The plan: a baptism in the gym-turned-sanctuary followed by a family lunch. The reality: a 102.5-degree fever followed by a midnight visit to the ER.
Mother’s Day did not go according to the vision I had for it. Does anything, anymore?
The Mom and Dad rolled into town Saturday afternoon and kept The Kid and The Niece while The Husband, The Sis, and The Bro-in-Law and I hauled ass to a local Italian restaurant, gleefully and childlessly stuffing our faces with food and cocktails. Later that night, TH and I fed the baby and noticed that he was on fire. One rectal temp and a consequential browned-down diaper later, we were on the phone hearing that we should head to the ER.
They flooded his nose with saline and suctioned it out. Then they catheterized him to get a urine sample. Then two different nurses punctured his skin with three different needles before finding a vein for a blood sample. Then they turned out the light, let us know the results would be ready in an hour, and left the room.
Our family of three remained behind, bleary-eyed and exhausted. TH sat in the chair so that I could lie down on the hospital bed with TK. He was wearing a tiny hospital gown (TK, not TH) that makes me cry when I think about it: furry animals and two ties at the back, sickwear at its cheeriest. I thought about the other children who wear these gowns, some for months at a time. I thought about how we had to wait once we were checked in, and how there are families that don’t wait at all because their situation is so dire. I looked down at the ball of humanity in my arms, the head burrowed into my shoulder and the arm slung across it and his breathing, fast and steady after all he’d endured; about my heart beating with more love for him every day just when I thought I was about to run out of room in there. TH beside me, TK in my arms, and I realized that this, this is what Mother’s Day is: this final assault on my overweening allegiance to self, this opening of eyes to all that life can hold. Everything that matters in this room, whether this room is in a home or a hospital.
I thought about all the ways there are to be saved.
We walked out of there a short time later, TK asleep in his carseat as TH and I navigated the road ahead for him as usual. I knew he wouldn’t be baptized the next morning, which was a disappointment but only a temporary one. Like his illness. I remembered what our pastor had told us when he came over to discuss the ceremony with us earlier last week, that the baptism is a sign of a promise. It’s a new beginning. I considered the inconveniences to my schedule that used to break me, and the people who matter more than that now. The next morning, I raced to TK’s room and found him sleeping peacefully. The rain fell down outside, washing everything. It felt like a baptism.