Golden Question of the Day

In the car today, running errands around town, Aidan once again pulled out one of his Golden Questions:

"Mommy, does a platypus live in the ocean or lakes?"

Hmmmm ... I was stumped. For some reason I didn't think it lived in salt water, but then I wasn't sure what kind of lake it would take up residence in. After going back and forth, I had to admit to my boy that I just wasn't sure. Frankly, I don't think about the platypus often. Or ever.

"That's OK," he said. "When we go home, we can just look it up on "platypus-dot-com-"The Mystery" and then we'll discover everything!"

For some reason, that really struck me funny. I did poke around a bit, for fun, and there is indeed a website called "platypus.com" ... but rather than unveiling the mysteries of the sea creature, it featured some contemporary artist in California.

I love what goes through his little brain -- and the intense enthusiasm that goes right along with it. Even if it involves the odd, duck-billed, platypus who now has a champion in a little boy.

A First Step Can Be a Doozy ... or a LOT of fun!

Yesterday my girl and I took our first step -- literally -- down Clubfoot Lane, or at least the new branch of it. We're starting over, finding someone who will treat her properly, correct her relapse, and in our first step yesterday we paid a visit to a new doctor, to check him out. I went in with basement expectations and walked out quite elated and very pleasantly surprised. Still, I'm cautious -- very cautious. We have another dude to check out next week, to do a little comparison shopping.

Anyway, the visit went very well and Grace was a dream -- also exceeding my expectations. At the age of almost-3, she is a handful, and difficult to take places (at least for me). She gets antsy very quickly, especially in doctor's offices. But yesterday she was beyond great, playing so nicely in the office while we waited, keeping her hands off of "doctor things" in the little examination room, and so on. She got a big kick out of the x-ray machine, and seeing her foot bones. All good.

After being admired by the nurses/receptionists behind the counter for quite some time (and clearly basking in their admiration of her cuteness), we finally left. As the door closed behind us and we stepped into the hall, Grace suddenly shouted (yes, shouted):

"Oh, that was SO ... MUCH ... FUN!!!!"

I do believe, My Dear Watson, that we're off to a very good start!

He Really Needs To Start His Own Blog ...

My "I'm not interested" husband asked me to write another post for him, last time recounting his youthful experience at the Smithereen's concert, and now his glee over something else. Actually, it is quite a fun story -- one of those experiences that fall into the "This never happens to me!" category ...

A few weeks ago he went to some training seminar for his current line of work (which, for those of you who might not be aware, is "Episcopal Priest-turned-high end A/V home theater & home automation installer" ... I actually put that as "father's occupation" on Grace's medical form, haha!). At the end of the second day of training, he called me on the cell phone on the way home, giddy and verging near big-man giggling.

"Guess what? I won something!" he exclaimed.

Ooooo-kaaaayyyyy ... where's this going?

As it turns out, he had put his name in for a prize drawing, and actually won the item -- a super high end Universal Remote Control (MX980, he said over my shoulder, lest I leave out the most important part!). High-end indeed, worth hundreds of buckaroos! What are we going to do with it? I asked.

"Sell it!" he said. And sure enough, within a few days he sold it for a nice hefty sum, half of which slipped right back out to purchase a new processor for our computer, which has been running like a 92-year-old man at the Boston Marathon. Scratch that -- there probably are some incredibly fit 92-year-old men who can indeed run the Boston Marathon. I'll just say the computer was running like ME at the Boston Marathon ...

That is a pretty cool story, actually. Not only winning something (which doesn't happen often) but winning something big, not some trinket or dorky fridge magnet or a nice shiny logo-encrusted pen. OK -- so I didn't quite mind posting this little nugget, since I also benefit from it. My, blogging now is so speedy ...

But still -- he really does need to start his own blog.
Yeah, and I think the chances of winning something are greater than that ever happening.

Got Tums?

My stomach is churning a bit this morning. After spending the entire morning yesterday on the phone with doctors, I am now beginning the first steps on a somewhat "new" journey -- or at least, a new branch of a journey we've been on for the past three years with Grace. In a nutshell, we're starting all over with her clubfoot situation.

Do I want to be here, at this point? No way. No one likes going backwards, starting over. It's kind of funny -- ironic funny -- that my very last post expressed a new "beginning" for me regarding one major part of my journey, letting go of the events of the past, forgiving, and moving on. Maybe it's not so coincidental -- perhaps reaching that milestone has freed me up to now focus on the next stretch o' road in front of me, gathering up my emotions and energy and will and placing them on my daughter and her needs. Yes, we're starting over.

