Kawasaki Days

My most wonderful Succotash, I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've recorded the doings of your life here. The truth is, your mother has had her bandwidth reduced to near zero in the past few weeks. So, a quick summary of where we are in your life right now:

You are, at the moment, upstairs watching one of the apparently one zillion Toy Story spinoffs, in your "pajammmies" with your dad and Ama. Last night, for the record, watching Toy Story 3, your father and I were both in tears reflecting on how all children grow up and that one day you, too, will outgrow your toys and there was also an elderly dog and I really couldn't cope.

Last Tuesday Montessori called because you had a headache. We went home that night and took it easy. You developed a fever, then a rash, and then in the night you barfed up rivers of chocolate protein shake the likes of which I hadn't seen since the Great Scallop Mishap of 2021, when you were only one year old. We went to the doctor on Tuesday, when your eyes started to redden. The short version: we are monitoring you for Kawasaki disease, which is a rare systemic inflammation response that is very treatable, but if not caught in time can damage your heart. Your favorite friend Gabriel's mother Sarah is, thankfully, a pediatrician with privileges at Boston Children's, which also, thankfully, has the world's expert on Kawasaki. For a time it was looking like we were going to take you to the ER this morning. We are at the moment holding off and it looks like we'll be taking you tomorrow morning for outpatient evaluation instead. I am, as you can imagine, only pretending to hold it together. 

Other things: in May I had to go to Houston for two weeks because we moved my mother, Nana, into hospice care. She died on May 31, while I held her hand and told her stories about our trips to New York when I was a child and then read her the part of Eloise in Paris where Eloise and Nanny are calling everyone to tell them they are leaving for Paris France. Bon voyage and merci beaucoup. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

This has affected you in indirect ways. It was hard for both of us to have me gone so long. Also you can tell that I am off. I was incredibly stressed out in the weeks leading up to my being gone, due both to Nana's failing health and also to my being under absurd pressure at work. (I actually read Nana the first pass page proofs of my Astor book for the first stage of my sitting with her on her deathbed, which I told myself Mom would appreciate, both because she would have enjoyed the book, and because Mom was as much a workaholic as I am. But it's still ridiculous that I had to do that. Maybe one day as an adult you will understand how indefensibly ridiculous that is.) While you didn't really ever develop much of a relationship with my Mom - a fact that by itself made me mourn what I had for so long imagined when I was trying to have you - you are nevertheless processing this otherwise vague loss. Your biggest loss up to this point was Milo, who you knew and loved, and who was there one moment and then gone the next. We see pictures of him and tell stories about him still, and you sometimes profess to miss him. I don't think you will miss Nana per se. But you have been affected by how it has affected me, and for that I am sorry. 

I can tell because at moments of high dudgeon lately you will say what I imagine is, to you, the worst thing imaginable. You will bellow "BAD GUYS," or more commonly "EVERYONE DIED." 

Unfortunately you have been in some dudgeons lately. You are now on a behavioral modification plan at school, because you continue to hit kids in your class. Your dad and I are really baffled by it all, as you have largely moved past that behavior at home, and at the playground. Sometimes you will even run around playing with new friends without my intervention. School has asked us to stop letting you pretend you are a pirate or a knight, which I find utterly heartbreaking. We are trying to think through what we should do. Is 20 kids too many in a classroom for you? Shore, where I really want you to go, only has ten kids in a class. It's telling that your dad's and my class backgrounds come so much to the fore when we are worrying about you at school. I worry "What if he doesn't get into the prep school I really want for him?" Your dad worries "What if he's a sociopath and he goes to prison?" I don't think that's very likely, fortunately. 

On the upside, you are tall, and handsome, and merry, and warm, and hopefully you don't have Kawasaki. You are getting more articulate, and have a really wonderful vocabulary. "Bewildered means confused, Mama," you explained to me as we read together one night.

And that is where we stand at the beginning of summer when you are three and a half years old.