I want to say thank you for the text messages, emails, phone calls, voicemails, old-fashioned cards, and telepathic messages that have been sent our way over the past week. It’s been so nice to feel the support of our community as we deal with this, our first real medical situation with one of our children. (And how lucky we felt, at Children’s Hospital, where there are some very sick children, that this was our first — and still an elective procedure.) (Though don’t tell Elan we elected it. Poor guy would be quite peeved at us if he realized that.)

He made a break for it when we got into the pre-op receiving area, and who can blame him? Most anyone would feel the same urge, even if adults wouldn’t act on it. They gave him an oral sedative and an iPad with Uzu, a sort of hypnotic fireworks game, on it. Mikhail carried him down the hall to an antechamber to the operating room, where he got the anaesthesia via a mask. Once he was unconscious, we stepped out into the hallway and I burst into tears. “90 percent of parents cry,” the very nice Child Life Specialist told us, as I tried to pull myself together, away from the image of my little boy lying on a gurney.

But I digress. What I want to say is that we have an arbor of holiday cards adorning our big front picture window. It’s nice to look up and see friends and family looking down at me. I think I’ll leave them up there till spring.