My Son

He was born ten years ago, a week early, and weighed in at 8 lbs. I was doing pretty good; I’d kept him in three weeks longer than I kept his sister in two years earlier.

It looked like history was repeating itself with the second pregnancy. I had contractions from three months onwards and had been on bedrest for months. The first baby had come fast and it appeared that the second one would be faster. My experience in the hospital with my first baby had not been pleasant, to say the least. I didn’t want a wild ride at midnight to the hospital. I got a midwife and prepared for a nice relaxed home birth. Little did I know that I’d go into labour at the midwife’s office in down freakin town Toronto and take a wild ride up the Parkway to get home.

I had to get over my disappointment that my babies were born in the city instead of in a farmhouse bedroom with a sloped ceiling. If it was good enough for my grandmothers, it would be good enough for me. I at least found it comforting that this kid would enter the world with a somewhat relaxed mother, in her own familiar room, as opposed to a mother screeching at the intern doctors to not just stand there gawking, get busy and do something. I’m not kidding about that. I just hate it when I’m working and everybody else is slacking off.

So once we got Grandmar busy with the little girl, we hunkered down in the basement apartment and got busy birthing a baby. Forty-seven minutes later he was out. “We have a boy.”

At that point I stretched, shook myself and went out to chop some wood.

I’m kidding. I cuddled with my baby while my husband held the girl and the cat purred on the foot of the bed.

My boy and I have been through hell together. He started crying at two weeks old and kept it up until he was two years old. He wasn’t colicky; he had all the medical attention and still he didn’t stop screaming. Colicky babies usually have a set time period each day when they cry, but our boy just cried whenever he wasn’t asleep or feeding. I think I know what was going on. Imagine how frustrating it is to be a genius, but only be able to communicate by infantile means. Man, now that he can talk, draw, and make music, he’s fine.

He’s emotional, passionate, energetic. He’s a talented artist, and can play guitar and drums. He’s an accomplished stunt biker, and just yesterday learned how to drive his grandpa’s “new” ATV. In fact he’s a legend in his own mind. He’s also a certified Dragonologist. The only girl he loves more than mom is his horse. He’s all gifted and stuff. His spelling is “creative” but his marks are always high. He’s the kind of student who can just show up in class and do the minumum of work and still ace it, the kind of student that I used to be very jealous of. Like his dad.

He inherited my curly hair and double row of teeth grin. He inherited his dad’s pretty black eyelashes and big feet. He also got my crooked spine, sadly, and his dad’s propensity to attract dirt. He got the sense of humour from both of us.

He’s ten now, and that not only means that I’m ten years older, it means that we’re all in the double digit ages now. We are permanently, irreversibly out of the little-kid phase of our lives. This makes me kind of sad but it’s also totally cool because I’ve got these two young people in my life that are so much fun to be with.

He has to go outside now and help his grandpa scrap some cars. He’s holding the hose while his grandpa cuts the metal apart with the torch. The boy is a valuable guy to have around.