CHAPTER 9
AGAIN AND AGAIN…
So, that day, my son told me: « Ma petite Maman montre-moi donc ça... » (show me mom!).
Then, once again, here and there, like he once did with my arm, he fixed my defective knees. But this time, I have unequivocal proof: I have x-rays, an astonished orthopedist, an Orthodontist and a doctor.
And once again, Dr Piwie baked it all with healing warms on my knees… the entire night without moving an inch.
Marvelous isn’t it? It IS my life!
Damn isn’t our back badly located or what? and can’t it heal itself? It is such an atrocity to see your son suffer like this.
Where ever the pain originates, his body or his soul, he is in pain these days so, as to try to dissipate his pain, I too am suffering for him. I’ve just been in an hospital, on my back, in pain so I couldn’t drive him to his chiropractor today. After we tried every possible option available, it seems to be the only thing that brings him a bit of pain relief these days.
He said: “it would be cool if I could clone myself, I could treat myself no problem!”.
COURAGE My baby. You are a man now. and yet, our mothers heart he will always remain “my little baby boy!”. The (only) one I gave birth to.
It is now my turn to make an attempt to treat you like you have yourself treated me. I haven’t counted how many times you have healed, i used to count them but today i must let you know that your maman had never really been good in math, except maybe in “Secondaire III” (equivalent to year 9) in fact I used to skip math and a few other subjects…
Sorry to tell you this now but your maman had a few issues already at that age…
I hope you won’t think less of me my boy…
I realized we must share our past with our kids so they learn from our mistakes.
What good is it then if we don’t pass on our wisdom to our kids?
It saves them time as they won’t have to make those same mistakes by themselves and therefore gain wisdom just a little bit quicker.
As life was quite different in my days my son. in those days, we didn’t have so many distractions that we had time to be kids and later teenagers, not skip it all together…
Thank you for being there for me this week. You took care of me when I couldn’t. And it’s not because I didn’t try to find someone to help me. I even contacted every government department I could think of in order to find some aid to come to my house. I was ready to pay for it as well. All I wanted was someone to hold my hand really…
And yet, there you were. Emerging from your dungeon in the basement, like the good boy that you are.
There, you took good care of me every time, me your “petite maman” in her pink sleeping gown. During all that time you cared for me.
And yet, i have something else to ask you “mon fils…”. and this time, you must listen very well.
Do not take example from me, on the contrary yes do learn from me. See all that I could accomplish despite all the obstacles, the pain and suffering I had to live with all this time, a which was slowly decimating my body, my heart and my soul.
I only managed to survive the ordeal because you were there, next to me. My rock.
I always had a plethora of reasons why I stopped writing. Being scared was probably the main one. But now, I have a thousand reasons to start doing it again and never stop:
You introduced me to reading stories that were so totally amazing, stories you wrote yourself with skills I never knew you possessed. I discovered universe I never knew existed. I was hooked for the first page, as if I was Sylvie Fréchette**** at the Olympics or working on Cirque du Soleil’s “O” production in Vegas.
**** Synchronized swimmer who lost gold because of a corrupt Brazilian judge (but received her gold later, in front of an arena full of her supporters who had never lost faith in her or in justice).
Universes you created from mid-air with mysterious and enticing characters, so full of nuances and oh so endearing...
I know my little bunnykin, I brought you up hooked on Disney (which you have visited oh so many times before your 14th birthday (the most memorable time being when your cousins came too, all the way from the other side of the World…). LOL:
A chronically sick mother who love her kid unconditionally must be inventive in her ways to evade the pain. For me, when the pain was too severe, my solution was “a reading festival” we called them. I read everything with him: from HARRY POTTER to AMOS DARAGON! or we invented stories together to which we added, one at a time, bit after bit. Fertilizing your iMAGINATION was one of my main goals.
Other times, we had our famous “pyjama Parties” where I quickly put on my sleeping gown (not pink at that time…) when I came back from work. After I had picked you up from your new “mamie”, your “Claire de Lune” (moonlight) who picked you up every time after class.
There, in my bed, we watched TV, or a movie and hop! We were once again deep into a new story, a new world to explore, together!
From birth to late in your teenage years, there hasn’t been many evenings where we didn’t share one of those privileged moments together, just you and me... Where I didn’t take the time to read you a story before you went to bed. I longed for those moments, they helped me forget, and cope with my life…
I always used a torch light every time I read to you so that, in the end, you would inexorably fall asleep…
Sorry but I still wanted to spend quality some time with your stepdad who finished work later that I did…Every time he saw me come out of your bedroom half asleep myself, he vowed he would one day buy me some reading glasses…
(Well today, when I put the reading glasses, he finally bought me on my cute little nose, I say “it’s because of those damn computers that I need them!”).
Oh and do you remember when we embarked on our long bi-monthly road adventure to the wild North (as we live on the south shore of the Big Island Montréal) and his dad lived north of the little island (north of Montréal lies another smaller island called Laval),
imagine if at that time we recorded all of the mesmerizing stories we came up with together along the road, we would certainly be rich by now my son!
No, all I ask you today, what I ask of you my son, is for you to finish your stories one day because everything you do interests me, stimulates me to keep on fighting despite my pains. If not these stories, some others, it doesn’t worry me.
But please, do not do as I did and quit along the way, please! (Funny because I just remembered that my brother came up one day with a “family motto” with his kids, which he had immortalized on a ring they all wear this year!) … We NEVER quit! Wise my bro.
Yes my son, never let your pain, no matter where it is coming from, stop you do what you want to do, must do, are destined to do to become totally fulfilled in your life.
Just like I did in the past, left…or right (that episode in my life he was never told, a son never want to know about these things or your past), NO MATTER WHICH DIRECTION you end up choosing, please only remember that…
That you are someone great my baby. Everyone who really knows you will agree, me first, of course. I fully understand your pain and agree that it is not pleasurable, far from it! After all, I wrote 95 % of this work laying on my back, moaning as quietly as I could not to worry you my son (now you know why I agreed so quickly to you having your own retreat in the unfinished basement at the time… Ouppsy!), but I final wrote it to the end.
And now I am living the sequel.