Blessings in disguise.

This is Grey, temperature hovering near 103°, the interior of his mouth a simmering mass of bacteria doing the Streptococcal Samba. The woman on his right is his mother, me, fooling around with my iPhone, mostly oblivious to my child's increasing disease and discomfort. 
Not my finest parenting moment.
Looking at the photograph, it does seem fairly apparent that he is not feeling top-notch. How embarrassing.
This was yesterday. The boys got out of school at 1:10 and Myles and I were there to meet them. The first thing that Grey said to me was, "Mom, I have a headache." He told me that it had started that morning and that he was feeling worse. I asked him if he had drunk enough water over the course of the day. He hadn't. 
Now, had I not two other sons who were very enthused about playing on the playground before going home, I'd probably have taken Grey home immediately and attended to him there. Thing is, Child One and Child Three immediately took off to different parts of the playground, leaving Child Two standing near me looking, well, wilted.
I might also add that it was a warm day with strong sun (hello, sexy tank top shaped sunburn) and that Grey was so out of it that he spent a good part of the following ninety minutes sitting. On the scorching blacktop. 
I am further ashamed to admit that while I was chasing Myles and keeping eyes on Isaiah, Grey entreated me several times to go home. While I yapped with other Moms, he fell over on the lawn or just sat, listlessly, staring at the other kids playing.
I mean, I knew that he didn't feel good, but I figured that he was a little bit tired and dehydrated and that he'd be fine once we got home. He is a really stoic, really solid kid and this time, his solidity came at his cost: His own mother didn't take to heart the gravity of his requests.
I finally began to understand how poorly he was feeling when he suddenly sat up (having previously been lying supine, motionless at the base of a slide) and said, with conviction, "Mom! I keep saying that I want to go home but everyone else wants to stay here and nobody is listening to me!"
Well, hell. 
I reigned in the other two and we made our way home. Once we were home I sat Grey on the kitchen counter. Touching him, I realized that what I'd thought was heat from playing in the sunshine was really a fever. The thermometer beeped at 102.9 and I felt like crap, though not nearly so much as Grey did, I'd imagine. 
And so I took his hot little body in my hands and looked him in his sweet blue eyes and I told him, "Listen: I have something important to say. I am really sorry. You told me that you didn't feel good and I didn't take you seriously enough and you were sitting out there in the hot sun feeling like doodoo and I didn't listen to you like I should have and I was wrong." 
I hugged him hard and he started to cry, suddenly, and I thought that I had hurt him, somehow. I pulled back from him and I asked him what had happened, sure I had accidentally done something physically to make him cry. He was shaking his head and rubbing at his eyes with his fists and he said, crying, "No...it's just busting through!"
My heart just cracked and I asked him what was busting through - sadness? hurt? being sick? He nodded and kept trying not to cry and I hugged him some more and told him that he could cry, he was safe and nobody would make fun of him, while in my mind I was thinking about how well I understand the concept of the bad stuff busting through.
And so I took care of my little boy. He got tea and medicine and frozen fruit and a spot just for him on the couch to curl up in pjs and watch cartoons. Of course, all of this would have been done much more expeditiously had the other two not been making their own claims on my attention. Grey, bless him, waited so patiently - even falling asleep - while I attended to Myles' potty trips and Isaiah's need for frequent and substantial caloric replacement and the phone ringing and forgotten laundry in the washer and my own too-oft postponed need to pee and eat, among other things. 
Over the course of the next twelve hours, he didn't get worse but he didn't get better, either. He stayed feverish - right around 103° - and woke me up several times in the night. He came to sleep with me around 4 a.m. He must have been feeling better because we had an intermittent, (mostly) one-sided conversation that seemed to last the better part of an hour, or at least until dawn, as I remember the light coming through the curtains was part of the monologue.
He stayed home from school and had really seemed to improve but then took a nosedive right around lunch time. He complained of double vision, increasing headache pain, and the heat of the fever, and this kid is NOT a whiner. 
Justin left with Isaiah to attend a swim team party and shortly after they left, I went to check on Grey. I asked him how his head felt and his face kind of crumpled and he squeezed his eyes shut and said, "I can't hold it anymore, Mom." 
I took his temperature (103.1) and his pulse (126) and went to scour the internet for possible causes for elevated pulse rate in febrile six year-olds with severe headache and I only had to read about seven possible diagnoses before I thought "Oh, screw this noise!" and I paged Doctor Grampa.
Thankfully, Doctor Grampa was in. That would be my Dad. The doc is not prone to hand-wringing and dramatics, so when he suggests that we amble (he did say 'amble') to the ER, I listen. 
I called Justin and we fell back and regrouped and soon, Grey and I were on our way to the Naval Medical Center, San Diego. 


