The Small Symptoms That Wouldn’t Leave
One morning, I walked past Mason’s bedroom and noticed the door was half open—a rarity, as he normally burst from the room the moment he woke, already talking about breakfast before his feet even touched the floor.
Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders slightly hunched, hands pressed to his stomach, and face pale enough to tighten my chest with worry.
When he looked at me, his eyes were unusually glassy.
“I don’t feel great, Mom,” he murmured quietly.
At first, I assumed it was a common stomach virus—the kind that spreads quickly in elementary schools during cold months when children share desks, pencils, and water fountains.
Kids bring home illnesses all the time, and most pass within a day or two.
But as the days went by, that explanation felt less convincing.
By the second week, something far more unsettling appeared.
Mason stopped running through the house.
He stopped asking about his ball.
The cardboard castles he loved building remained stacked, untouched, in the corner of the garage.
Instead of racing down the hallway or talking endlessly about his next imaginary adventure, he spent long stretches sitting quietly by the living-room window, staring out at the street as if he were too tired even to explain how he felt.
The silence that settled over our home was heavy and unfamiliar, and though I tried convincing myself that he simply needed a few days to recover, a quiet worry began to grow inside me—a worry parents recognize immediately but rarely speak aloud.
