Breathe

Breathe. Breathe, Sam. Breathe. Please. I can’t believe how hard your heart is pounding. And how fast. Too fast. Is this okay? Should we wake you up, bundle you off to the hospital? You need to breathe. Real breaths. You’re panting, panting like a petrified rabbit - an image that keeps coming to mind. I want to calm you down, but you’re sleeping. Somehow you’re sleeping. I’m the one who can’t. Just breathe, Sam. Come on … please.

I’m counting again. Fifty breaths a minute. Fifty to my twelve. That can’t be right, can it? I want to do something to help – but you’re sleeping. You’re sleeping and your heart is beating 120 times a minute. So hard, so fast, I can see your pulse in your neck, your temple. I can feel your labouring heart pounding against my hand – my hand that I cannot lift from your chest. Not for hours now. I have this idea that somehow – by strength of will – I can slow your pulse, can deepen your breathing – that by wishing it hard enough I can make your body stop this, stop it – stop. Please breathe, Sam. Please.

I can’t stop it. I couldn’t all day. I gave you your puffers. I gave you cold medicine. I gave you drinks. I lay with you to watch Batman. And when you couldn’t chew your food at dinner time and began to panic, I gathered you onto my lap. I told you that – for your whole life – mommy’s hugs have always made you feel better. But not this time. This time you couldn’t quell the panic. Couldn’t get on top of the cough. Couldn’t take a big enough breathe to speak a full sentence. Time to go.

I had to carry you to the car. Your pounding heart hurts your chest – though maybe that’s the muscles that are pulled in tight around your ribcage. We drive. Drive in the cool and rainy winter night, trying to decide – is this an emergency? Do you need to go to the hospital? You’re breathing. Shallow and rapid, yes – but you’re breathing. Is this respiratory distress? You’ve eaten ice cream and now you’re sleepy. Can you be in distress and still enjoy Tiger Tail. Still fall asleep? Daddy and I exchange worried looks. We decide to wait. To let you sleep. To see if it gets any worse.

At midnight, you spike a fever, your skin suddenly hot to the touch, your hair soaked in sweat – your small body fighting off the virus that has caused this attack. My own worried heart beats a little harder, but you slumber on, your arm flung over my side, your shoulders rising and falling so fast. So fast. It’s a long, long night.

And then it’s sunrise and you’re using your inhaler. I’m counting again. Thirty-three breaths and 88 heart beats a minute. So much better. You’re going to be okay. You’ll stay home today and you’ll get better and better. And you’ll stay on your asthma meds this winter, so this can’t happen again. But if it does, you’re going to the hospital.

Your heart did just fine, but mine simply can’t take it.

Boy in the House: 1

Cabbage Roles

I spent part of Friday afternoon making cabbage rolls and thinking about Nan. It's her recipe book I use, and the delicious dish always brings childhood memories to mind. I found myself wishing that we could create little folds in the fabric of time that would allow Sam to walk right into 24 Rouge St. in 1975 to spend a day at Nan & Granddad's the way I did at his age.

Sam would love the yard, of course. The steep hill out back that ran down past the big vegetable garden and dipped into a conservation area—so perfect for exploring in summer and tobogganing in winter (oh that long walk back up!). The cemetery across the road with its imagination-fuelling tombstone tales. The pergola along one wall where grapes vines cast cool shadows on hot summer days. And the house was fun, too. An enclosed porch wrapped around from the kitchen door across the back as a high overhang above the walk-out basement below. It felt like a secret space full of neat things, and playing back there made you feel as though you were far away from the grown-ups—even though I'm sure they heard every word from the kitchen window.

Then there were the treats. In addition to the ever-present candy bowl in the living room, the kitchen cupboard were stocked with rows of "store bought cookies" and "sugar cereals" (as we called them), and the fridge was full of Pop Shoppe pop of every variety. Nan made yummy homemade meals and delicious pies, but she knew that those Oreos, Cocoa Puffs, and Cream Sodas were quite the draw for kids being raised on healthy food at home! A grandma's prerogative.

But the real excitement of a visit to Nan & Granddad's wasn't the fun yard and the cool house and the junk food. It was simply the way it felt to be there. As though we granddaughters were the most remarkable creatures to walk the face of the earth. So smart! So pretty! So talented! We spent many an hour in that living room performing songs and skits and gymnastics and anything else we were up to. Nan wasn't a captive audience; she was a captivated one. We couldn't have been more perfect to her and she made sure we knew it.

I'm sad sometimes that Sam came along a little too late to know Nan, but it makes my heart happy to tell him stories from my childhood and to explain that making cabbage rolls is part of our family story, one that connects him to his heritage.

When I first opened up Traditional Ukrainian Cookery, I found that the cabbage rolls recipe was bookmarked with a copy of "Footprints," the poem in which God assures the author that he never left him alone on his life's journey, that two sets of footprints dropped to one when God carried him through tough times. It's nice to think that Nan is following along on our journeys, too. Not leaving footprints in the snow from car to door anymore, but still leaving footprints in our hearts and lives. I snapped the photos for this post before sliding the cabbage rolls in the oven. And when I did, I whispered, "I love you, Nan." And I heard her answer clear as a bell: "I love you, too, darling."