Where Hip Meets Smart-Sleuthing

Five of the seven of us have been to the hospital recently. Me, child-birth. Graham, a hernia repair that went smoothly. Mike, a surgery to fix a right bicep tendon only ten percent attached on one side. Mia, a concussion. That was the scariest. Carter, a broken leg.
I’m hesitant to label the almost four months since delivering my fifth baby. The sheer survival of caring for others while in pain (a delivery, an abscessed stitch, and a pinched nerve in my neck) puts all those days in a mental category wholly separate from a statement like, “Yeah, things were crazy.” I had many, many blissful moments. I’d like to remember them most. The infant-stage of my final child. Four birthdays parties full of cake and crepe paper.
We had Cora’s first kindergarten day and a beautiful sunny moment where I tried to memorize her face full of pride and smiles outside the dark glass of the main entrance because I forgot my camera. I had Carter’s smooth lip against my finger while I leaned to hold his straw at our startlingly many trips to McDonalds because otherwise I’d feel sorry for him two hours later when his lap was still drenched. Mia’s obsession with the word “did” remained high despite her entry to preschool, thank heaven. ‘I did ask Carter if he did want to come downstairs but he did say no.” Skipping our sixth week of sacrament meeting, under the insanity plea, let us watch and mimic three hours of synchronized swimming, hands-down the most popular event in the “olym-kicks.” Mike sent me an amused look when I cradled Graham close, smelling his baby skin and sighing “I wish I could keep him.” (You know, like keep him a baby. You steal your time with babies. There’s no “keeping” involved.)
You’d be pretty surprised what can be accomplished in the background of laundry and meal preparation after I answer Lina and Cora with, “If you want to do that, fine, but I’m not helping.” They mimicked the “haunted graveyard” of a classmate’s party by making tombstones on the front lawn for themselves. We get concerts, autumn-grass-clipping trampoline-fights (a two hour clean-up involving baths), hand-written birthday party invitations for twelve girls (maybe I should pay attention), a complete treasure-hunt map and clues for said twelve girls, homemade beaded necklaces made as gifts for friends, and so many role-playing games they can’t be counted.
Life finally got revenge on Carter for his thrill-driven cat-and-mouse game with his mom. Laughing in the ecstasy of escape, he splashed into the bath and thirty seconds later (I swear) violently spit and gagged and wiped from his mouth the poo he had just created and then eaten. Carter has taken to dumping food all over his head at meals. He screams and thrashes when I run cold water and wash his thick hair straight down to his Zack-Effron sideburns, the bitter gleam of revenge in my eye. After Mike got his surgery, Carter had to be severely reprimanded several times, for fear of him re-injuring the shoulder. Carter would walk around and, if anyone bumped him, scatter away from them with the solemnity of not understanding what was going on. “Ow, Ow. My shoulder,” he’d say.
I miss my happiness-is-a-treasure-worthy-of-desperate-plotting little boy. He was despondent when he broke his leg jumping benignly with older kid on the trampoline. He glared, pleaded, yelled, moaned for hours, refused to eat one day, threw his food without even laughing when it hit the wall, squeezed his eyes shut and screamed at his sisters trying to cheer him up, shouted at neighbors on walks, kicked his own leg and howled in pain, clawed at the bandaging—he did nothing that would make us take that splint off. A week later, a miracle. The doctor took it off, only to reapply a cast; and the whole thing started again. I felt so bad for him. I’d strap him into the high chair and take a walk to the willow tree three houses down. I’ve never had an infant carry on the way he did. I can see what people mean about the quickness of the anger that comes listening to it. I can’t believe how good the girls have been. Hours and hours in the middle of the night, listening to this. Mike and I want to shout we’re so frustrated. The girls tweak their sleeping faces like a mosquito has buzzed past.
Adjusting slowly, Carter has begun to discover stationary pursuits. He’s like an on-off switch, agony-joy, agony-joy. He knows many of his letters now, playing with a kid-computer. He listens to the songs on his dog and his guitar a hundred times in a row and tries to sing along. We let him watch family videos, we do the actions to “The Wheels on the Bus,” the girls dance for him while he makes himself giggle and repeat words, extending the joyful moment.
The concussion, meanwhile, came when Mia fell off the porch. No rough-housing. No tripping. She just stepped back (we think) and there was nothing to step back on. She screamed at me when I went outside to see what was wrong. She walked into a wall. I thought nothing of it. She fell asleep face-first on the ice pack and I called my ER-doctor brother, who told me to take her in (I was kind of a jerk on the call. Sorry, Eric). I had the phone in one hand, a nursing Graham in the other and the telltale noises of Carter successfully pooping in the background. I had four barefoot, unfed children, two of them frantically wanting me to ignore Mia and approve their Halloween costume choices. Fortunately, Mike got home from work just as I prepped to go door-to-door to find a home for everyone. Mia would not stop screaming, not for three seconds so that we could think. Not unless she’d gone to sleep again, and with terrifying speed.
