Brooding

To rage, to brood, to dwell to sulk. So many choices, so much time.

All the complicated things that have happened in my life -- concentrated in these past 5 1/2 years, after 30 some years of uncomplicated bliss -- have come without warning.

.... just about to go upstairs and girl it up for my wedding when the phone rings, and it's my mother, just having found her mother, my maid of honor, on the ground crumpled and without her nightgown, below the door to the unrailed deck of the Maple Manor. And so we were waylaid, sidetracked, put off for a few hours of tears in the grass while we decided what to do with all these people that had tripped from near and far to honor me and David as we defined our life together on an August day. With some redirection of traffic and hors d'oeuvres, the celebration went on, a wake and a wedding together, juggled, balanced, beautiful, and I realized again just how incredible my people are.

.... just out of a "complicated" end of pregnancy, the NICU nurses have washed up and left this perfectly healthy baby behind, we are in hospital timelessness and I am still pretty drugged up, but some sun is making its way through the curtain and the pediatrician is here, so it must be morning. And she begins to mumble as she paws over our little creature. And then she raises some questions and some tests are done and an extra chromosome is found and a whole different adventure begins. Without warning, without a map, but again the beauty is found as we find our way through. Team Morgwaite is in the house, and we can handle the unexpected, yes we can. Bring it.

.... just a month in, the second baby gets his first cold. he is clogged and coughing and miserable in the night, but this is just what happens to sick babies, right? I don't really know, his sister never got sick. But it's Saturday morning and he hasn't eaten much and he's a little warm, so I finally decide to call the doctor. Under a month old? Temp of 101? To the ER with you, neglectful mom. Dad and daughter are called back from their adventure, we are whisked through the phalanx of admitting nurses and the stress runs high as samples are taken, small of the smallest back is stabbed, scary diagnoses are bandied about, and so begin three days of sharing sleep between rocking chairs and window seats, snot suctioning and iv drip. Some Valentine's Day.

But this time, there is warning. I suppose, with better questions or a slightly more forthcoming doc, we could have been preparing for this day since Adara was Corwin's age. But instead we have just been blissing along, enjoying good health and scrappy adventure. Standing alongside as she moved from yogic flying to walking, to the climbing wall. Hopping, pedaling, pumping -- all the joys of a leggy childhood. And so we are sideswiped with the news that now, suddenly, the girl needs some surgery, some fixing on the hip she has been popping all these years, even while it gets her around the block and back again. Sideswiped, but with the giftly burden of a couple months to get our heads around it. And with this time, the choice of what to do with all our creative energy. The unexpected with time for due diligence. So how do we prepare?

Brooding is given, really, but given the opportunity to brood on the possible, I'll take it. I know it's going to be hard to have a 4 year old in a body cast. I know she will be uncomfortable and scared and angry. I know her brother will be neglected at times. I know my back will hurt and life will be a bit more of a pain in the ass. I know the cast will get pissy and shitty and sweaty and grubby. I know I will get scolded by the doctors for not being careful enough, clean enough, something enough. I know there will be long sleepless nights and setbacks and David will be stressed and life won't be fun sometimes and no amount of visitors, care packages, distraction will make it all go away.

But now that the the tears have stopped splashing on the inside of my sunglasses, I also know it's all profoundly possible. And so, given my druthers, I am going to stay off the internet, and spend the next month devising ways to make it fun, ways to keep my girl busy and engaged. Ways to keep a touch of risk and thrill of adventure in her days. Swings and strollers and water tables and bean bag chairs and bean bag tosses and movie fests and craft days and pinatas and streams of visitors and care packages. Baking bread and reading books and mastering the ipad and playing video games and painting pictures and playing the piano and running with the stroller and just generally rallying the forces of joy to make it through ten long, dry weeks of cruel immobility.

But really, it's only 10 weeks. And we will be just fine. And maybe we'll even get a minivan out of the deal.