What I Learned Taking Two Boys to the Hospital

When Sam was in fifth grade, he went on a field trip to a ski resort. He was not a very experienced skier, but I knew he would be well-supervised.

When he came home that afternoon, I asked him how his ski trip had been.

“Good,” he said, “It was cool.” Then he held out his left arm, and I saw a small piece of white gauze draped loosely on his wrist.

“I fell,” he said, when I asked him what had happened.

“Does it hurt? Did someone look at it?”

“It doesn't hurt much,” Sam said.

I’m no medical expert, and it looked fine to me. I told him to let me know if the pain continued or increased.

The next day Sam said his arm still hurt. He said it the same way he had before, very casually. It was Friday, and our family doctor’s office was closed. I certainly didn't want to take him to the emergency room.

I had a thought. “Hey, Sam,” I said, “I have an appointment with the doctor on Tuesday for the baby. If your arm still hurts, I’ll take you in then.”

He said. “Okay,” and I thought that was the end of it.

So I was surprised when, on Tuesday morning, Sam asked what time we were going to the doctor.

“It still hurts?” I asked, and when he nodded, I said, “The appointment is at 10:30.”

So I went to the doctor’s office with my oldest child and my youngest child. After the doctor examined Adam, I asked him to take a look at Sam’s arm. I was a little embarrassed to ask him, since the appointment was for Adam, and I had a suspicion that Sam was just looking for an excuse to miss school.

The doctor told me that I should take Sam’s to the hospital for an X-ray, something  I hadn't unexpected to hear. I loaded Sam and Adam back into the van and drove to the hospital.

A technician X-rayed Sam’s arm and we waited in the emergency room lobby for the results. After a while, a man in hospital scrubs came and called Sam’s  name. I stood up and pointed at Sam, and the man came closer.

"This is Sam?"

“

Sam and I both nodded.

“When did you hurt your arm?” the man asked.

When we told him it had happened on Thursday, the man shook his head in disbelief. “This is one tough kid,” he said. “His arm is broken in three places. You need to get a cast on it right away.”

A terrible wave of maternal guilt swept over me. Five days! I had sent my child to school and to church; I had made him do his homework and his chores, and all the time he had a broken arm. I turned to him with tears in my eyes and an apology on my tongue, but before I could say a word, he spoke up. “Cool! I broke my arm!”

He choose a green cast, since he would have it on for St. Patrick’s  Day, and everyone at school signed it. It was the best six weeks he’d had in a long time.

*    *    *    *    *    *

Ten years later:

When Ben said he was feeling sick, Wes and I wondered if he had eaten something bad. He was a very strong and healthy 15-year-old and had almost never been ill.

But the next the day he felt worse, and was feeling some abdominal  pain. I called a neighbor and asked if she could give us a ride to Instacare. The doctor at Instacare examined Ben briefly, then told us to go straight to the hospital’s emergency room. There they confirmed that Ben had appendicitis.

The staff gave Ben IV medication for his pain and began to prepare him for surgery. Wes arrived and we waited while our son’s appendix was removed.

After the surgery Ben was sleepy and confused, but the surgeon said things had gone well. We stayed with him until he was more coherent, but it was getting late and our other children were home alone. Wes told Ben that we would be back in the morning.

“I’m not going,” I said. “I’m going to stay.”

Wes was surprised. “You want to stay here all night?” He knows I don’t like hospitals. And we both knew that I wouldn't get any sleep if I was there.

“I’m going to stay. I don’t want Ben to be alone.”

“He’ll be fine. They’ll take care of him. He’s fifteen.”

I shrugged. I just felt like I wanted to stay.

“Let’s ask Ben,” Wes said, and asked Ben if he wanted me to stayed there with him. He said he didn't care.

I felt I should stay, and I did. Ben slept most of the night, and when he stirred a couple of times he seemed groggy and hardly aware of my presence. In the morning, Ben was released and Wes came and took us both home. Ben recovered quickly, and I basically put the whole thing out of my mind.

Many months later, I became seriously ill and was hospitalized. When I became more stable, Wes brought the five children who were living at home to visit me. During the visit, Wes asked each child to say something nice about me.

I’m  sorry to admit that I don’t remember what any of them said – except for Ben, who said, “When I had my appendix out,  she stayed the whole night with me.”

*    *    *    *    *    *

Thinking about these two experiences has taught me a lesson about being a parent: we don’t always judge things perfectly. We don’t always know what to do. But when we do our best, and follow our hearts, things usually work out – sometimes better than we may have expected. We often don’t see the results of our decisions right away – it may take days, or weeks, or years. But we just have to keep going, hoping, and believing.

Now that I've written this, I realize that the lesson is not just about parenting. It’s about life. It's about Grace.

