Let's Grow Old Together

 
















 “Papa didn’t like the beach either, it was the sand that bothered him the most,” my grandmother reminisces to me on the phone, after I recap our trip to Maine to her, “We once went for a picnic with all five kids and he was the only one to get sand in his sandwich.”

 I share with her that aside from his first trip to the beach, we visited the library last week, that he calls all animals doggies, and loves to eat blueberries. I don’t mention the choking incident. 

Matthew made it thirteen months and seventeen days without choking but then one morning he was snacking on mushy watermelon and cheerios when it happened. I saw him bite off a piece of watermelon larger than he could chew. He does this all the time or he shovels ten meticulously cut up pieces into his mouth at once. A few seconds later I saw him frantically gulping for air and quite literally choking to death.

I leaped out of my chair and wrestled with the straps of the high chair with the same difficulty I would have if I were wrestling an octopus. Then I whacked Matt on back until the watermelon went flying out and sliding across the kitchen floor amongst scattered cheerios

Once at a party I went to a baby choked on a teething biscuit. Not breaking conversation, the father whacked the baby over his knee a few times and the biscuit came up and out followed by a puddle of spit up. The parents cleaned it up with a burp cloth and carried on talking as if it were perfectly normal to save a life while discussing sautéed red potatoes.

I, on the other hand, was not nearly as composed. When Matthew wailed I announced that it was happiest sound I had ever heard! Those ten seconds  felt longer than my pregnancy with him did.