I have health insurance. It is free for me to visit the doctor. Well, "free" is relative - with the number of hours that our Daddy spends away from his family, I feel like we pay for it. Nevertheless, I am very grateful for the fact that I can take my kid to the ER on Friday night and not get a bill, even if it does take five hours between checking in and receiving the meds. 
Knowing the Balboa ER as I do, I was prepared. I had a tiny backpack filled with iced herbal tea for Grey, a bottle of water for myself, snacks for Grey, a book for me, and a Pillow-Pet tagging along. We checked in at about five p.m. and waited. Grey laid down with his head on my lap; he waited so patiently for triage. In triage, he told the attending amusing stories about how he had fallen ill and exactly what was happening to him at that very instant. He is difficult to interrupt.
There was nothing extraordinary about our visit - we went from checking in to the waiting area to the ironically named "Fast-Trak" mobile unit to another waiting area therein to a room to a curtained area and finally, we saw a medical professional. They did a throat swab and diagnosed strep. We were prescribed medication, went to the pharmacy, and waited some more before we got the meds.
What was extraordinary was how much I enjoyed being with Grey, even in these circumstances. It was delightful to sit with him and rub his back and talk about whatever came into his mind. We looked at magazines and talked about the pictures and practiced reading. It wasn't until more than halfway through the process that I relinquished my iPhone and let the kid watch cartoons. And then, he sat near me, pointing out the hilarious things that Jerry was doing to Tom. 
I was awed, awed and proud, of my son. He was so GOOD. Patient and calm and pleasant, regardless of the glacial speed of the medical unit, regardless of his fever and headache. I didn't have to tell him anything or correct him or ply him with treats to get him to behave. He was just good.
There is a Subway sandwich shop just across from the pharmacy at Balboa. Grey began to give me subtle hints that he was hungry at about eight o'clock. Frankly, not only could I not blame him, I felt the same way. Nevertheless, I kept my reserved demeanor, not saying yes or no to the Subway proposal. I wasn't sure that they'd still be open by the time we got out of the damn pharmacy.
Turns out that the hospital Subway is open 24 hours on business days. He did, once or twice, give me a pointed look and say, "We could go eat at Subway because I have been so good listening and being patient." 
Once we did have the meds, I told him that we could absolutely go to Subway and that he could have anything that he wanted. He stood there before the vast menu board in his leopard-print slippers wearing his turtle backpack and made his menu selection as carefully as if he were a Supreme Court Justice deciding the trial of the century. This IS my kid.
All illness was forgotten. We pumped out 15 mls of amoxicillin and sat side by side, eating our Subway and reading out loud any signage that was visible. He talked and talked and looked a little bit disappointed when I told him that it was almost ten o'clock and we did have to go home. 
He was gallant - trying to carry my purse for me as well as his backpack and his Subway leftovers - and charming, stopping me outside when I said that I was cold so that he could hug me and "give you all of my heat, Mom".
I arrived home insanely in love with my second son, so thrilled that we had ended up at the hospital for five hours. He fell asleep as I brushed his teeth and I laid down with him until he was completely asleep. Coming out of the boys' room, I tried to explain to Justin what effect my time with Grey had had upon me. 
Two things of note: I don't like school. I don't like that I have invested so much of myself into these small people and then they are obliged to spend the better part of their day away from me. I am selfish. I would have them with me.
Two, the whole event was unexpectedly gratifying. I felt that I was accompanying an equal, not someone who needed surveillance. He is only six and yet he is huge, his personality decidedly unique and his presence, undeniable.
He was good because he IS good. As Mom, I'm not here to make my boys do or not do - all I can do is show them how to be the best version of themselves possible. There is an immense satisfaction for me in letting them be who they are and finding out that left to their own judgement, they are better people than I could have crafted had I been manipulating every move.
*sigh* Okay, you can all puke, now. The Moms among you won't, though. This is a tough gig. Talk about delayed gratification, long-term investment, and letting go. Grey impressed me. I have felt this way about all the boys at some point, many times, even. The unfortunate part is that we are so caught in the grind that I often feel like BUD/s instructor ;) barking out orders, "You! Lunch, water bottle, backpack, library books, GO!!! You! Swim stuff, permission slip, signed planner, chapstick, GO!!! You! Pee in the damn potty, for chrissakes!!!" 
I am thankful for this bizarrely blissful slice of time with Grey. He is my kid, so you most certainly can't trust a damn thing I'm writing, but he is exceptional. There is no one like him. I am so proud of him and I only hope that some good part of who he is came from who I have tried to be, for him. Ditto for those other two. I love them so completely, I'm saturated in it. It's bigger than I am. Sometimes, I can't hold it and it just comes busting through.