Speaking of hayfever, now small lad has it. At first I thought it was the leftovers from a particularly nasty flu we all copped in June, but the last week has seen him sneezing all the time, and one eye is continuously red and half shut. Yes, I’m a terrible mother: we only go to the doctor if we’re dying. We are going next week though.
Probably he’ll be referred to a specialist, and a scratch test later we might have something more targeted than blanket antihistamines. Fingers crossed. I’m hopeful that he’ll grow out of it, but in my half-knowing things and living with hayfever myself, I don’t think the odds are that great compared to if, say, he’d copped this a few years back. He’s getting older, and this may be something he has forever.
You know that moment where you feel powerless and awful for something that you couldn’t possibly change, couldn’t even know about, but there are consequences for which you’re the cause? When I was pregnant with small lad, I had a glucose intolerance. It’s one step down from gestational diabetes. Aside from looking after my diet and being all pricking of the fingers (so nothing wicked this way would come), I felt as if I’d failed small lad before he’d even appeared. Limited family history aside (one aunt with type II diabetes), there is no way I could have known this would happen. And it wasn’t much of a problem for his nibs. He was a bit bigger than he might have been without all of the extra sugar crossing the placenta, but nothing dangerous. But that feeling of failure persisted.
With this hayfever, I feel the same way again. I thought this was a bullet he might have dodged - the inheritance of allergy is of the process, not the specific allergy - and he’s shown no signs of anything until now. But it’s my fault, I wail (in my head), since it’s my genes he’s showing there. Because of course I’m responsible for them. Snort. I think that kind of thinking is taking responsibility too far, but that’s my kid there, and he’s practically perfect in every way.
And I read that part out to husbandly, small lad heard and:
SL: “Not in every way.”
Me: “Practically perfect, so not completely.”
SL: “Okay then.”
The last couple of days I’ve spent mostly in my own head, so I have nothing to report. I started reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which so far (all of the first chapter) is a beautiful read. I may have to go through this book very slowly, since my own “year” of magical thinking after my mother died lasted three or four. If I include staying in pathology, then I’m not going to admit just how many it has been, because it’s just too depressing for words. And for someone so supposedly smart, I’m dumb.
Except I’m not. Dumb, that is. I had (and still have) a life going, and if it wasn’t everything I wanted it to be, enough of it was to compensate. That will have to do, and thanks part of my brain who likes grabbing shit and smearing it around, you can shut up now.
When I was a kid, we hardly ever used the oven unless it was a baked dinner deal. Roast meat (beef/lamb/chook), roast potato and pumpkin and peas you could drink off the plate because they were boiled to buggery. I mention this because I’m sitting in the lounge with the white noise of the oven in the background, and I reflect that we have oven-cooked things all the time.
I don’t know why my mother and grandmother “saved” baked dinners and other oven things for special occasions. I wonder if my own cooking habits are the result of having power from a grid, and NOT having to stoke a fire and keep it burning for hours, or if it’s that small lad has potato issues and will only eat them certain ways. Or because baked potato is damn easy to do and it gives me time to do funky stuff with the rest of the vegetables. Or because I like chips, and the slightly upmarket diced and covered in fresh herbs seems a better dinner choice than just chips. Clearly, I am the queen of ever-recursive discourse. Or maybe just lists.
Moot point, since I’m not cooking tonight, husbandly is; I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that (until I see the sink later, but into every life some rain must fall). And he’s made gravy. Nom nom nom.
Love and peace.
