Leo Clement

This is a brief amendment to the previous post: Step In Time.  I realize tonight, that I forgot to write about something else that happens in time. Not about when time is fast or slow, but when it crashes. When time freezes in a horrible way. When time seizes uncontrollably, your heart beats blur like the wings of a hummingbird.  I'm still reeling from a shocking experience with Leo yesterday afternoon which totally brought this home to me. After a completely normal morning and nap, I noticed Leo suddenly developing a complete left sided weakness. He started tilting over, not moving his left leg or arm when tickled or prompted. He was acting anxious and clingy. My stomach sinking, I pulled out his emergency med so that it would be on hand. But even though I was watching for it like a hawk, for the next half hour or so, his left limbs were not jerking. So I'm ashamed to admit I totally panicked. Visions of brain bleeds, strokes, shunt failures were rac...

There is never enough time. And then, there is so much time that it feels like eternity. It's an eternity, waiting in the family room while your child is having surgery. Time flickers by like a flower spotted from a speeding car when your child takes his first step. A kiss, a feeling of happiness, gone in a little burst of light. The sun passes behind the clouds, and a cold wind blows for what feels like years. I try to remember, to recreate those days, those feelings, that sensation of a little hand taking yours, a smile or a laugh. My brain knows that somewhere, there is a place where I would remember those moments, but the rest of me, doesn't know how. I like to pretend that now will last forever. That right now, the moment of joy, of sun, will carry on endlessly, cloudlessly; that the song will keep playing and I will never grow tired of it. An endless symphony of glorious sound filling and overflowing with joy. Perhaps this is what paradise will be like. How can I keep a ...

Pictures speak louder then words. Before picture of Leo's eyes. Since his two major head surgeries, little man's eyes have stopped working as a team. One eye was always taking a coffee break, leaving the other to do all the work. It was hard for us to figure out which eye was the one he was looking at us with. But because of the little miracle that took place yesterday, we don't have to play this guessing game anymore! The surgery was a total success, and it is so thrilling to look into to both of the little lion's sparkly eyes at the same time.   Leo in the waiting room before surgery The procedure itself only took a couple hours, and then once he woke up, we had to wait around for another couple hours so that the eye doctor could check his alignment and re-adjust if needed. As it happened, his left eye needed another tweak and since she had put in stitches that were adjustable, poor buddy needed to go under again for another fifteen minutes or so. Leo wak...

Our little family spent the last week on a lake smack dab in the middle of the Adirondack park. The family camp lies nestled right on the beginning of the curve in a quiet bay, where the most traffic you would see all day are the loons with their babies, or the beavers and fish. Yeah, its pretty quiet all right. There are no cars, because there are no roads. The only way to get to the camp is by boat. There is also no internet and thus the normal world with its IV drip of flowing data and instant gratification is unplugged and forgotten. Everything slows down, and there is nothing to do other then sit on the dock and listen to the water lapping up against the rocks. Well, that isn't exactly true, since now that we have kids, there is always something to do. But Leo too, got into the feeling of camp. The atmosphere mellowed him and bestowed a peachy glow to his otherwise pale little cheek. It is so easy to put your whole person; mind, body and soul into the hectic lifest...

On Friday, I was procrastinating the whole bedtime thing. You know, when that slightly maniacal feeling comes over you, where you just want to wash a couple more dishes, or finish the laundry, or at least pick up the toys, or BUST? Well I was in the grips of this get-stuff-done fever when I almost tripped over Leo, who just several minutes earlier was playing happily and creating more mess, and who was now, lying in the hallway acting weird. So far, when he has gotten his seizures previously they were in the middle of the night, or in nap time so by the time I caught them, they were full blown. What alerted me right away to Leo was that this time, it looked like his whole left side had shut off, almost like a stroke victim, so when he was tried to crawl he kept collapsing and screaming in frustration. My heart pretty much burst out of my chest like an alien and hid under the table, shaking. The rest of me grabbed him and recognized the fact that he was beginning to seize. It had a...