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A Peek At My Bookshelf…

I felt him standing there before I saw him. I looked up to find Ken paused in the doorway observing me with an arched eyebrow. “You have that look,” he commented in a reproving tone.

“What look?”

He rolled his eyes at my deliberate obtuseness. “That look. You need to get out of here.”

“Whatever do you mean? I’m fine.”

“Uh, huh. Take a look in the mirror. I’m doing fine. You? Not so much.”

“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t mean it that way, you twit.”

I touched my thumb to my nose while wiggling my fingers and crossing my eyes in his general direction. He wasn’t impressed. Or amused.

“You. Out. Now. Go breathe some fresh air. Or at least go haunt one of your old bookstores for the afternoon.”

I protested because we had both been up much of the night with Jacqui due to her recent CVS episode, “You need some time to yourself too…”

“I told you I’m fine. You, on the other hand, are not. You’ve been hovering over Jacqui for weeks now and you can either walk yourself to the door for a change of scenery, or I’ll boot you there.”

There was no arguing. I had neither the energy or motivation to go out — which was precisely why I was being escorted to the door. “Okay, okay… I’m going.”

And so I went. I thought about serving my time by sitting out in the driveway in the driver’s seat of our car, but that thought only lasted about a minute as I balked with the notion of being told what to do. Then common sense took over. No point in being belligerent to my own detriment. I had car keys and an afternoon all to myself. The driveway would not be the most brilliant use of my time.

I pulled out of the driveway with the thought of heading to the local Barnes & Noble book store, but then my car did a funny thing… It turned a different direction. I stopped at the grocery store, picked up a loaf of out-dated bread and headed towards the park. I fed the ducks and geese and then leaned back into a park bench and watched the clouds. I went for a walk. I strolled bare-headed down a riverside path as hail pelted cherry blossoms from the trees in a fluttering blizzard of pink. I walked until my fingers grew numb and I laughed when a hummingbird dive-bombed my path as I returned to my car. Good to know I hadn’t forgotten how.

My car meandered past sleepy shops and I stopped when I saw the sign of an old bookstore. I stepped inside and could feel my eyes lighting up from within. A cluttered shop, jammed near floor to ceiling with books. Doesn’t get much better than that. I parked myself in a dusty corner with an armful of aging yet timeless treasures: A collection of Dickenson’s poems in an unassuming dark green cover with faded, yet ornate end papers, a tattered calf-skin volume of Longfellow’s poetry with the words, “To my darling Jenny ~ 1897″ written lovingly on the fly leaf, a small red leather pocket volume with worn gilded edges and no title that fell open to a someone’s long-ago favorite words penned by Keats, and an obscure little collection of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales with the cover loved threadbare. I spent the rest of my rare afternoon with my finds, most of them too costly to enjoy beyond the afternoon. But what a lovely afternoon it was!

I returned home after trading my pocket change for the tiny copy of Wilde’s tales, grateful and rested. Grateful for hummingbirds, clouds, and cherry blossom blizzards. Grateful for timeworn books and introspective afternoons. Grateful to be sharing my life with Ken, my very best and truest friend. Like Wilde’s “The Happy Prince”, his heart is generous — his first thoughts for the welfare of his wife, for his children. The guardian of my sanity who sends me off for a a solitary afternoon of soul-mending with a smile and a wink at his expense. Because he knows I will do the same for him.

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Today wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not another storm so quickly on the heels of the last one. We were going to go to the library today… she wanted a book about flowers. She was laughing and giggling after breakfast, but as we slipped on her shoes to leave, that awful switch flipped. The light in her eyes snuffed out as a new CVS episode stormed through her… before the pink even had a chance to return to her cheeks from the last one.

So once again, I mingle my tears with the rain and pray that she will come back to me soon. As she slipped away into another week of sleep, she whispered with a faint teasing grin, “I fink dis means I get to sleep in your room ‘gain.” My little girl is so much braver than I…

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One of the hardest things about CVS is the waiting. Waiting for your beautiful child to come back from nothingness and pain. The days of an episode stretch on… a windswept beach with no end in sight. But you cling to what you know. Remind yourself that it will pass. Stare at the faint scribbles in the sand and will yourself to remember… she will come back.

