Let Me Count the Ways

Last night I sat down at the computer and made a List.

I like lists. Usually I scrawl them by hand on a notepad. I picked up the habit from my mom — she always has a small yellow pad on her kitchen counter-top. Our handwriting is so similar I sometimes look at something and can’t remember if I wrote it or if she wrote it.

It must have been all those notes in my lunch box, five days a week. I <3 You.

Her lists are always her daily errands. Or around the holidays, a longer list of gifts and recipients. I make work lists, grocery shopping lists, places to go lists, names and numbers of doctors lists, packing lists, recipe directions.

I didn’t hand write the List last night. Instead, I opened up my word processor and a few tabs in my browser and I started typing the Things That are Wrong With my Kid.

Okay, so not really. Not really wrong even though at 2 am when your kid is standing next to your bed calmly explaining the logic behind why his buddies have informed him that they need to sleep alone and that he’ll just have to sleep in Mama and Daddy’s bed your mind swiftly drifts to what is wrong with you and then you think about that Where the Wild Things Are movie and you remember Max looking all crushed and kicked when his mom yelled that and you end up unable to fall asleep. And instead you just listen to your son breathing beside you.

rapid mood changes (gets very angry, hits self in the cheek/ear)

aggressive/violent/hurtful to the baby without remorse (or laughs about it)

repetitive play: arranges cars over and over, rolls cars over and over, puts together playset a certain way, moves everything from one place to another

“squeezing” (stereotypic movement disorder/chronic motor tic dx by neurologist/developmental ped) ( between 10-100 times a day depending on activity, for example less often if we are out on the go all day, more often if we’re at home or he’s uncomfortable in a new place)

doesn’t seem to pick up on annoying/bothering other kids (won’t stop chasing, follows around, stands very close, repeats questions over and over and over)

The List isn’t a big deal in these little  chunks. Oh that’s totally the way preschoolers act!

Then it grows and spills from one page to the next and slowly creates a jagged mosaic of Quirkiness that might be nothing and might be everything.

Then my heart races because what if in the morning, the doctor says good news, these things are all normal. What then?

I don’t want to make a List. I want to take snapshots of my beautiful, complicated, child.

**

“Mama,” he cries, walking up to me. “Those kids won’t play with me.”

“Babydoll, walk up and tell them your name. Introduce yourself and say, ‘do you want to play with me?’”

“No, I will just walk by them again and again until they notice me.”

He doesn’t walk. He runs. Arms rigid by his sides. He sways into the momentum of a flock of children playing tag and then slides back out of it. Rounds the playground twice. Runs back and forth and back and forth by the boys playing with cars. Runs up onto the playground and bounces beside two older kids. Runs away again, runs and runs.

**

Sometimes I don’t bat an eye. On those days, I’m convinced I’m That Mom, that I’m just convincing myself that my son is different. Special.

Then my husband gets home and we try to eat dinner together and we can’t speak to each other because he yells at us for talking, comes up to me and touches my face and grabs my chin and makes me look at him instead. Tells us that he can’t hear when we’re speaking. Runs into the couch full tilt over and over and over until I’m scared he’s going to break his neck. Bounces and shimmies and shakes and makes his fingers go rigid while he stares at them and growls and my husband and I glance at each other. Stare at each other.

My List is more of an outline I guess, a foundation so that I don’t choke with all the “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” that I feel.

It’s just a pre-screening thing, to see if they want to see him again. I’ve waited four months for this appointment and more than two years since his first visit when he was too young to tell for sure, just keep an eye on him, you know him best.

I wonder, I wonder.

This may or may not be related:

1. I understand all those songs now
2. I think I guess I want to cuddle
3. We Walk a New Alphabet