The mother lion

Have you ever hear the expression mother lion or mother bear? Have you ever been called that? I have. I don't want to be a helicopter parent hovering over my kids all of the time. I want them to be capable, competent happy people. There are times when the anger is so huge that it overwhelms me. I had to go back to THE doctors office today. The same doctors office where they basically said there was nothing wrong with my little boy, that he was making up his symptoms. I digress. Anyway I walked into that office and I could feel it welling up in my throat. I was only there to get a much needed referral for another child to be tested for his LD. I hated being there! I stuck it out, I was polite went through the process. If I could just get the referral. The assistant who checked my son in stared at my other sons prednisone swollen face. Used to it by now, he cheerfully told her that he has a disease. When she would have questioned him farther(he's alive, who cares how he looks) I broke in and said sweetly that it was the same disease the doctors office had believed was not real. Well then "Why are you here?" she said snidely. I'm here to get a referral. I said That's it, it's all I want.
Without further comment we got checked in, spoke to the doctor and left. It was over, thank you Lord. I looked at my son almost jumping next to me at the prospect of icecream, and marveled at the resiliency of childhood. He doesn't harbor any anger that I can see. Mom is in charge, mom got him help in time. The odds are excellent that he will be a Juvenile Dermatamyostitis survivor. He's hopeful for the future. I looked behind me at that clinic and thought about the last time he was seen here as a patient.
It was a stormy day in February. He had been crying more and more about his legs. He would cry himself to sleep at night. I had noticed a bluish haze on his face; around his eyelids, in his nailbeds of his fingers. He was chalk white, he had no strength. His legs would go out and down he'd be, crying for me to pick him up. Something was wrong. I had carried him out of this same office that day, the doctors voice ringing in my ears that if he was curious enough he would get up and walk. Only he didn't, that day or the next.
Now I looked down at him, icecream? I said. He cheered and ran, yes Ran ahead of me. Maybe it would be o.k. maybe the mother lion could sleep.