Category Archives: Finish the Sentence

At Twelve

attwelve

It’s August, and I can’t believe she’s twelve.

I remember the August twelve years ago, after I finished a July of laying on the floor of my office, the door closed, my feet on the back of a chair, trying to turn my stubborn breech baby. I placed earbuds at my pelvic bones and played fiddle music in the direction I wished her head would face. When she turned finally, one night in late July, I felt every organ in my torso shift, roll and right itself again in one nauseatingly relieving motion.

In retrospect, it was a sign: with enough work, everything would eventually be repaired, over and over again. My girl, who always kept me on my back with legs in the air, directing my world from the floor, has now turned twelve, reaching down to offer a hand and pull me up. When I rise, she stands next to me and steps to one side to rest her cheek in the hollow between my shoulder and neck.

She’s grown. Improbably, in defiance, literally right under my nose now. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

Lemonade Out of Gluten-Free Lemons

grocery-cartSometimes, I just have to laugh at the way the universe answers the questions I haven’t even asked yet.

It’s half-way through the summer of 2017, and here I am, suddenly aware that I live with one foot in the summer of 2010. I spent that summer in a cloud of specialty flours: tapioca and arrowroot, garbanzo and white rice and coconut and and sorghum. I sprinkled xanthan gum like a gluten-free fairy into all the creative ideas I had for how to make food for my daughter, whose health challenges required that she cut out dairy, eggs, soy, nuts, meat, and gluten. During my deep-dive into specialty cooking for what I called the “joy-free” diet, I dreamed in recipes and grocery store trips. Along the way, I picked up several dozen grey hairs, but I also became an unwilling expert on food challenges.

Though my daughter’s health issues resolved without any need for her to continue with food restrictions, the knowledge I gained never went away. In some ways, it’s not unlike a spare tool in the garage; though we seldom need that particular odd-shaped wrench, the neighbors know we have it, and they can borrow it any time. Even though we may have bought that wrench to put together a hospice bed or to tighten bolts in a subfloor that collapsed beneath our feet — and seeing it brings back every memory of that awful time — we’re glad it’s going to use for someone else who needs it. That wrench — my reluctantly-gained knowledge — shouldn’t go to waste.

Because of this, my friends call me when they need to follow an unusual diet or avoid a common food. And because I want to make lemonade out of those gluten-free lemons, I always help. Always. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

They’re Not Here Anymore

sick-baby-tired-mama

It is early 2006. The woman holding the camera — a small digital camera with a flash, the only camera she has — is taking what someday will be known as a “mirror selfie,” and people will take them with their smart phones, which, in 2006, almost no one owns.

The baby in the photo is being held securely in a ring-sling, a native-style baby carrier that holds her snug against the woman’s chest. She is asleep, making a raspy, wheezing, wet sound which precludes the woman from doing the following:

  • talking on the phone
  • hearing anything on the tv
  • coping with anything but the most crucial, immediate needs
  • thinking

Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

Raspberries, Mushrooms, Garlic, Plums, Peace

farmers-marketFor ten summers, with varying frequency, I’ve been taking my daughters to the Saturday Farmers’ Market. In more ways than I could have ever expected, it has saved our sanity.

We began going to the Farmers’ Market as a way to preserve the parenting energy my husband and I needed. He and I made a pact after our second child was born: each of us would ensure the other got to sleep “late” (read: 8 am) one day a week. He slept “late” on Saturdays and I claimed Sundays. On Sunday mornings, he packed our squealing, chattering daughters quickly into the car — sometimes in their pajamas — to go to Home Depot, which was sometimes the only place open on Sundays. There, he handed them paint sample cards to carry and let them touch all the doorknobs while he mused over the varying bolts and power tools that just might be required for his next renovation project in our old townhouse.

On Saturdays, I took the girls to the Farmers’ Market. It opened at 7:30 am, and some Sundays, we parked our car in the tall parking garage overlooking the Market and watched as the farmers set up their stands. Had we stayed home, I would have been aggressively shushing them, desperately trying to give their father the sleep he’d earned yesterday in the dawn at Home Depot. Out of the house, I somehow discovered the reserves to be patient.

“Look,” I’d say. “Look at all the flowers in that truck!” Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather

Broken, Brittle, Patched, Softening

babysammiShe was outside my body for only a few moments before someone was suctioning her throat. I was paralyzed on an operating table ten feet away and I could hear the sound of the suction tube interspersed with the sound of her newborn cries.

“Listen to her cry,” the midwife, at my side since the start of the c-section, said encouragingly. “That’s a solid cry. She’s strong.”

She was six weeks old when she had her first bronchoscopy, 13 months old when she went under general anesthesia for the first time, and fourteen months old the first time a doctor opened her body up and laid an expert hand on her tiny aorta.

She was four years old when she started having regular endoscopies. She was five years old when she started remembering the road to the hospital and asking me if today was a day she’d go to sleep there.

She was eight when, finally, they fixed what was wrong.

She was nine when the bullying started. Continue Reading…

twitterby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinteresttumblrmailby feather