I used to come here a lot to write down my silly thoughts, then I guess I got older, busier and stopped having time to think funny things. I just looked at the content of this blog and was surprised to see that I started it in 2007. Fifteen years ago. A lifetime ago.
In 2007, I was in my mid-20s and I had a one-year-old. We lived in a two-bedroom townhouse that I couldn't be bothered to clean. I had so many things to say, far more than my young husband could listen to. I started a blog to share my nonsense thoughts for anyone willing to listen. Look, here is a picture of a dumpster with a pair of giant, dirty underwear on the ground in front of it. Here is a story about when I went to the grocery store and ran into someone from work and the only thing in my cart was an enormous box of tampons and my toddler with a box on his head. All those little funny things seemed so valuable back then. Then they tapered off. I started to give my job all my creative energy which sapped away the need to publicly declare my thoughts.
This evening, after a very long week, I felt the irresistible urge to go to Lowe's (please note, I'm not sure I approve of this apostrophe. I can't understand what they are possessing - is it someone called Lowe who wants you to know this is their place?) to buy a new bird bath. The birds were thirsty and I had to deliver. I stood there in the garden center, looking at the highest row where the bird baths were stacked and pondered the situation. I needed that product. It was too high. The birds were counting on me. I didn't really have the energy to summon a person in a red vest. I didn't think I could climb multiple shelves on my own (I'm middle aged, after all). Instead, I just wanted to keep standing there staring, hoping somehow they would come down to me.
While I was frozen, I had a thought - I wish I was writing right now. I also wish I had nachos, but back to the point, I was in need of some catharsis. I started to write a blog in my head for the first time in a very long time. It wasn't about the bird bath or even nachos. It was just brain vomit like the old days. Only this time, I had no silly little stories to tell, no pictures of babies. I had an ache.
As a neurotic individual, I have made it my life's work to prepare for nearly every possible crisis. Road trip: pack a puke bucket. Traveling by air: pack a thermometer (way before taking your temperature became a regular thing). Emergency shovel and jumper cables in the trunk, 25 tampons in the secret pocket of my purse (like that girl from Sixteen Candles - "...want to see what's in my purse?"). If I'm expecting you home and you are late, I've already mentally anticipated a call from the police, or the hospital - however that works. I'm ready.
Turns out no matter how hard you try, you are never really prepared for the truly shocking thing to happen. Especially when it checks many of the boxes on the list of Stuff of Nightmares. Have I built this up sufficiently so you think I'm about to announce a tragedy? I'm not. Remember I have a flare for the dramatic.
It was, however, a Really Bad Thing and I don't like bad things.
For the last couple of years Eli has been on a club soccer team that travels all over the place. It's been a fun experience for him to see different parts of the country. Two weeks ago we were in Cincinnati on a Friday. I took him out of school early and we listened to This American Life while he tried to work out his nerves for the upcoming game.
Shortly after he got in the game, I watched a ball bounce between him and a player from the other team while they both ran full speed toward it. A moment later they were both on the ground. Eli tried to get up, then went back down. I saw something wrong, but then wondered if it was just my neuroses acting up. His leg appeared to be going the wrong way. Eli falls down all the time in soccer games, but he always pops back up. This time he stayed down.
Then the coaches were on the field. You could tell by their reactions we had a big problem. They called me onto the field. My stomach clinched. His leg had a big lump in the middle that didn't belong there. Meanwhile, the other kid who went down writhed and screamed continuously on the field, adding to the tension of the moment. Eli was calm and lucid. I think his body kindly decided shock was the right way to go.
There were two ambulances called. It was our first ever ride in one. I used to say that if anyone ever called me an ambulance, I would refuse it because I've heard they charge you a bunch of money for the transport. Turns out that was nonsense. You get in the stinking ambulance when it comes for your kid. You are grateful for it, even when the ambulance accidentally goes over a curb and jostles your son's broken leg.
From there it was a lot more bad things. Lots and lots of pain medication. An army of people in our room in the ER in order to "set" a very unstable leg. They gave Eli some kind of awake sedation for this and told me he won't remember or feel the pain, even if he called out. He sat up screaming, trying to grab for his leg. Turns out they were right, he doesn't remember. I, however, do.
They gave us a real hospital room around midnight. It was terrible watching them transfer him from one bed to another. I just wanted to scream at them to stop moving his leg. We also got a CT in the middle of the night (another move off the bed) and made him wear a stiff neck brace for hours when they were trying to figure out if he had some kind of neck injury (he didn't). His night was full of nausea, more pain than the medicine could handle and counting the hours until 7:30 am when they would take him to surgery. Meanwhile I was begging God for mercy.
Mark drove over to Cincinnati that morning. Surgery went well. They put a long nail down his tibia, then four screws to hold it all in place. The fibula apparently is fairly worthless and isn't worth a nail of its own. The surgeon told me everything was great and we should be able to go home when he was up and moving on crutches and his pain was under control. Based on this, I imagined he would pop up and be mostly fine. The nurses later told me the surgeons have a funny view of how these things should go. We didn't have an easy time of it; certainly no one was popping up anywhere.
We finally left the hospital on Monday and precariously figured out how to slide Eli into the way back of the van we borrowed from my mom. We packed him in pillows then drove back home for four-and-a-half hours. Before his narcotics made him lose consciousness, every bump in the road was torture.
At home, we set up camp on the main floor and became couch dwellers. There were medicines to keep track of, endless hours of groaning pain, the emotional and mental footprints that come with a sudden trauma and the loss of the small things like school and ability to get a license, summer job and sports.
Life continues to move forward, even when crazy things happen. There are up and down days. You learn your body can somehow keep functioning without sleep and with 40 pounds of fear loaded into your stomach. You can work when your mind is elsewhere. You learn there are amazing people who are ready to show incredible kindness when you are suffering. You learn that God is faithful, and He loves your child more than you do.
There, tonight at Lowe's, I stood staring at those dang bird baths, so high up there, so unattainable. Then I moved my eyes down. On a bottom shelf, there in the back... one of the bird baths, just waiting for me. I wasn't going to disappoint the birds after all.
We were going to keep moving forward. All of us. Even when the bad things happen. And we will come out refined, even if there are vicious scars all over our mended leg.
No comments:
Post a Comment