Fireflies

A few weeks ago, MLW took the mini-BG in for her yearly heart check-up. It's a new doctor now, since the prior one no longer sees children on account of his susceptibility to infection (owing to the fact that, get this, he had a heart transplant in the last year). This year went off without a hitch, primarily because the toddler's now of an age that she can be distracted throughout the tests by various cartoons.

Aside from getting her current stats (over 32 lbs., 3'3" tall), the docs found that her condition is great. Her heart is always going to be "noisy," since she still has a mass on the outside wall, but it has not gotten larger, and hopefully as she continues to grow it will remain the same size as her heart increases in size. She had to wear a monitor for 24 hours, which she'll most likely have to do every time she goes to a check-up, but she was a real trooper and reaped a reward of "junks" (anything sugary or extremely fattening).

Three years on, I'm less inclined to remember the exact date when the mini-BG had her surgery, as it was not an easy day to have lived through. In its place are these check-ups. Every year I'm able to convince myself that I view these appointments with a certain nonchalance, and every year I find that I've been unconsciously getting more and more tense as the time MLW takes her approaches. When I speak to her afterwords, I can almost feel myself unclenching.

That night, the mini-BG and I walked to our local park. I watched as she chased after fireflies, an insect she's only really discovered this summer. She was completely unmindful of the monitor and the leads that were taped to her chest, her concentration focused solely on those brief glowing flashes. I watched, and thought back, and was thankful.