You Lay There Sleeping Like an Open Doorway

Once upon a time I got "growing pains". I was growing "too fast" they said. I was in fact, quite tall. I'm still pretty tall but there was a serious consideration that I'd be over six feet tall back when I was in school however I slowed up to a more acceptable height somewhere in high school.

I can prove how tall I was, based on this awesome picture of me and my best friend in 4th grade Christa.

I'm the one wearing the MORK shirt. I also had suspenders, I feel kind of sad I wasn't wearing them that day. I was a head taller than most of the other kids, and I stayed that way a long time. I thought it was cool, it was a great thing.

Except for the growing pains.

Night after night, excruciating pain from my knees down radiating like fire that grips and hold would happen. I would sob and cry, and my mother would appear with a stack or two of ace bandages and some liniment. She would rub on HEAT which my dad had for cramps after he would referee high school ball games. If we were at my Grandma's it would be Sloane's Liniment.

Regardless of the product, we used some sort of thing to cause my muscles to warm up and relax, and then wrapped them up tight with ace bandages. Eventually the heat would make the cramp let go, and I would fall back to sleep on my tear stained pillow. 

I'm now the mother of a tall little girl. I had, over the years, sort of forgotten this episode of my own childhood for the most part. Until my too tall girl started growing and growing. The tears fall fast and hard and her distress is very real. It takes me right back to the terror of that pain, sneaking up on you at night when you are safely resting in your bed. It's like a knife in your leg, and when you're little it's so scary.

I've got icy hot, I've got ace bandages but most importantly I've got IBUPROFEN. Miracle medicine I love you. Her relief is swift and complete, and she is sometimes asleep before I get the leg wrap on properly. I'm so sorry this little sweetie has to go through this but I know it ends and even she might not be 6 feet tall either.

I don't know why we get them, maybe this growing too tall too fast thing is true, I don't really know. I can tell when she's having them before she wakes, she draws her legs up and down in her sleep. She'll roll this way and that, trying to work out the cramp in her sleep. Sometimes I just get up and start fixing it before she even wakes up. 

Poor kid. I wish I could make it not happen at all. According to my math, we've got another 10 years to go and then they'll be done. 

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