On Reading Aloud

“My feet are numb,” my daughter says. She has been sitting in her chair, eating dinner, feet on the floor. There is no reason for her feet to be numb, to have fallen asleep.

Well, there is one reason but during this conversation, I do not remember that it exists. I just wonder how a person’s feet can fall asleep when she’s not doing anything that would cause it.

“Hmm,” I say. “Does it hurt?

“No. Just numb. I can’t really feel them.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun,” I say.

“I don’t like it.”

“I wouldn’t, either.”

We finish our stir fry and she does the dishes and a day or so later, we are sitting together, reading a book in Spanish, one about a magical cat, and she says, “My feet are numb again.”

There is no reason for her feet to be numb, except for that one reason, and this time that one reason inconveniently jams itself into my mind.

You know what’s happening, fuckwit, my brain says to me and I do, all at once, and I see that this is what my daughter is asking me about.

I say, “hmm,” again and then, “It’s happening a lot,” a foray into a minefield I don’t really want to traverse.

“Yes, it is,” she says.

Neither of us says a word about That One Reason. We both edge carefully away from the minefield and later, I tap keywords into Google and I confirm what I already know: her degenerative spinal cord disorder is progressing, when I thought it might not. Would not. I thought maybe it would be ten more years before it came to this, but it is not ten years, it is barely two.

A few days later, we are reading more about Trece, the magical cat, when Jessica leans over and puts her head on my shoulder.

“Is it happening again?” I ask her and she takes my hand and grips it in hers and I juggle the book awkwardly but I don’t lose my place;  I am good at not losing my place in books.

“Trece is very sarcastico,” she says.

“Very.”

“And un poco malo.”

“Maybe more than a poco.”

Her hand grips harder.

“Is this the last book in the series?” she asks.

“No,” I say. I kiss the top of her head. “There are plenty more. There are lots of adventures left.”