She sits on my lap facing me.
Her little legs dangling on either side of mine.
We’re just sitting, my girl and I, enjoying the sunshine after the last hospital confinement.
We’ve been gone a week and this is our first morning waking up at home.
‘Home’.
I love that word.
It resonates warmth and colour.
Everything that the hospital is not.
The other kids are here too. The biggies lying across the bed in pre – teen slothdom and Noah pottering in and out, an over flowing handful of tank engines jutting out from his collection of morning toys.
She looks into my eyes, seaching them to see how I am fairing and then takes my pointer finger and traces it over her hand; two places and then guides it up to the crook of her elbow.
“The doctor made some holes”, she explains and I look to the tiny specks, the beginnings of bruises, the marks of intravenous therapy.
I rub at them softly as if to take them away from her, as if to stop the pain.
“Oh baby,” I whisper, “Mummy’s sorry that the doctor had to make so many”.
A minute passes like seconds.
“The doctor was shaking”.
I am amazed by how much she has taken in, by how she has seen the doctor’s distress above her own.
She is only (almost) three.
“Yes,” I say, “the doctor was sorry she had to hurt you too”.
She hugs me, this wise old being, charading as a little girl, her large flopsy curls tickling my face, her closeness so welcoming it engulfs me.
“It’s okay, Mummy, it makes me so betterbetter”.
She hops off my lap and moves to play with her brother.
“You got the holes”, he says, taking her hand.
“Yeah but the medicine make me better”.
“Yeah…”
“Yeah, it’s all done and I not have it until next time”.
I laugh quietly at their conversation but I do not interrupt. I know this is important time for her, for everyone, this post hospital time.
It is space for us to process what has become an almost normal part of our lives.
The debriefing is common place now too.
It helps somehow.
How does your family cope with things that stray from the normal?
Also blogging over at Three Ring Circus.
Our lives stray from the normal a lot. It is hard. Over time we have learned that having a sense of humor helps…a lot.
We cry. We talk. We scream. We hug. We run. We stomp. We stare. We hide. But above all, we love.
Fetal alcohol syndrome mixed with autism and cerebral palsy (and more) often equal nothing less than hell. That was our week.
Love this post…and the heart of your children, and you.
I appreciated your post. Our kids understand and can deal with so much more than I expect sometimes.
Normal (i.e. lack of crisis) is actually a little new for us. We’re working on understanding what it looks like and waiting a bit for the other shoe to drop.
The kids, having no other reference point, think all of the last four years of chaos ARE normal. They’re probably just bored by the lack of chaos at this point!
I *heart* Ivy’s little “betterbetter’s”!
Our family processes times like these much the way yours does, Tiff.
The repetitive questions and conversations are re-assuring somehow. And you’re so right — home is a lovely, lovely word.
Beautiful post. Thanks for sharing it.