Grace's clubfoot has relapsed. It doesn't look great and of course I'm concerned. For a while now my mother-gut has been churning, hearing and listening and doing yet not quite believing that what we were doing was right for her. I have some fabulous new women in my life now, helping me along the way, filling in the cracks and voids so I am better armed to face what's ahead. It kills me to think that she never even needed that horrible surgery at three months of age, that it was completely avoidable, that the scar tissue clogging up her heel now wouldn't even be there if we had known. But no one can go back.

This afternoon my girl and I are taking our first journey-steps, heading over to a new pediatric orthopedic surgeon nearby. He comes highly recommended, and I'm sure he's fantastic with certain orthopedic issues, but how he handles clubfeet is yet to be discovered. Thanks to these women who have gone before me, I now have a list of questions (that I'm sure he'll love!) to ask, to better understand what's in front of us, what our options are. I'm doctor-shopping and he's my first stop.

I'm nervous. I said to Don the other night, I feel very similar to what I did when we first began this journey, at Grace's birth -- not knowing what all this is about, feeling inexperienced and lost, feeling overwhelmed and scared. After one of our earlier meetings with her doctor, I recall him saying that when she reaches the age of 3, this will basically all be over, save the occasional check-up in the future, older years. The age of 3. I remember thinking, at the time, as I held my newborn girl, that three years seemed an eternity. I remember telling Don that, while I didn't want to overlook those precious newborn moments due to looking in vain into the future, there was that part of me that kept muttering, "I can't wait until she's 3. I can't wait until she's 3 ..."

And now, she's 3. Well, almost. And we are so, so, so far from being finished. We're just starting it all over again. While I won't wallow in this, while I won't be swallowed up with regret and woe, I will allow myself to feel this, to grieve this, and then to take those first steps forward on this new leg of the journey. I don't know what's in store for her, but I do know this: she is one incredible, vivacious, beautiful little girl who will, I have no doubt, handle this better than her Mommy. :)

So here we go ...

Roadside Assistance

"First I thought it was numbness, shock. The inability to believe that a just God could allow someone to destroy a gold mine of prehistoric knowledge for a year's worth of Salisbury steak … Life is a mystery. One man's life-altering experience is another man's tenderloin. I'm one of you now. I'm a Cicelean."

(Dr. Joel Fleischman, Northern Exposure, Season Five - Episode 24, "Lovers and Madmen")

Joel just discovered an entire, perfectly preserved woolly mammoth while playing golf in the wilds of Alaska, only to later find it gone -- transported to Walt's shed where he was in the process of butchering it. Nothing like a 3-inch fillet of mammoth the size of your femur, smothered in onions and peppers ...

After this wretched discovery, Joel collapsed on Maggie's couch, stunned that someone would butcher a mammoth rather than show the world one of the most incredible discoveries of all time. But instead of having a typical Joel-meltdown, he's quiet, reserved ... resigned. The above quote is his famous monologue -- the moment where Joel finally realized he's crossed over. After years of fighting and protesting and whining and fighting some more, it's over. He's finished. He's one of them now.

Last weekend's trip to PA was, for me, more than just about Grace's clubfoot. I discovered my own woolly mammoth, in a way, and I learned something pretty important. I took a few more crucial steps along my journey's path, and like Joel, I realized I have come to a monumental point. While I'm not a Cicelean, I have been able to do something that I've been "fighting" with for so long. Like forgiveness, it's been in my head, but finally -- Fleischman-like -- it made it's way down to my heart.

I'm OK.
Everything is really, truly, finally OK.

I mean, with everything -- with what happened with the church, with our calling, with our ministry, with our lives, with where we ended up ... it's OK. I still feel angry at times, and that's not such a bad thing. I'm created in God's imagine, right? And God is a just God. He didn't create sin, or injustice, or abuse, and God hates it. So, being in God's image, it's OK to hate injustice. It's OK to be angry with people who do bad things. Period.

But what our weekend trip helped me do was to put that in its rightful place, in that box labeled "Appropriate Response" and put the lid on tight. It's no longer in that sieve, seeping out through tiny holes into every area of my life, making me miserable. And so how did this come about? Through two separate conversations with two separate friends, on two separate days.

