Author: Xiomara Spadafora

Watching my son laugh, makes me laugh. Watching him sleep, makes me calm, but watching him suffer to take a breath while he battles his acute asthma, makes my own wind pipe constrict raising my anxiety to levels hard to describe. For the past ten days, I have been asking my son to stop running and every time I do, I feel as if I were asking a bird not to fly.

This asthma attack, the worst in his short life, blurred his birthday and kept him hostage—and yours truly–inside our house for several days. Although he was cranky and hyper due to the bronchodilators, for the first time I thanked God for my son’s stubbornness, because no matter how bad he has felt, he didn’t give his illness the opportunity of a victory dance. Continue reading “Take a Deep Breath”

Last Friday my husband and I took our son to the Kennedy Space Center for the last day of his Spring Break. Although we are not very fond of theme parks of any kind—big lines and crowds are not our favorite thing in the world–we wanted our little boy to get a closer look into space, which is according to him, the home of the Transformers. Continue reading “A Job Out-of-This World “

 
Last Wednesday I bought my son a Lego Optimus Prime Transformer toy as a little appetizer for his upcoming birthday in April. We sat down in the family room and put it together, but as usual, once my son started manipulating it, it fell apart.

Once again I ignored the big sign on the box that says “Age: 6-12” in both, English and Spanish. I could hear my husband saying, “Did you read the box?” Continue reading “Lego’s Villain Mom”

Last Sunday I took my son to see the new Disney motion picture Zootopia. When the movie started, I thought I was going to survive it without crying—darn Disney is like kryptonite to me—but the song Try Everything, by Shakira, started playing when the main character, Judy, rides the train to Zootopia with a smile and a heart full of hope. Continue reading “Wild World”

I am not an athletic woman now nor when I was growing up. Not only did I not like sports, but my home country was not very supportive of anything besides soccer for boys back in the eighties. Also, my mom had to work full time to support us, so she didn’t have the time or means to sign me up for extracurricular activities.

Therefore, my exercise was playing with my neighbors in the street every afternoon after school. Hide and seek, water wars, and other childhood games were the improvised “meets” without safety nets or participation trophies. Continue reading “Sports Fan”