Small boy

Small Boy is now sixteen, seventeen in another month. So I suppose I can't really call him Small Boy any more.

Hard to remember now the whirling fright of his very premature birth or the long days of his first few years of life when I seemed to camp out in hospital or the doctors rooms. Hard to remember now the terrifying nights when he hovered between life and death.

Hard to remember .......

Yet he has always been an irrepressible, mischievous little boy, grown into an irrepressible, mischievous but deeply caring young man. A young man with strength and courage that shines through the teenage angst of girlfriends and tossing hormones.

Twenty two months ago he was in a rugby accident that fractured a vertebrae. He was spine boarded off the field with no feeling in his legs. He healed. Thanks be to God. Thanks also to the First Aid Team on the pitch who did everything right, to the surgeons and nurses and physiotherapists who worked with him, and to Father Paddy who led the most amazing Mass for him. He walks and runs and drives and dances with his girlfriend. He is learning to find a way through the despair and grief of lost dreams and hopes and to find new dreams. His dream of playing for his schools First Team is shattered and of joining the Army (which he seemed born to do) is over.

Now he faces the possibility of more surgery on Wednesday. He has a trapped nerve and is in constant pain. We see the neurosurgeon at twelve today.

He faces it with more equanimity than I do.