It happened

We parents are often, if not constantly, thinking about our kids’ futures. How we will provide for them physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc. We’re generally carrying the burdens of today as well as all of the burdens we perceive will come along tomorrow, next year, etc.

(I can't find a better example that's scanned into my computer than the one at right, taken when she was about nine months old. You can't see the leg really well, but you can kind of tell that something strange is going on over there.)

We’re a paranoid lot. We fear and dread certain rites of passage. Or at least, to some extent. I generally hesitate to speak for others in this way, but I don’t know how one could be a human parent who loved and cared for one’s child without having certain hopes and dreams for them. And certain fears. Some are fairly universal, and others are specific to the child.

One that Matt and I have had since Day 1 has to do with Lizzy’s right leg. For any of you who knew Lizzy before the age of, oh, 3, you probably noticed an angry red blotch that completely covered the back of her leg from the knee down, and wrapped around the front just above the ankle. She was born with it; we never really knew what it was. Lots of kids have similar things. We were just glad it wasn’t in a more conspicuous spot.

We weren’t too worried about it as an actual impediment, as she seemed to learn to crawl and walk at about the right times. That lower leg has always been slightly skinnier than the left one, but again, it never seemed to hinder her in any way. I took her to a specialist (not covered by my insurance company – THANKS, K@!ser) who didn’t know what the heck it was, so he (no joke) made up a term for it. It’s now a Rapidly Involuting Congenital Hemangioma. Translation: A skin blotch that was there at birth that appears to be quickly going away. Come back if it starts to get worse. That’ll be one hundred dollars, please.

So our much milder worry became: What would Lizzy’s reaction be to her slightly less than ‘normal’ leg, when she became old enough to be vain about such things? We figured that would be about the time other kids got old enough to point and laugh.

Fortunately, it has gone away at a really rapid clip. You can still see some small spider-type veins here and there, and it’s still ever so slightly skinnier than its neighbor, and there’s a weird vein indentation running up it (used to be an actual vein, when things looked worse), but otherwise, it’s cool. It's kind of like she's got one 4-year-old leg, and one 50-year-old leg. Kinda.

Yesterday in the car, Lizzy was squirming all around. Can’t blame her, the 4-year-old who shares her parents’ hour-plus commute each way.

We told her to put her legs back down in front of her – she was kind of sitting on them (those older-kid carseats allow for a lot more wiggle room) – and then she said, ‘Hey – what’s this?’ Matt and I darted a glance at each other, then looked down at her leg. ‘What – this?’ I said, pointing to the spider veins. ‘Yeah,’ says Lizzy. ‘Is this the first time you’ve seen that?’ I asked. ‘No,’ said Lizzy. ‘What is it?’ So Matt and I take a deep breath and sort of tell her the story, emphasizing that LOTS of kids are born with spots here and there, and things, and that there’s nothing wrong with her. That the leg works great. She told us it never hurt – something we used to wonder about when she was a baby.

So, there we are, for now. She’s aware of her leg, but doesn’t seem freaked by it. Please, Lord, make it go away completely by the time she’s a pre-teen, or give her a lot of confidence about it.

Matt used to say that he was kind of glad she had something funny like that. That it would help her be stronger and more humble about herself. Since she’s sure to be a great beauty, and all. :)

Now -- time to move on to bigger worries! First pimple, first heartbreak, first 'I'm fat!', etc. I'm sure it never ends.