I unlatch the buckles from my four-year-old son’s car seat, my back freezing in the icy air.  “Brrr, it’s cold out here, bud.”

            He wiggles in his seat, excited by the change in weather. 

“Put my hood up,” he demands, impatiently tugging at the hoodie on his sweater.  He manages to pull it half on, lopsided over one ear. 

“What do you say?”

“Please.” 

I help him pull the rest of it on, and zip his coat all the way up.

            “Ok, bud, want to jump?”

            He nods vigorously and climbs out of his car-seat.  He grabs my hand with his small, strong fingers and hops out of the van onto the cold wet parking lot.

            “Fingers out of the way,” I say, locking my door and swinging it closed.

            “Don’t close my door!  Let me do it.” 

My hand is already on his door handle. 

            “No, mama, let me, let me do it!”

            “Ok, but hurry,” I say, “Mama’s cold.”

            He grabs the van handle and pushes the heavy door on its track until it thuds closed with a satisfying clunk.  He grins up at me.  I high-five him.

            “Now let’s go before my nose freezes off.”

            “Let’s run, mama!”  He starts yanking at my hand, his little body already bracing to take off.

            “No, wait,” I say, holding him back.  “Not so fast.”

            “But I want to run,” he says, the whining tinge in his voice.  “I could race you!”

            “No, you have to hold my hand,” I say firmly.  “We’ll walk, and I’ll go as fast as I can.”

            He starts jogging beside me, dragging me forward. 

“Honey,” I say, panting a little, “You have to slow down.  Mama can’t go as fast as you.”

            “Why not?  I wanna run!”

            “Mama’s sick, honey.”

            “Why?” He’s still jogging along, and I’m trying to keep up, widening my paces to long strides to keep up with his fast small ones.  I look down at him, so tall and full of energy.

He’s getting older, so independent already.  When I was driving just now, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw him looking out the window with his brow knotted up, like he was thinking really hard about something.  He used to just yammer and jabber non-stop whenever we drove.  Three was the year of constant vocal chatter, but now, at four and a half, I’ll catch him in these moments where he is silent and obviously pondering something.  Contemplative and quiet.  Like he’s becoming his own little person.

            “Mama has a sickness that doesn’t go away,” I say tentatively, slowing down and huffing with the effort as we near the store front.

            “Why?”

            “Because Mama has what is called a chronic illness.  The word chronic means it goes on for a long time.  It doesn’t go away.”

            “Why?”

            “There are different kinds of sickness.  You remember when you got sick last month?”

            He nods solemnly as we walk through the rush of warm heated air blowing after we step through the front doors of the store.  I’m breathing hard, and I pull him over to a little bench by the entrance. 

            “I threw up on the couch.”

            “Yes, but then you got better, right?”

            He nods, crawling around the bench on his knees.  He stands up, holding on to the back rungs of the bench, and cranes his thin neck to look all around.

            “I’m tall!” he yells.

            “Hey bud, focus just a second longer.”

            He looks down at me. 

            “Wanna sit in my lap?”

            He jumps hard in my lap, almost knocking me over.  I laugh and snuggle my arms around him tight, inhaling the scent of his soap-fresh hair, then nuzzling my nose into the soft space between his cheek and his neck.  He giggles and I pull back.

            “Mama has a sickness that doesn’t get better.  It’s not like the sickness that you had.  I don’t throw up, but I am really tired a lot of the time.”

            “Why?”

            I close my eyes, part of me wanting to launch into a long talk about how life is hard sometimes and we don’t always get what we want, and bad things happen, not for any reason, but just because they do.  And you deal with them the best you can.

            “Just because I did.  People get sick sometimes, and sometimes they are sick for a long time, like me.”

            “Why?”

            “Because that’s just what happens sometimes.  So I get tired really easily.  And not just tired like when daddy gets home from work and says he is tired.  It’s a different kind of tiredness.  So I won’t be like other mommies, and that’s why I never go to the park with you or play catch or tag with you.” 

I could keep going and going, and I feel the prick of tears at my eyes just thinking about it.  It’s why I couldn’t breastfeed you or take care of you after you were born and were so colicky.  It’s why I was bed-bound for five months when you were barely one.  It’s why grandma came to live with us.  It’s why the first three years of your life I was a peripheral person, never able to take care of you by myself.  It’s why I’ve always felt like a terrible mother.  It’s why now, even though I’ve been feeling better lately, I still can’t take care of you for more that four or five hours at a time by myself.  It’s why this outing to buy you some new shoes is going to exhaust me for the rest of the day and I’ll take a nap right when your father gets home.  It’s why you’ll never have a brother or sister.

            “You’re growing up into a big boy now and this is just something that we’ll start talking about sometimes, okay?”

            He is busy watching a pair of bobbing balloons attached to the cashier stand. 

            “You listening, bud?”

            He nods, then wiggles up out of my lap and jumps up and down on the bench with a loud stomp, giving me a grin like he knows like what he is doing might be naughty.  I love watching him.  How could this happy, active boy have come out of my sick body?

            I grab him into my lap again and snuggle him tight.

            “Give mama a hug,” I say, holding his wriggling body.

            “Let me go!” he shrieks, giggling.

            “Not ‘til you give mama a squeezy hug.”

            He stops squirming and hugs me around my neck, so tight it almost hurts. 

            He pulls back and looks at me intently, his sweet, perfect face just inches from mine.  I could stare at him forever – his skin that is so flawless and smooth, the way his nose arches into his brow, the intelligent way his eyes flick this way and that. 

            “Was that a good squeezy hug, mama?”

            “It was the best squeezy hug yet.”