Skip to main content

Making Sense

Kenzo was home today... kinda sorta sick. His temperature hovered between 37 and 37.5°C, which is one of those annoying in-between fevers where you can’t really say if someone’s sick or not, but they’re definitely not quite right. He mostly lay on the sofa all day, which made me kinda sad because he’s usually a whirlwind of energy. Seeing him so still felt... off.

At some point late in the morning, I decided to make a second 500ml round of coffee. Maybe it was the extra caffeine, or maybe it was just one of those Mondays (and it was), but before lunchtime my body decided... "hey remember panic attacks? Let’s do one of those." Shaking, dizzy, breathing all weird, like I was trapped inside my own skin, which we all are of course but when you feel it then things get bizarre. 

It’s been a year and a half since I had one this bad, and I do not miss them. There was a six-month period a few years back where panic/anxiety attacks were a daily thing, which is why I finally decided to see a doctor. 

I took my backup medicine, which helped a little, but the rest of the day felt like I was running a marathon inside my own head. Sideways. With heavier than normal gravity. By dinner, I felt like someone had wrung me out like an old dishrag and placed an anvil on it and then sat on that.

Meanwhile, Osamu had his last full day of kindergarten. And judging by his grin, he is really done. Ready to move up. Ready to be a first-grader. 


No hesitation, no looking back. Watching him, I had what I sensed to be a weird parent moment where you simultaneously see your kid as the baby they used to be and the full-fledged person they’re becoming, all at the same time. It's beautiful and melancholy at the same time. Such is life. 

Late afternoon, Kenzo gave me a letter. Or maybe more of a subliminal message. Two pictures. The bottom one was easy. It was the 10-yen candy dispensing machine from the arcade. The top one stumped me until I finally asked. Kenzo informed me, with great patience, that it was the claw game where I won his beloved Pokémon stuffed animal (and, to be fair, several other large, impressive prizes thank you very much).


Most people don’t get our little world. They don’t get why a 10-yen candy machine and a claw game mean something. They don’t get the way my boys think, or the way I sometimes have to ride out a day when my brain decides to betray me. They don’t get why I stay up late thinking about how to be the best parent I can be while simultaneously trying not to lose myself. And writing this blog. But it's okay I guess. 

The good news is I ain't tryin' to live a life other people understand. I’m trying to live a life that makes sense to me and my family.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not About Baseball

I stayed up past my bedtime again last night. I almost made it. I watched a couple of episodes of Ted Lasso and came to a good stopping point where I was satisfied with myself for enjoying some quiet TV time with my favorite show and even though it was after midnight, I was confident I could still get a pretty good night's sleep.  But no. For some reason I decided it would be a good idea to just lay on the living room carpet and put on a movie. I saw the first seven or eight minutes of Goodfellas and then I woke up when the end credits were rolling with Sid Vicious' is cover of My Way . I brush my teeth and I can see the light of day already shining in through the bathroom window. "It’s almost the longest day of the year," I told myself, to at least rationalize why I'm brushing my teeth and crawling into bed at this hour. I was trying to minimize the mental anguish I regularly put on myself for not just going to bed like I should. I told Eri that I was thinking a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sendai vs. Tokushima

Osamu said he had to go pee, and I make it a habit to believe him most of the time. Another habit I have is taking him to go pee, much of the time.  When we came out of the restroom I decided it was time for a beer, so with Osamu holding my hand we waltzed over to the food concession and I was checking out the selection, and the prices. Seven hundred yen for a draft beer. I had a feeling. It was only 500 for a whiskey cocktail (whiskey with water on the rocks) but I wasn't about to be that much of a derelict this early with my four-year-old son in tow. The tickets were free, the seats aren't bad, might as well spend seven bucks on a beer. The problem was that the dude next to us with his little boy about the same age as Mumu-chan loudly and with braggadocio you don't often see in these parts ordered a Blue Hawaii snow cone for his kid. I heard this and panicked. Last weekend at Michinoku Park I got a Blue Hawaii snow cone for Osamu and he loved it.  I looked down at my l...
1 comment
Read more

Overpriced Highball for the Big Guy

I keep falling asleep at my desk and waking up all groggy and surly in the middle of night, stumbling downstairs to brush my teeth without waking anyone, and slinking back up the steps and into bed. So I was the last one up again this morning, but I made up for it by quickly getting ready and taking the boys out on a Sunday morning walk to look for bugs. Kenzo has been particularly keen on capturing another lizard. He doesn't understand that lizard season is ending and those guys are becoming more and more rare. He got his hopes up when we came across a little one walking up some woodsy steps. After that we took a break. Eri's sister and her husband stopped by to grab the car seats that the boys just graduated from. Their little girl Emika is just now big enough to start using one and next spring she's gonna have a brand new baby brother or sister who will also need a car seat, so the timing worked out nice for all of us. Emika apparently loves Thomas the Tank Engine (who d...
Post a Comment
Read more