I hadn’t thought much about unconditional love until earlier this week.  It had never come up, never been forced upon me, never required that I prove it.  I had, possibly like most parents, simply taken it for granted.

Each weekend I looked forward to spending my spare time with my 7 year-old son.  Teaching him about sports, talking to him about anything, including him in my daily life.  Given that my enjoyments simply coincided with his, I was never required to think deeply about why and how much I cared.

Earlier this week however it all came surging forward and as I spent 3 days trying to navigate half the globe to get to a small hospital in Thailand to see him I had the time to really contemplate the concept:  unconditional love.

My son and my wife had been spending their traditional summer back in Thailand, visiting with the in-laws and assimilating him into Thai culture.  They had been gone almost 5 weeks when we found out her mother was terminally ill with cancer.  The news obviously took my wife for a profound loop and having lost her father very suddenly while she was out of the country, this time she had a chance to spend time with her mother before she left us.  We decided that she and my son should spend a few more weeks in the country helping to take care of her mother and saying their last goodbyes.

I, on the other hand, was in dire need of a simple vacation and with no family at home decided to take off down to El Salvador for some surfing with friends.  While sitting in the departure lounge I called back to Thailand to see how things were going.  My wife and son were fine and her mother was spending time going through a lot of tests at the local hospital.

“You’ll be amazed at how much Leighton is growing,” my wife mentioned.  “He’s eating everything in site and everyone says he’s getting so much taller.  I probably don’t see it because I’m around him all the time.  All I’m seeing is that he’s getting skinnier and skinnier.  It’s like he’s stretching out.

“And he’s drinking water all the time as well.  I’m trying to get him to slow down but he complains about being thirsty.  He’s drinking so much he has to pee every hour or so.  It’s crazy.  He even pee’d in his bed three times last night.”

“Hmm, that doesn’t sound really right to me.  If he’s peeing that much he may have a bladder infection or something.  You should take him over to the local clinic and see if they can give him something.”  I had no concept as to what may be going on with my son, but I knew that having to pee every hour was a bit odd.

“Yes, I was going to do that this morning.” With the time difference between the US and Thailand, they had just woken up and I was stepping onto a red-eye flight down to Central America.

“Ok darling, I’ve got to jump on a plane.  I’ll call you when I arrive and see how things are going with him.”  I didn’t give it much more thought and boarded the flight.

When I arrived and settled into my room I gave them another call.  It was now late at night their time and my wife answered the phone a bit more concerned than she had been over the last week.  The clinic had referred her and my son to the local hospital where they had run some tests.  The doctors had expressed that it may be more serious than we had originally thought.  As my wife had to take her mother to a regional hospital 3 hours north early the next morning, the local hospital arranged for her to get my son checked there as well.  She gave me a cell phone number I could call while she was spending the next few days up North.  I told her that I’d call again mid-morning the next day to find out what the hospital said.

…to be continued

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