At the Pediatrician's Office

Yesterday I took my seventeen-year-old to his yearly well-visit at the pediatrician’s office.

The only other people in the waiting room sat across from us in a row of chairs—a young couple with a newborn in a bucket carseat. At one point, the dad pulled the baby out of the seat and held him to his chest, gently patting his back. Judging by the baby’s size and the looks of exhaustion on the parents’ faces, that little guy couldn’t have been more than a week or two old.

I sat there next to my 5’10 child, a child who’ll be an adult next year and free to go to his own “regular” doctor.

I thought of all the times I’d been in that office, sat in that waiting room, stared at the fish tank, begged my boys not to bang on it.

We’d been going there since Cal came home from the hospital. So many appointments. So many frantic calls worrying about illnesses and injuries.

I thought about all the sore throats and earaches and fevers and coughs that refused to go away. The terror and the tears when it came to shots and the joy of that post-strep test popsicle. The boys’ attempted tippy toes when measuring height and their little fibs about how many vegetable servings per day.

I remember one afternoon at home when Cal was about three years old. He thought he was Superman and launched himself right into the coffee table. Twenty minutes later, we sat in the backroom of the pediatrician’s office. The doctor asked me to sing to Cal while he placed three stitches under his eyebrow. I couldn’t think of a single song. I was so scared.

I was so scared so many times. But I always left with a prescription or a game plan or some other reassurance tucked in my pocket.

Yesterday, I stopped by the baby scale on the way out, and thought about the days when my newborn had to be weighed like fruit at the grocery store, on his back in his tiny little diaper, arms flailing in the air.

Now that seventeen-year-old just had his lipids checked.

One day you are carrying your baby in a bucket carseat under your arm. The next day that baby is getting in the driver’s seat of his own car in the parking lot and headed to work at the fro-yo shop.

But there are so very many days in between. There are a lot of dots on that growth chart, and a long line connecting them.

He’s come a long way. Me too.

Better keep that cholesterol in check, kiddo.

Like this object-based story telling? My memoir, Piece by Piece: A Life Remembered through Things Lost, is available here.

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