We saw Jade at least once a month. She was always on guard for some inadequacy on my part and even signs of mistreatment. A few weeks after his party, we had a visit lined up with her. Thorin had been playing outside, and Ward called him in to change from his muddy clothes. Standing in the kitchen, Thorin lost his footing as he pulled off his jacket. He faced planted on the kitchen floor. I ran to him when I heard him scream. Ward was calmly assessing Thorin’s injury while Thorin screamed and sobbed. I, on the other hand, screamed bloody murder upon seeing Thorin’s face covered in dripping blood. Thorin took this as his cue to start screaming louder.
“Kari, stop it! It’s not that bad,” Ward counseled me.
“Not that bad! He’s covered in blood!”
Thorin wailed.
“Kari, go in the other room. You’re scaring him.”
Holy, crap! I was scaring him!
I sat in the living room while Ward updated me.
“He split his lip,” he shouted. “It looks fine, almost done bleeding.”
“All that blood from a spilt lip?” I shouted back.
“I take it you haven’t seen much boxing,” he said dryly.
Next, I became terrified at the thought of seeing Jade later that day. I was convinced she would call DHHS.
“Kari, she’s not going to do that. You’re overreacting,” Ward assured me.
“What if I’m not overreacting?”
“I’m going to assume you are, Screamy,” he said smirking.
When we saw her, I didn’t even have a chance to explain his swollen, bruised lip.
“How exactly did that happen?” she said, touching Thorin’s face.
I made the mistake of telling the story to her in a rushed, slightly manic and apologetic way.
“Don’t apologize to me; I’m not the one you scarred for life. And screaming? How stupid was that?”
“Well, he looks a million times better now,” I said smiling. Privately I thought, What a ball buster.
“Except for the fact he needs a haircut,” she snapped. I had to hand it to her; she was quick with a comeback.
“Oh, he wants to grow it out,” I said, realizing our roles were totally reversed. It was a real Freaky Friday situation with Jade. She was the adult.
Jade snorted. “He’s three; he doesn’t know what he wants. You want to grow it out. Bad idea.”
During that same visit, Jade told us Halloween was her favorite holiday so it would probably be Thorin’s. Sherry had shared with me that Thorin dressed up as a giraffe the previous year, but he hadn’t been trick-or-treating yet.
Later that month, I took Thorin shopping for a costume and offered a number of characters to choose from. He shook his head no at all of them. After ten minutes of trying to figure it out with him, I decided to pick one for him. There was a bee costume that would be toasty warm for trick and treating with Ella and Evvy; it is the only costume I ever picked out for him. From then on, Thorin would plan months in advance for his costume choice, usually an Avenger character. He wears the costume for weeks before Halloween and weeks after. Jade was correct: Halloween is Thorin’s favorite holiday, surpassing even Christmas and his bedroom motif.
Five years after that first Halloween together, Thorin and I were sitting in the backyard. It was July. He turned and faced me.
“Thanks you for bee costume.”
“The one from when you were little?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. You had to wait a long time to be able to tell me that.”
“Long time.”
“You’re welcome. I’m glad I got it right.”
As the weather got colder, Thorin started getting sick. He would get horrible colds; snot would run from his nose, and he would have wracking coughs. One night, I was awakened by what sounded like a seal barking. Thorin was standing in his crib barking and sobbing. I reached to pick him up.
He screamed, “No, Daddy!”
I yelled to Ward who was able to hold Thorin and provide some comfort. I knew it was croup because I had seen Terms of Endearment. I suggested, as Debra Winger had demonstrated in the film, we start a hot shower and close the bathroom door with the three of us huddled in the steam. What I discovered is—in that the same way Jack Nicholson would never really be interested in a woman the age of Shirley MacLaine—the steam room treatment was not an actual remedy. Thorin now was not only barking and crying, but he was also screaming and flaying his arms. The three of us had our hair plastered on our head, and we were drenched in sweat.
“He’s not better,” I said quietly.
Ward mouthed the words, “I’m scared.”
Trying not to act as panicked as I felt, I said, “Hey, let’s get in the car and go to a place where they help kids who get sick in the middle of the night.”
“You think this is bad enough for a hospital!” Ward exclaimed.
I couldn’t exactly send Ward to the living room, like he did with me, so I tried to calm Thorin.
“It’s not that bad, Sweetie, but we are new at this so we should go to the hospital.”
Once there, he surprisingly sounded better. The emergency room doctor verified it was croup. He also told us the reason Thorin improved was that the cold air on way to the hospital probably opened his airways. He told us when it happened again, which it would, to take him for a drive with the windows open. We were shaken but relieved there was an easy fix.
The doctor was right. A couple weeks later, we were awakened by Thorin’s barking cough. Again, Thorin only wanted Ward to hold him. Thorin protested going in the car, sobbing. The temperature gauge on the car read 25 degrees as we drove around our neighborhood with the windows down. After twenty minutes, the barking subsided. We got back into bed. Ninety minutes later he was back
