Just before noon on Friday I was rushing out of the elementary school office—my youngest had forgotten his lunch—when I heard a knocking.
It was coming from the rear window of a black Suburban. The back passenger door stood open.
I turned toward the car.
The knocking came again and from inside the car came the familiar voice of someone I’ve been close friends with for more than a dozen years.
“It’s Pyeatt!” she called, sounding sunny, which was weird considering that she was sitting in the way back of her car in the middle of the day right in front of the elementary school office.
I stepped up onto the running board.
She held up the playing cards in her hand and smiled at her youngest son, Mitchell, a second grader I have a real soft spot for. “We’re just playing a little ‘Blink’!” she said.
“I love ‘Blink’!” I said.
My little towheaded friend, usually even sunnier than his mom, immediately thrust his face between the seat in front of him and the tinted window, clearly not wanting to compare favorite card games.
Pyeatt then told me that she and Mitchell were sitting in the car in the middle of the day—in the middle of lunch recess to be precise—because Mitchell is taking part in a very important clinical trial at Stanford to increase tolerance in kids with peanut allergies.
Mitchell has the kind of allergy that means he’s been rushed to the emergency room, vomiting, throat swelling, three separate times.
It’s the kind of condition that means his parents have to look at the back of the box of crackers when they come over and we all have to keep a special eye on our special friend, making sure that a cough or a red face aren’t the beginning of what might be a fatal reaction to a substance that is—in our household—just about everywhere.
There in the car Mitchell was upset and frustrated because that morning he had needed to eat his three peanut M&M’s, an advanced part of the trial protocol, later that morning than usual. This meant that Mitchell couldn’t run around, not even at recess, which—for a seriously sporty eight-year-old like him—was akin to canceling Christmas.
“You know what?” I said to the back of the little blond head. “You know who had a really hard night last night? You know who was frustrated and sad and really tired of dealing with his stuff?”
Mitchell turned just slightly toward me.
“Big Wull.”
Ever since Mitchell was able to toddle after my Will—eight years his senior—Mitchell has thought that “Big Wull”—a nickname Mitchell gave and only Mitchell uses—was amazing. They have a lot in common. They are both goofy and easy going. They both have enormous heart and they both like kicking the soccer ball around at family get-togethers.
They also both have life-threatening conditions that mean daily interventions that sometimes suck.
When I sat there and told Mitchell that his big friend had had a rough night? That was an understatement.
Will had walked into the kitchen the night before after soccer practice and I looked over for the quick check I make when any of my kids comes into a room. With Will, though, I first check to see if he’s extra pale or doing speedy talking, which could signal a plummeting low. Mostly, though, I’m checking general mood, which was—given his furrowed brow and slumped shoulders—not good.
He let his soccer bag whump onto the floor. He crossed right to the playroom couch, falling back into it like the world was an entirely hostile place.
“You okay?” I asked.
He said, “I’m not good.”
By the time I was sitting beside him, he was in tears.
Now. My five-foot-ten, one-hundred-fifty-pound almost-fifteen year old does not cry easily. I can count the teary moments he has experienced since toddlerhood on one hand.
Now, though, he pulled one of our dogs onto his lap, let his head fall forward, and had tears streaming down his face.
“I don’t want to do this any more,” he said without looking at me. Clearly he was talking about his T1D management. “It’s too hard,” he said. “It’s not fair.”
Well. It turned out that Mitchell, not twelve hours later—would saying those exact same words to his mom.
“You know what?” I said to Mitchell, still hiding his face. “Last night, Big Wull was just done.”
Pyeatt nodded at me, clearly wanting me to continue.
“And you know what I said to Wull? I said, ‘It is not fair you have to do all this stuff you don’t want to do.”
Pyeatt was really nodding now.
“I told him it’s really hard that Aidan doesn’t have to do this stuff and Quentin doesn’t either.”
In the back of the car, I told Mitchell that Will was even crying last night. I said he was really angry and really sad, and the little boy in the backseat brought his face out from hiding.
He didn’t say anything, but he listened as I told him but that Will felt a lot better today and that sometimes it’s good just to get really angry about the whole thing and tell your mom and cry and get it out of your system.
Which is when the bell rang. Mitchell sat up tall. “Can I go now?”
“Sure you can,” said Pyeatt. “Yes. Go.”
Mitchel vaulted toward the middle of the car and down out of the car where he hurried—not quite running, which he knew would increase the chance of anaphylaxis—back to class.
Pyeatt and I let out twin sighs.
The fact was, I knew that Pyeatt had seen what Mitchel hadn’t, his cute face hidden by the car seat. My eyes, in telling a close friend about my night, had been full of tears—not quite spilling over—even at the mention of my boy crying.
It’s not fair that Will has to inject insulin four to six times a day to survive. It’s not fair that Mitchell has to await a terrible reaction every morning in order to ensure his health.
It’s awful that they have to do things—every day, at set times, when it’s the last thing they want to do—while no one else in their family does.
It had felt really good, there in the back of the car, to have told Pyeatt, in the most indirect of ways, about watching Will struggle.
It all seemed a little easier knowing that Pyeatt had been going through the exact same range of emotions in the exact same twenty-four hour period, blocks away from our house.
It was reallygood to think that little Mitchell was heading back to class, maybe feeling a little better now that he had Big Wull—and what the two of them share—in mind.
Big Wull, when he was just about Mitchell’s age, roughhousing on what would be–once he was born–Mitchell’s lawn.
