I am a single mom. I have an eight year old son and we live with my mother in a 2-bedroom apartment. Our life has been quite simple and uneventful for the past years. You can say that we live normally and take pleasure in life’s blessings. I work hard and try my best to give my small family a decent life that they deserve. You see, even before my son was born, his father left him. And my mom is a widow so she has learned to live alone for the past so many years. Around seven years ago, I decided to take my mom in from the countryside and have her live with us (my son and I) in the city. Of course, the place we have is not as spacious as our ancestral house in the countryside but it is just right for our little family of three.

I work in an advertising agency uptown and I basically stay there from Mondays through Fridays. So it is my 58 year old mom who takes care of my son when he is home from school. During weekends, I make sure that I spend time with them either in the nearby park or ice cream parlor along our street. We were a simple family with a simple life and simple needs. However, this peace had been broken a bit with news from the doctor.

Three weeks back, my mother told me that my son had been squinting and smirking a lot while talking. My mom thought that her grandson had learned a new trick from his friends, as they find new ways to often lovingly tease my mom. All along, my mother thought that the boy had been making fun of her. When I saw my son, I was a bit shocked to observe that his squinting became worse over the days and it came to the point that he would slightly roll his eyes upward and lift the left side of his lips at the same time. I told my mom that he was not teasing and that something was wrong. Talking to my son, he said that he did not even notice it and that it was no big deal since he does not feel anything at all.

That weekend, we went straight to the doctor’s and found out that he had transient motor tic disorder, a kind of sickness that makes him move his muscles involuntarily. The doctors said that we need to observe it for some time more and see if it disappears over a few months or not. If it stays, then we will take new measures to treat it because it may not be temporary at all.