallows,” he
said.
I nodded gravely, and bought the biggest, freshest
marshmallows I could find.
And I told myself that he has plenty more chances to sled. He has his whole childhood
in front of him.
Remind me not to overbook it.
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