Let's keep walking ahead each day

We are lucky, I tell my son. He tells me about his new friends who have a giant house on Edgcumbe Road and plans to vacation abroad at Easter. I tell him we live better than two-thirds of the people in this world. We are lucky, I tell him.

He tells me about the kid in his class who has Asperger's and is allowed to sit in the middle of the floor and spin. I ask him if he ever thinks about his own remarkable body, how he doesn't have to suffer through his body like that. He says yes, you're right, we are lucky that way.

I worry about him, though. It seems he is made up like me; I see his dark and light sides and I see myself. I worry about us, of the things we carry inside. We come from mixed stock. My dad, the scientist, is hard-wired like a cattle pen, taut and braided strong with barbs positioned at every curve. If you come at him too hard he pushes back, and bites you in the butt to boot. My mom is the painter. She is the sprite and her inner make-up is intricately balanced, like all those criss-crossed wires of the aerial artist. Sometimes, when life comes at her too hard she teeters, like she's taking her first walk without a net, even after all these years of practice.

I've had to tell my son a few things this week. I heard about a Maplewood preteen who had been approached by a man in a car "with candy." Just when he is finally unafraid of the dark anymore, I had to tell my son of that and the Missouri molester and those abducted boys. I went through our steps again. Yell. Yell loud. Never get close to a car. Run to the first house you see. He reassured me: "And I'll start carrying baseballs so when a bad guy tries that on me I'll pelt him in the forehead first."

I told my son about my tests this week. See, I've got the best and worst of both my parents, and the messy middle ground in between. Sometimes I'm like a bull on a tight wire (a confident bull, but still) and it seems the lines are starting to fray a bit. I've had symptoms. I'm getting them checked out.

Tuesday I went to Neurological Associates for a look-see. A gray-haired woman in knee-high furry boots came in for her appointment and when the receptionist asked her how she was doing, the woman said, "Not too well or I wouldn't be here, would I?"

They wired me up with discs and then sent electricity up my nerves; then they stuck needles into my muscles and measured my reactions. Apparently the gray-haired woman was having the same test in the room next door, and she cried out, "Goddammit. GOD dammit."

Yesterday I had five tubes of blood drawn. My clinic lab tech had to pull out her manual to learn two of the prescribed measures. She said, "We've never had to do these two."

Today I go for a brain MRI. The registrar pre-screening me droned over the phone: Name? Social Security number? Birth date? Insurance? Next of kin? And did I need a sedative? "I don't know," I said, "do I?"

My son listened to all this and said, "You should call them back and say 'you know what? I changed my mind. I'm good to go. I can live with this.' " He laughed awkwardly and then turned to me, "We'll get better, Mom. Anyway, we are a lucky family."