Flying Solo

On Sunday I dropped my son off at the Tulsa airport and hugged him goodbye for the last time until August 9.  This will be the longest amount of time I've ever been separated from him:  this, my "little boy" who once grew inside my body and now towers four inches over me.  The longest I've ever been apart from him before is four weeks. This will be nine.


I was strangely okay with this. I got a little teary as I was saying goodbye, but as I got back into my car I was already thinking ahead toward my summer flying solo.  I was already taking advantage of the new found freedom:  instead of returning straight home from the airport, I took a half-hour detour up to Foyil, Oklahoma, where I spent a few hours volunteering for Wild Heart Ranch, a wildlife rehabilitator. I scrubbed hawk poop out of cages, refilled supplies, folded laundry, squirted food into a dozen wide-open baby bird mouths from a syringe, and, best of all, I got to feed several tiny baby skunks, just big enough to have their eyes open.  I got home sweaty, tired, with my shirt smeared with hawk poop, but happy, at 10 p.m.


I know I will miss my boy. He is, as I mentioned in an earlier post, always a presence in my life and my home. But this summer feels different. This time is mine.

I'm also working furiously on raising money for Lucky. Our GoFundMe campaign is now up to more than $1,000, which is amazing. I've been really touched by the way my friends and co-workers have come out with support, both emotional and financial. I have even received an offer of a free apartment to stay in while I'm in Stillwater for Lucky's surgery!  One colleague baked and decorated beautiful sugar cookies shaped like shamrocks and dog bones and put them in the breakroom with a donation jar.  They garnered $150!  And at the end of the day yesterday, I received an envelope of cash from an "anonymous donor" that put the fund over the $1,000 mark.


Still, that leaves about $2,000 to be raised, so I've listed several items for sale on Craig's List. These are big items, things I've been hauling around for six years now for one reason or another:  the armoire my X and I bought on our honeymoon that weighs a ton; the ginormous coffee table that was scaled perfectly for the large living room we had before, but looks like an ice rink in my current space; a chest of drawers that belonged to my great grandmother and is the last of a bedroom suit that has long since been broken up and sold off piece by piece by various family members.


I've been attached to these items and have argued with myself that I need them, that I love them. But it feels somehow liberating to put them up for sale now. I crave the empty space in my home, and the opportunity to go through my stuff and decide what warrants space in my reduced storage capacity and what has to go.


Perhaps in the same spirit, I've gone back to the gym. I find I am no longer resigned to the 20 pounds I put on over the past two years.  Hormonal changes made me pack on the weight and depression made me feel helpless to do anything about it.  But I feel stronger these days, and I realize I'm not helpless. It's not impossible to regain the body that feels like me, and I want to get my strength and stamina back.


So I'm doing okay with my looming stretch of solitude. I've got shit to do!

The Fight for Lucky

As I write, our little dog Lucky is at the vet, having had X-rays earlier today.  It's been a while since I mentioned Lucky, but his issues have not gone away and in fact have gotten worse.

After conducting a liver bile acids test, our vet is convinced that Lucky has a liver shunt: that means that the blood vessels that carried blood away from his liver to his mother's liver while he was in utero failed to close after he was born, so his blood is not getting to his liver properly to be cleaned. This is causing pretty much all the problems he has been experiencing:  lowered immune function, protein elimination problems, wasting, the seizures, and now abdominal bloating as fluids leak from the liver and possibly intestines because of the protein imbalance.  (That's why he was getting X-rays.)

It's all very complicated.  The upshot is that  he needs surgery to fix the shunt. The surgery could kill him, as it is long and complicated and he is weak.  But he will certainly die without it, as his condition continues to worsen. It has to be done by a specialist and will cost an estimated $2500 to $3000.

Obviously, that's money I don't have.

Yesterday I started a Go Fund Me campaign to try to raise part of the money.  My Facebook friends have been sweet, and so far we've raised $145.  Not bad for one day.  I'm hoping as friends share with friends we can continue to get that up to at least $500.  I'm going to sell a few things around the house to try to get it up to $1000.

The vet is reluctant to give me a firm timeline, but based on the rate at which Lucky's condition is deteriorating, he said in 4 weeks, Lucks could be beyond help, so we need to get him into surgery as soon as possible, if we want to increase his odds. He gets weaker with every passing day, and the more depleted he becomes, the harder it will be for him to withstand the surgery.

Whatever happens, I tell myself, he has been and continues to be loved.  Whatever happens, he's had more life and a healthier life than he would have without us, because me and my family have been willing to pour money into him to keep his little furry head above water all these months.


But we have had him less than a year.  And he's only a year and a half old.  It's not fair.

I don't want him to die.  I don't want to have to hold him and say goodbye, and I don't want to let that little personality go because I failed him.  But I don't know if I can keep that from happening.  There's a sad little part of my heart that fears Lucky was never meant to be long in this world: that he's had a date with death since the beginning, and I've just barely been keeping it at bay.  But he's also been a trooper, and resilient.  I don't think he's giving up yet, and I'm not giving up on him.

The clock is ticking... or is it a time bomb?

Tomorrow is the last day of school for G.  That's the end of junior high for him. In just ten short weeks he'll be a high school student.  

Years ago, when he was still fat and could be patted on the bottom, I tried to imagine myself as the mother of a teenage son.  I pictured myself in the grocery store, trailed by this tall, slouching, demi-man.  I imagined our two-word conversations as he devoured everything in the refrigerator.  I resigned myself to fist-bumps rather than hugs at departures.

Aaaaaand, that's pretty much what I got.

My boy cleared 5'10" last month--officially equaling--perhaps surpassing by now--his father in height. He avoids going to the grocery store with me, or on any errand that doesn't involve the possibility of food or a stop at the book store or game store. And when he is persuaded to accompany me, he doesn't exactly slouch.  What he does do is careen  through the parking lot on the back of the shopping cart on our way to the car, and I can't help but imagine that A) a car is going to pull out suddenly and send him flying, or B) a little old lady is going to step out and get creamed.

Our conversations, though comprising sentences of more than two words, are largely the opposite of what I thought they would be (me talking and him grunting). Example:

G:  So this character in my game is a god, but he's, like, a really weak god, you know?
Me:  Mmmm?
G: But it's because he is just a (insert element) god, he can (insert activity) and he'll transform into a (whatever).
Me:  Mmmmm.
G: So if you meet him in the game, he'll always ask you if you have a (whatever) for him.  Because that's what he needs to do (whatever).  Nobody ever has it, but he asks it every time.
Me.  Hmmm.

This is pretty much what I see every day,
from the time I get home until I go to bed.

The other conversation alternative is that he's wearing earbuds and every time I say anything to him he pauses his computer, pulls out an earbud, and says " what?"  After which I repeat it. He's sort of present and not present at the same time. He's rather like a piece of semi-sapient furniture that periodically bursts out laughing or asks what's for dinner.

And yet he is there.  He is pretty much always there.

And in just a few days, he won't be.  I'll be shipping him off to Texas to be with his dad for nine weeks.  This will be a heroic act on my part because I've never...
EVER...
been separated from him for this amount of time.

Four weeks has been, I believe, my max.  And on Sunday I'll be saying goodbye to him until August. Fucking AUGUST!

Granted, there's a little selfish and weary piece of me that enjoys the idea of a home in which Family Guy is not playing continually... a home with TWO clean bathrooms, and in which I can purchase milk one gallon at a time.  But I figure the novelty will wear off in a few weeks. After that, I'll have to start finding a way to keep from turning into the Crazy Dog Lady.  


Tick tick tick...