Today I’m taking a page out of the book of Margaret Parkes.

Margaret is my 95-year old maternal grandmother, who views life with the kind of sunny optimism normally reserved for Disney princesses. When you catalogue the ups and downs of Margaret’s life, it’s amazing that she has ever had the strength to keep going, but despite the tragedies she has faced, she rallies, she moves on, and she doesn’t feel sorry for herself. If she were a member of my generation she probably would have spent most of her adult life on a therapist’s couch, prozac-ed to the gills, but she just smiles.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the human body just can’t sustain any heightened emotion for an extended period of time without trying to return to its normal state. Fear, anger, pain, grief - these all fade with time because they have to. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to continue to live.

We entered the hospital on Sunday June 20th, 10 days and a lifetime ago. I’ve seen the delerious heights of renewed hope, only to plummet back to rock-bottom the next day as yet another piece of bad news is delivered. Gavin’s recovery was off to a great start, he had an MRI the next day which showed no sign of remaining tumour, he woke right up from sedation, was extubated, and breathed on his own. Then he talked to us and held our hands. Hearing him say “mama” again repaired some broken bits in my heart.

One week

One brain tumour.

One six-hour surgery.

One earthquake.

One riot.

One blood clot.

One more night.

One more day.

I woke early, with a start, panicked, and raced back to the hospital in the grey light of early morning. My boys had spent a restless night, and a short time later I sent Craig away to sleep. Gavin and I spent the morning cuddled up and watching Max and Ruby and eating Shasha cookies. My parents arrived sometime later and I went downstairs to buy non-hospital-issue tissues and a new toothbrush for Gavin as he wanted to brush his teeth. I bawled my around Shoppers Drug Mart and hurried back upstairs. By the time I got there he was clearly not well again - he wanted to lie down and go to sleep after being quite playful only a few moments before.

We had arrived at the hospital in the early evening, and it was 2:00 in the morning when they were finally ready to take us to MRI. It seems that they called in the staff to perform the procedure especially for us, because it was quiet and deserted in the bowels of the hospital. Luckily for him, Gavin stayed asleep the whole time, and we were allowed to stay with him as the anesthetist sedated him. We left our baby pale and sleeping in their capable hands, knowing that it isn’t uncommon for people to die simply from the general anesthetic.

Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. – Joan Didion

Last Sunday my existence was forever altered when my husband Craig and I were hit with the devastating news that our beautiful 21-month old boy Gavin had a brain tumour.

Gavin hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks. Looking back, there were signs that something wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t shake the feeling that his symptoms added up to something worse, but I had no idea what. He walked with his head tilted to one side for awhile, it seemed to be torticollis, a minor neck problem that we tried to treat with chiropractic visits. And then everything started cascading – he complained of pain around his ear and head, he experienced morning nausea, throwing up every day for 10 consecutive days and having little appetite. He was diagnosed with an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics. He had periods of good energy followed by lethargy and listlessness. On Sunday the 13th he frightened us by vomiting continuously for several hours when we were out of town at the family cottage. We had a terrifying drive back to Toronto as Gavin slept, paper-pale and breathing shallowly, and then spent 6 hours in the emergency room of our local hospital, before finally being treated for “flu” and dehydration, and turned away.

As soon as you become a parent, you quickly realize that your brain will never be quite the same again. This is because a large portion of it suddenly has as its only function Worry About Child’s Well-Being. So if you don’t have kids but have noticed that your friends seem a bit stupider since they had theirs, don’t be too critical, it’s just evolution at work.

Anyway, the part of my brain that used to hold a fair bit of useless trivia and song lyrics has now been re-labelled “Gavin,” and runs programs in the background even while I’m carrying on a fairly normal conversation with someone else. The point of all this is that today at the kindergym I was chatting with some other moms but of course watching Bean out of the corner of my eye when he became involved in a fairly big-impact car crash. He was hanging out in one of those big, plastic Little Tykes cars as he loves to do, when one of the bigger kids, pushing another car with passenger, slammed headfirst into him running full-tilt. The impact forced him out of the seat and under the wheels and he became trapped under the car. There was a collective gasp and screams of horror from the onlooking moms and nannies.

Sunnies!

The Bean and I have just returned from a 12-day jaunt to Florida. It’s become a bit of an annual tradition for us as this is our third year running. My parents rent a place there every winter and we’ve been taking advantage of their generosity in giving us free accommodation!

The first year Gavin was a very little bean - I was about two weeks pregnant and couldn’t keep the news to myself. (I even told the people sitting next to me on the plane!)