The scriptures tell us that “it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do,” and that "the Lord's grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

I learned a few songs in Spanish in college. For some reason, the only one I remember well is the Mexican folk song "La Bamba," perhaps best known as a 1958 Richie Valens hit. 

This is the part of the song I like most:

Para bailar La Bamba
Se necessita una poca de gracia
Una poca de gracia para mi, para ti.

Here's the rough translation:

To dance La Bamba
A little grace is needed,
A little grace for you and for me.


I don't think this song was meant to be a sermon or a lecture on faith. Most of the lyrics are a bit silly, actually (I'm not a sailor!  I'm the Captain!). But I have learned to believe that in order to figuratively "dance La Bamba" – to get through life reasonably well – a little Grace is needed. For you and for me.

Bamba, Bamba, Bamba, Bamba, Bamba, Bamba, Bamba!

Outage Outing

Yesterday afternoon Adam came to me and said, "I think the power's out." I hadn't noticed, but I flipped some switches and he was right: no electricity.

It's been a while since we've had a power outage that lasted more than a few minutes. In fact, if I'm remembering correctly, the last one was over three years ago. It was in the late fall, and when the lights went out in the early afternoon I assumed they'd be back on before dark. But as darkness started to move in quickly, I realized we needed to prepare for the possibility of a cold, dark night.

I gave my children a few assignments: "Gather blankets from downstairs; we'll all sleep upstairs tonight. Someone help me put together some food we can eat while we can still see. Ben, go get my basket of candles and bring them in here."

Ben was thirteen, and incredulous at my request. "Mom," he said. "The power is out. It's starting to get dark. This is no time to worry about how the house smells."

Okay, it's possible I have too many scented candles.


But I digress. Back to yesterday . . .

It was a very hot and humid day, and without our swamp cooler and fans the house quickly became suffocating. I stepped outside to find that it was even less bearable there. All the drivers in the family were gone. We had no television or computers to distract us, and our phone wasn't working. The sun was setting, and it was getting hard even to read. My plans to do some laundry, make dinner, and write a little were shot.

I finally found a cell phone and asked my daughter to text her dad at work. Power's out, she wrote. Call this phone. I realized that with my hearing loss, I probably wouldn't hear the phone if he called it, so I sat down on the couch, tucked the cell phone just under my leg, and tried to wait patiently.

And then the couch started shaking.

I was near panic. What's going on here? I thought. The power's off and now we're having an earthquake!"

I'm sure that some of you have guessed that the phone I was sitting on was set to vibrate. When I finally figured that out, I had the privilege of spending several fumbling seconds trying to figure out how to answer the phone. But eventually I hit some random button and the phone stopped shaking. Hurray! I could make human contact!

I told my dear Wes how miserable we were. "Okay," he said, "I'll come home and rescue you."

And he did. Fifteen minutes later we were sitting in an air-conditioned van on our way to a pizza restaurant. Peace and comfort had been restored.

At the pizzeria, we made the uncharacteristic choice to splurge a bit. (Since eating out with our family is an uncharacteristic splurge in itself, it didn't seem quite so weird to continue the madness.)

We ordered a something that this restaurant offers mostly as a novelty: the 36-inch pizza.

It's a lot of pizza. It completely covered the table, so we put our plates on our laps. And there's a contest connected to this monstrosity: if two people can finish it off in an hour, they win a prize. (And the prize is: lots more pizza! And maybe barf bags, I don't know . . .) We didn't eat it all, but we put quite a big dent in it. And we laughed and talked and shared.

It was still hot outside when we left the restaurant, and we didn't know if our power was back on, so we went to the library to check out some books and movies and to enjoy their air conditioning, When the library closed at nine, we decided to go home.

The road was dark. No street lights, no house lights, no porch lights. We saw our neighbors sitting outside, waving paper fans across their faces. Clearly, the electricity was still off.

We pulled into our dark garage and began to feel our way into the house. Adam got there first and opened the door. Then, just as he stepped inside, the kitchen lit up. It was like magic.

And now we can return to our distraction-filled, speedily-moving electronic lives, with perhaps a little more appreciation for the electricity that makes it possible.

As we got ready for bed, I mentioned to Wes that I was getting frustrated with my computer, which we bought used last year. I haven't wanted to complain about it, because, while we always have enough money to get along, we don't usually have of lot left over for luxuries. But, I told him, the computer is becoming increasingly unstable and unreliable, and I haven't felt like I can get anything done on it.

We realized as we talked that we had just spent twice as much money on pizza as we spent to buy the computer. (It was a twenty-five dollar computer.)

"That's okay," I said."We weren't really buying pizza."

He nodded and we smiled. Nothing more needed to be said. We both knew that we were buying memories.

And here I sit, typing up the whole story on my sad little computer, which has been on for two hours now and is still running happily.  So I can still find reasons to believe in little miracles.

And hey, if anyone out there wants leftover pizza, there's some in my refrigerator.