Mother Tongue

By Kristen Taylor

The Mother Tongue is a parenting column that Kristen (Juvie's owner) writes. It was published monthly in the Ventura County Star from 2004-2006, and now appears in the Los Feliz Ledger. Kristen's other publishing credits include the Christian Science Monitor, Because I Said So, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and elsewhere.

February 22, 2010

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Holy cow, does my back hurt. At first I thought that I was dying, because surely it would take some organ failing to cause this much pain. In fact, I happened to tune to a radio story about back pain on the way to the Doctor’s office, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was certain that my pain couldn’t possibly be caused by something as pedestrian or mechanical as disc issues. This pain was definitely the result of an exotic disease.

It took about two minutes for my doctor to rule out disease or any other life-threatening condition, which meant that I had disc issues. She might as well have diagnosed me with Middle Age. I expected her to say, “Take a cruise to Mexico, order some Not Your Daughter’s Jeans, and call me next month,” but instead she prescribed physical therapy.

You probably know what my favorite thing to do is in situations like this: Blame the kids. But honestly, I can’t figure out even a convoluted way that they have anything to do with this. And they both have been entirely sweet and helpful and concerned every time they see me wince or winge. Luke even said that he wished he could take the pain for himself. I should really loan that boy out to people who need some empathetic company every now and then.

Unfortunately, this little back brouhaha is going to require some family adjustments along with the muscular ones. It turns out that physical therapy is quite a commitment, on par with a part-time job. Two or three appointments a week is going mean that I’ll have to push a lot of my work hours to nights and weekends, the time when I normally answer homework questions, prepare their meals, clean their clothes and drive them around (glamorous, I know). It’s travel season for their dad, so they’re going to have to take over some of my duties.

I can already hear the grumbling, because as we know, a kind word is a lot easier to dish out than a complete dinner or a load of laundry. They’ll likely be as relieved as I am when this silly little back issue (that has nothing to do with age, or them) is over.

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