She threw up four times on the way to the hospital. I listened over the phone to the doctor shouting, “Mia? Mia? Can you stay awake, Mia?” This was after I had found the kids a place to stay. After I borrowed an infant-safety seat and obtained a ride because Mike took both sets of keys and the van with him in our haste. After I cried.
Mia was already coherent enough to angrily answer which letter was which by the time I got to the emergency room. The CT scan results took longer than the presidential election. We are so very, very lucky she was okay. They let us let her sleep and I went home to kids slurping chocolate milk in front of a movie. We have the best neighbors. We gave her a bath when she got home near midnight, soaking the vomit out of long, brown locks. Our sassy, beautiful Mia.
Now about Mike’s surgery. He still can’t lift his arm. Hopefully after a lot of stretching, he’ll be glad he went in. He recovered from the operation well after a few days of fever and several more of pretty intense pain. He injured himself a few years ago, but wanted to get it taken care of in preparation for playing catch with Carter and Graham. I hope he feels better soon! (Mike, you should really start your own blog. I never say much about you, because I don’t want to speak for you. How do you feel about your surgery?)
Graham’s hospital visit was a blink. An intense forty-eight hours with a rigid feeding schedule (he fussy very little in his five hours with no food), a six a.m. trip to Primary Children’s Hospital while Mike stayed home with the kids, several hours of worrisome incision-bleeding in the afternoon—not enough to soak a diaper, but enough to keep us on the phone with doctors while we tried catch any sleep we could. The tube put in place during his surgery, meant to keep him from choking, stripped his voice. His hoarse cries were so pathetic that all six members of the family insisted on his being attended to, even when Mike left for scouts as my visiting teacher came. She “dropped off a meal” via staying nearly an hour and serving enchiladas to four kids ages two to eight.
Ah, but after that, nothing. Just peaceful, contented Graham, angry only when hungry. He’s extremely fat these days. He smiles, keeps his head up while on his stomach, rolls over, laughs with extreme prodding. (What am I saying? He chuckles, in great, big gulps of air. It’s so wonderful.) Sometimes he gets anxious, probably envisioning some of his unchaperoned moments with Carter. We swaddle him tightly and let him need us for ten minutes. Rapid, shallow sniffs. Then he’s asleep.
And me. Occasionally, I shout internally at myself: “You are going to remember every second that you are not in pain anymore. You are going to rejoice forever. You are never allowed to be annoyed, ever.” This lasts ten seconds. Every day, however, I get the pleasant surprise of enjoying things I convinced myself during pregnancy that I hated. Like cooking and strapping my kids into the car. I actually catch myself giggling at Carter’s fight to do his own buckle. I point out the sunset to Mia, Cora, and Lina, who of course are not in the van when it’s time to go, but have escaped to the driveway with their scooters again. Once the kids are secure, half my work is done. I threaten to eat their dessert right in front of them if they don’t stay in their seats, and I dash back in the house seven times—for Graham, for a bottle, for the key or the grocery list or the dance shoes. Sometimes I turn off the lights and pause, just loving the silence. The sensation that the moment will end only when I choose it to.
With all of the above, we don’t have one injury that will plague my beautiful ones or myself permanently. We are so grateful. We have thirty people we want to thank for meals, rides, scrubbed toilets, tended children, cookies, baby-booties, blankets, phone calls, emails, and visits. Thank you so much!! We crammed so much life into the past few months that I have whole pages already written for a future blog. For now, I’m enjoying the golden leaves of an Indian Summer, a little boy who just re-learned to walk—this time on a cast—(We are so happy! He is so happy!!), and the neighborhood crew of girls negotiating Halloween-candy-trades as they choreograph, Monster Mash.
As usual, some quotes:
Mia: I am go-getting it!
Mia (nervous, one hand on Graham’s swaddling blankets): We’re not going to real eat him, right?
Mia (tears on her face as she points at a printed party invitation for Cora) They used a pen you couldn’t see. They invited M-I-A. (She sniffs grandly.)
Mia: Don’t put milk on my cereal. It might sog.
Mia: Are we in heaven now or on earth? (later) I fly in the sky to Heavenly Father’s building and then I visit him!
While eating, Mia kept trying to talk to Aunt Karen, getting frustrated at Karen’s frequent, “What did you say?” Mia finally swallowed, shouting, “I was saying, my mouth was full!”
Lina to Grandma (pouting, her words an after-thought) : You are smarter than I thought.
Mika to kids: You need to learn that all fruits taste good and some veggies taste good, too. Some are terrible.
Once, Mike dashed to hover semi-frantic near the stove. “What are you doing? Karen, do you not understand bacon?” Apparently, my sister was cutting fat from the meat.
Mike had some real winner these past few months. Totally on the fly, he told Karen that I used to shoot down all of his plans to be self-employed. “I was an entrepreneur, and Nikki was an entrepre-pooper,” he said.