I even had fans of my stylist abilities. I ran into a friend who told me her daughter was interning at a preschool. The daughter was taken with a little boy there who wore great outfits. In fact, she had a nickname for him: College Boy.
“It’s Thorin!” I yelled.
She laughed, “It is Thorin!”
Ward would often offer to dress Thorin. I couldn’t risk having him put together an outfit I would find unsuitable but I didn’t want to be insulting about it.
“Oh, thank you. I already laid clothes out if you want to use those!”
It took months before Ward caught on.
“It’s almost like you don’t trust me to dress him.”
Laughing, I said, “Well that’s a weird thing to think.”
Thorin’s aide at school was named Mindy. She looked to be in her early forties. Her personality was exuberant with a touch of manic. She stood five-feet tall, had washboard abs, ropy arms like Madonna, and shiny, straight hair. I felt like a big clod next to her. At the end of the first day with Thorin, she told me she loved him. It was clearly level jumping but it was also clear he felt the same way about her.
Mindy became devoted to Thorin. She took time to quiz his physical therapist, occupational therapist, and speech therapist about what more she could do to help him. I found out from Mindy that she worked a second job, was raising a teenager, and helped raise her grandchild. Yet in her spare time, which must have been while she was going to the bathroom, she taught herself some signing to better communicate with Thorin.
Her only shortcoming seemed to be that she went a little overboard sometimes. When I would pick up Thorin at the end of the day, she would fawn over him, hugging and kissing him.
“I love you, Thorin! I love you so much! I’ll miss you!”
I wanted to shout, “Sweet Jesus, Mindy, stop!”
I didn’t want to risk alienating her, but her routine was making it difficult to get Thorin to leave with me. After a week of it, I took her aside.
“Listen, Mindy, my job is to drop off Thorin and act like it’s no biggie. Your job is to do the same at the end of the day. No biggie. Do you understand?”
“I just really love him!” she said.
“Mindy, I get that. He loves you, too, but you’re acting like you’re sending him off to war. The thing is, Mindy, you’re sending him home with me—his mother.”
“Oh, no! I’m so sorry!” She looked like she was going to cry.
“Mindy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .” I trailed off.
I had a complicated relationship with Mindy. Thorin was still not calling me Mom, and he was clearly in love with her. I was jealous of Mindy. I had to remind myself we were lucky to have her. I also knew that if Thorin were on a field trip, singing to the elderly at a nursing home and a grizzly bear broke into the building, Mindy would kick his ass seven ways to Sunday before he got to Thorin.
Thorin’s preschool used a model of childcare that accentuated the positive. They believed so strongly in their methodology that they proselytized their message daily. For example, I was encouraged to say, “Use your quiet feet” instead of “Stop running!” I would never say to anyone, “Use your quiet feet,” so why would I talk to Thorin like that? It was also recommended I ignore it when Thorin threw things. I didn’t think the teacher knew what we were up against at home.
“You know that scene in the movie Carrie,” I began telling her, “when she makes all that cutlery fly around the kitchen? That’s every room in our house—except replace the cutlery with toy cars, shoes, cups, dishes, eyeglasses, remote controls, books, and almost a mini-dachshund.”
She gave me a sympathetic smile. “That’s because you aren’t ignoring it.”
Of course she would say that. Then I wondered, What is the positive directive of “Don’t throw Coco?”
I thought the preschool’s intentions were good but I didn’t want to hear what I should be doing. I was Thorin’s mother even if he didn’t acknowledge it.
As the weather changed, so did Thorin’s health. The middle of the night trips around the neighborhood in the car and visits to the emergency room began once more. Seeing Thorin helpless was punishing. Dr. Not-McDreamy, as I came to refer to his pediatrician privately, prescribed a nebulizer to use at home.
As he gave me the compact machine and a box of ampules filled with albuterol, I asked, “Maybe he has asthma?”
“He doesn’t,” he said authoritatively.
A couple weeks after I brought home the nebulizer, Thorin woke us in the middle of the night. He was making the dreaded stridor sound. As I ran to his crib, I had the mental image of him trying to breathe through a straw.
“I’ll set up the nebulizer,” I told Ward.
Ward lifted him from the crib and carried him into our room. Walt followed them to our bed, curling up against Thorin as he lay propped up on the pillows. I went to put the little mask over Thorin’s face. He pushed my hands away. He was still making the shrieking sound then he started gasping for air. I saw the panic in Thorin’s eyes. Ward picked him up and starting pacing. Thorin’s back was arching. He started banging his head with his fists. Then he was clawing at his throat.
“We have to call an ambulance,” I said as calmly as possible.
“No, it can’t be that bad,” said Ward. “Maybe we should wait.”
I grabbed my phone and called 911. The dispatcher answered.
“I don’t know if our son can breathe.” I could hear my voice breaking and felt my heart pounding in my ears.
With her assistance, I was able to give her all
