A Dizzy Day

This morning when Atrain awoke he wouldn’t lift his head off of his pillow. He had a tummy ache and was dizzy. LVAS vertigo was creeping up on him again. Poor kiddo. He was late for school, but I decided to go at his pace. I don’t know how often to expect dizzy mornings like this (and the specialists don’t know either), so I need to set a precedent for how to handle them. We can’t just default to the Disney Chanel.

I tried not to push him too hard, but also wanted him to know that we were still going to try to follow our schedule as planned, and to let me know if he started feeling better. We changed him into his underwear and clothes, ate breakfast on the blanket on in the living room and read scriptures all with his head glued to the floor. When he announced that he needed to go to the bathroom I carried in his port-a-potty, and held him steady while he did his business (even though he protested). I was trying to be brave. So was he. “I’m having a sick day,” he said. “You’re right,” I responded, “We’re just going to go slow.

Sooner or later he started to chipper up, occasionally holding his head up to adjust his cars or take a bite of toast. We read a few stories and then Atrain began to stand, pushing his dump truck down the hall. I exhaled. He was getting better. I asked if he would like to go to school, and told him how excited his friends would be to see him. “And Sammy will be so happy and say, ‘It’s Atrain,” he elaborated. “Yep, then Zoe will say, ‘We missed you,” I assured him. He smiled. I love that little smile.

We packed his lunch and headed to his school. As soon as we came in the classroom his friends and teachers did just as we predicted. “It’s Atrain!” They yelled, “He’s here, he’s better!” And after he heard his little friends’ welcome, he was as steady as steel. After telling his teachers, I headed to the indoor track to get a bit of exercise and linger close to Atrain, just in case the vertigo returned.

I walked around the track with Jdog in my arms and kept my eyes on the playground through the two way glass, waiting for Atrain’s class to appear. I let my guard down and shed a few frustrated, confused tears. Then Jdog looked up at me with his squishy sweet smiles and I pulled myself together again.

There are a lot of things I can’t control in life. As much as I would love to be able to create perfect circumstances to perfectly prepare my kids for everything they may encounter in life, I can’t. I shouldn’t want to anyway. It’s more important for my kids to understand that there will be disappointment, there are a lot of things we can’t understand, people aren’t perfect, organizations aren’t perfect, and (especially) I am not perfect. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do our best with what we’ve got, and always keep trying to get better. I won’t stop trying to be a better mother for them. They deserve the best.