Soon she will light up the sky with her brilliance… begin writing once again on your heart.

And your heart will soar. Storing away all the precious moments…

The wonderful laughter.

So that the next time, and there will be a next time, you can draw out each memory. Treasure it. Evulse hope from each shred, scrap, stitch. And assuage your broken heart with the credence that laughter does indeed await still… she will return.

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Image Courtesy Pet Food Direct

I’m not a typically over-emotional person… really I’m not. I can usually stare straight ahead and shrug my shoulders as the world comes crashing down around my ears. Sometimes I can even manage the faintest hint of a smile. But… not when I’m sleep deprived. Which I apparently am. Why else would a forty-pound back of dog food set me to bawling in the grocery store when I stop by for milk. It was an end-of-the aisle display of the same brand we used to buy for our dog… but she died THREE YEARS AGO. Three. Years. Ago. It’s dog food for crying out loud…*sigh*. I really, really need a nap.

I looked longingly at the La Quinta Inn on my way home from the grocery store… but no. Ken would have figured it out and come after me. I know he would have, because he’s told me he’s had the same crazy wish. Just a quiet room with some comfy pillows for a whole luxurious eight hours. No interruptions. Is that too much to ask? I’m typing this at two am by the way. Because I’ve given up on my pillow. It’s just not to be. About every 10-30 minutes, Jacqui has been needing me to hook up her decompression tube to her G-Tube during this CVS episode. And I feel like a big whiny baby when I see what she’s going through, but wow… this is really bordering on a torturous level of negative quantity sleep.

During the two-and-a-half hours when she did sleep last night, Kyle didn’t. He had a bad dream or something and woke up terrified. What in the world could a twenty-three-month old who’s never known anything but butterflies and rainbows find so terrifying and why did it have to come and bug him at four am??? Honestly.

So we sat and sang songs and I held him close, whispering in his ear all the wonderful things he could grow up to be one day, all the while longing for my pillow. I reminded myself how someday I would long for nights when I could cuddle my baby boy, that they are growing rapidly short. And this logic might make sense to my sleep-deprived brain sometime two weeks hence. But not right now. Try as I might to savor the moment, my body screamed out, “Just go to sleep kid!! PLEEEEEEEEZE!!” So I sang yet another song, then finally laid the sleepy little monkey back in his crib at ten minutes to five am.

I had just touched my ear to the pillow and Jacqui’s feeding pump alarm started beeping, red LED screen flashing frantically, “DOSE…DEL, DOSE…DEL…” So I got up, rinsed the bag and added more formula, re-primed it, threaded the tubing back into place, made sure all the clamps were opened, cleared the dose delivered, re-set the dose volume, got Jacqui up to go to the bathroom, decompressed her G-tube, hooked her back up to the feeding tube, started the pump, re-filled her warm water bottle and tucked her back in.

5:20 am. I face-planted into my pillow and slept like a rock. For twenty minutes. Then Jacqui woke up needing her decompression tube hooked up again. Then Kyle decided it would be a good day for an early breakfast. And now it’s two am Tuesday morning and I’m half-way through a repeat of last night.

Ken’s sleeping in the family room so he can be semi-alert at work. He did take the eight pm to midnight shift for me, but for some maddening reason, I laid there just looking at the clock, utterly exhausted, telling myself “JUST GO TO SLEEP!!” And I only managed to sleep the last hour of it. I want to run up the white flag, but I’m the reinforcements… wait, no… that’s not right… “We have met the enemy, and he is us?” Something like that. I’ll be exceptionally pleased with myself if I read this next week and it makes even the remotest amount of sense. Good night to all you lucky, lucky people who get to spend more than thirty consecutive minutes with your pillows this week. I’ll try really hard not to be jealous.

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