Missing Jukie

Is it wrong to be as excited as I am? Jukie is leaving for a week tomorrow, and I can’t wait. That sounds terrible. I love that boy. I LOVE that boy. But, along with his departure goes the constant vigilance. I’ll have eight days where I can leave all of the doors in the house open. All the pictures will stay on the walls. No one will chuck Geneva’s violin down the stairs. I won’t hear water running somewhere and panic that Jukie’s flooding a room. At least this week, I won’t have to replace a toilet due to God-knows-what being flushed down it. I won’t find anyone climbing the back fence without his pants. We’ll generate ½ as much laundry.

Jukie and Andy spend a week at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins every six months. Jukie is enrolled in two SLO Syndrome studies. He will be seen by the Genetics, Speech, OT, Neuro, and Ortho departments. He’ll be studied by the autism researchers. He’ll be sedated for a spinal tap. And he’ll have an all-night EEG (during which daddy will sleep on top of him in the hospital to keep Jukie from pulling the electrodes off of his head). This morning when I told Truman that Jukie was going on a trip to see his doctors for a week, he asked, “is he scared?”

Truman’s question haunts me. I truly don’t know how Jukie processes these weeks. I know that he occasionally cries when hearing us talk about NIH. I know that he’ll sometimes scream when we’re there, especially at the beginning of the trip. What if it’s terror that he’s experiencing? It’s so hard to be Jukie. He has little say in where he goes and what he does. We ask of him so much more than we ask of ourselves. I have certainly never had even one spinal tap. How would any of us feel about spending a week attending back-to-back doctor visits, all while being unable to express our thoughts and feelings. And Jukie handles most of it with typical Jukie sweetness and love. I worry less about my boy because I know that he’s with the Best Daddy in The World. Andy will make sure that Jukie has every opportunity to run and play and get all of his Jukieness out.

And back at home with the bookend kids, I know that it’ll only take a day or two for me to start missing my little imp. First, I’ll miss his smile. Jukie’s smile does light up a room. And his laugh – it’s infectious. When Jukie laughs, everyone laughs with him. I’ll pine for his sweet kisses and early morning snuggles. I’ll even miss his sippy cups and chewy keys drying on the rack. I might even sniff his jammies; no one smells sweeter than Jukie. I can get all nostalgic over just about anything “Jukie.”

By the time he and daddy arrive at the Sacramento airport, I’ll be RUNning to my boy. I’ll look to his eyes to hear all about his trip; they’ll tell me that it was good. And his kiss will reveal how much he missed me back.