Separation anxiety

It's been a super-busy week, so much so that the blog has suffered, for which, apologies. On the work front, much has been achieved. One major project - to launch our first eBooks - has jumped its first major hurdle, and we have begun the process of taking this new bit of our business to the next level. All exciting stuff. Part of my job is also about winning hearts and minds, I believe, and I have felt like I am beginning to win on that front, too. I can't decide whether that is through enormous energy and drive and enthusiasm or whether actually it's because being around me is like chinese water torture; eventually, I get through! But anyway, it's all been good. And VERY busy.
Amidst all the busy-ness, I came to an abrupt stop one morning when Eden woke from a nightmare, genuinely distressed. She clung to me for ages, crying really hard, until finally she revealed that she had dreamed that she and Ava had been stuck in our car as it ran down a hill on its own before the rest of the family climbed in. ".....And we never saw you again!" she sobbed. Separation anxiety, I thought. She's started school; I've gone back to work. Makes sense. The nightmare stuck with her for quite a while afterwards, and I tried to banish it from her thoughts with chit chat and treats.
The next day, it was my turn to experience it. As I rushed between meetings, Paul called me on the mobile, sounding really panicky. "Nathan's really not himself," he said. "He's really floppy, really distressed... He won't stop crying and he's making a really weird, hacking noise in his throat." Trying to stay calm, I asked Paul what Nathan had eaten recently, got him to check his temperature, asked whether his eyes were rolling, how alert he was, and so on. In the background I could hear him screaming, punctured by these sharp, hacking noises. It was really rather alarming. After a call to the doctors the consensus was reached that he should be taken to A & E to be on the safe side; there may be something lodged in his throat. But after every conceivable check had been made, they concluded that there was nothing wrong with him, though they still couldn't explain the reason behind the weird noise he was making in the back of his throat. For the three or four hours until he was discharged, though, I felt that Kings Cross might as well be a zillion miles away from our home in south east London, for all the good I could do. My whole body wanted to be by his side, even though my mind told me it was probably all a false alarm. It was as if we were joined by a thread, and it was being tugged ferociously from the other end, all those miles away. I'm off work for a few days now around the bank holiday, and I can't stop surprising my boy every time he runs past, scooping him into my arms and holding him tight and smelling his neck and nuzzling his hair, because I'm so happy he's mine and he's fine.