flowers on Lighthouse Avenue, Pacific Grove, CA (through the viewfinder)
Lex is really sick. Fever since Friday or Saturday, cough, headache. It’s weird now that he’s fourteen and so much bigger than I am to take care of him when he’s sick. Not weird, I guess, but different. I mean, he’s not going to sit on my lap and put his head on my shoulder to feel better or anything. He wants to stretch out on the couch and text his friends while I make him a lunch of grilled cheese and yellow gatorade. I hand him a couple of Tylenol pills and he holds them in his palm, looks down at me, Mom, this is the adult dose. Shouldn’t I just take one?
Well, no. You *are* an adult by their standards.
Huh, he says, kind of smiling. Okay.
It’s really a shame the kid isn’t old enough to vote yet. He listens to NPR all the time and is honestly far more up to date on politics than I am. He’s in his bed right now, listening to election results and talking back to his radio. I keep having to remind him to stop swearing. Even if you are sick you CANNOT TALK LIKE THAT, I say.
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So some fourth-grade mom, I’ve no clue who, told her daughter that she thinks Barbara Boxer is evil because she wants to kill babies because she supports keeping abortion legal and safe. (She probably worded that last part differently, though.) And that means that the rest of us moms, likely even a lot of moms who agree with her, are now stuck telling our nine year old kids about abortion. THANKS for that! Really.
My conversation with Soph actually went fine, but I’d have been happy if she didn’t have to know about stuff like that for a little bit longer. I mean, she still semibelieves in Santa and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, but she can tell you how babies are made and a very limited amount about how pregnancies are terminated. I don’t know if that makes my brain or my heart hurt more.