In a nutshell, our friends -- both of whom have experienced their own painful situations, one also within the church -- both said this: it's OK. You came upon it, you experienced it, you were hurt by it, you moved through it, and it's OK. It's part of our history now, our story, our journey. But journey's don't stop ... they keep going. They have to. But I just kind of got hung up there on the roadside, mired in the muck. But thanks to the weekend trip -- going back, revisiting where we lived, seeing friends, and being ministered to -- I finally felt like I received some roadside assistance, pulled out of the muck, so I can start walking again.

Sure, I've got my things to work on -- I'm not perfect. I know I'll slip up and fall backwards. I don't have a lot of hope yet for the future -- indeed, who knows where things will lead? But the hope is this: it will lead somewhere. And right now, everything is OK. It really, truly is.

And that's really all that matters.
It's good to finally see this, to become a Cicelean.

Hour of (Explosive) Power

It's 4:00 p.m.

Why is it that kids explode at this hour?

The hour I most need to myself.
To think.
To finish up whatever I missed through the day.
To take care of last-minute chores.
To start thinking about (or preparing?) dinner.

And then the rumbling starts, followed by ...

Actually, it's ironically fitting that following the rumbling came an explosion of lava ... in the form of red juice, spilling all over the living room floor ...

Ah, yes. There are multiple explosions going on here.
There's no other hour quite like it.
I just don't get it.

One Little Foot

When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time last year, she didn't see it coming. She was happy and confident as she went to the appointment, the routine check-up. She foresaw nothing on her horizon, and life was good. But then she got the results, like a bolt of lightening, no warning, just the words: "your cancer is back." There's no feeling in the world like it, receiving that kind of blow.

I was feeling that way going into Grace's appointment for her clubfoot -- happy, confident. She runs like some fleet-footed creature, she has no pain, she's in good shape. But as the days ticked down toward The Appointment Day, I started to get a little nervous. Maybe all is not quite right. So I entered yesterday's appointment with ebbed confidence, with a nagging sense that we're not out of the woods.

And the funny thing is, I was right.

After over an hour's wait, as expected, the doctor came in. He stretched her foot a bit, threw around funny words like "dorsiflexing" and various percentages that seemed a little low to my ears, my maternal warning light starting to blink. He asked her to walk, he twisted his mouth a bit as he watched her. OK, so here's the good news: NO MORE SHOES! Oh, my goodness, I can't tell you how happy that made me, being rid of those monstrosities. And yet, even after experiencing that bit of relief, I knew a "but" was close behind.

My hunch was correct -- her foot wasn't quite right. He wasn't pleased with how little "give" there was. It is way too tight. When she walks, there's no movement or flexing of the foot. He showed us the comparison to her healthy foot, which flexes and stretches all over the place, every which way. But her clubfoot, while it moved a bit, didn't move enough. It was way, way too tight. My heart dropped a bit. We're not out of the woods.

He was comforting, clearly trying to relieve some of my Mama-Guilt. It's genetic, and there's only so much you can do to beat out something that wants to do something contrary by its very nature. Her little foot has, for some reason, been programmed to do this, to tighten up, to turn inward. Each kid is unique, each response is different. So, for the next four months, we have to be super-diligent in stretching her foot; "force is more important than time," he said. 10 minutes in the morning, 10 at night (let me tell you -- it's much longer than it sounds!), stretching that little foot to its limit and then some. We have to return in October, and if the foot hasn't loosened up, then we're back to serial casting. Ugh -- not what I wanted to hear. Every week she'd get a new cast ... every week travel to Philadelphia?! No way. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, troll and all, but if casting is involved we'll have to look for someone up here. But until then, we stretch stretch stretch, amid the protests and wailing and "No, Daddy, STOP!"

So that's it, the end result of our check-up yesterday. Sure, I was hoping he'd give the all-clear sign. But I have to be real -- there is no "all-clear," really, with a clubfoot ... at least not during childhood. Each growth spurt is a potential relapse waiting to happen, and she's got lots of them on her horizon. My lesson here: CHILL OUT. Take each day, each growth spurt, each diagnosis, each potential cast as it comes. She's alive, right? She's walking, she's running, she's healthy, she's beautiful.

Lots of lessons heard and learned this weekend, my friends. This is just one of them. This clubfoot trip is all part of the package called Grace -- not what I envisioned at all for my child, but it's her journey, our journey, and we're on it together. What a girl.