The seven year old is home with his third case of strep throat since January. He started his medicine yesterday but can’t go back to school until Monday. He was feeling better today so I took him to breakfast at McDonald’s this morning (“Why do they want to hire smiling faces, Mom?”). I reached across the booth to butter his pancakes. He insisted the pancake on the bottom be buttered again because I’d not spread the butter to every edge as I had on the top pancake.
Afterward we went to the post office (“How much do you think this package weighs, Mom?”) and to the grocery store (“Can we make a fruit salad, Mom?”). I like to have fresh flowers for the dining room table and I let him pick them out today. I held three bunches of daisies out–red, yellow, and white–for his consideration. “What about these?” He wrinkled his nose, “I don’t like the white.” He picked two bunches of purple irises instead and I nodded appreciatively. We contemplated adding some statice to the arrangement but both agreed the irises needed no complement.
We had the irises scooped into our arms when some pots of cheerful tulips caught our eye. I felt, suddenly, like I couldn’t bear to take the irises home. No matter how beautiful they seemed, there was no escaping that they were, in fact, dead.
How does it happen that such a thing can make my stomach ache?
My son chose some pink tulips–not the color I’d have chosen but that’s neither here nor there– and we headed home. He was tired and I wasn’t feeling so great myself (sore throat and headache), so we took a nap. I slept the heavy, weighted sleep of a troubled person.
Was it the irises that caused my unease? No, of course not.
It’s the still-frequent ache in my pelvis six weeks after my surgery. It’s the fact that my recovery hasn’t been all that smooth. It’s that I am so far behind at work that I may never catch up–except I have to, because there’s no one else to help me. It’s that my husband is under a tremendous amount of pressure right now and I’m seeing less of him than I’d like. It’s that my son keeps getting strep throat and I worry about him. There are other things.
***
I cooked dinner tonight. I peeled and cubed potatoes and set them to boil while I worked on the fruit salad that my little boy asked for. I filled the sink with cold water and added some baking soda in order to soak the wax off of the fruit. I peeled and sliced kiwi and mango. I added blackberries and strawberries. I cubed red and green apples and handed chunks of them to my child as he looked on. He ambled into the family room and turned on the TV. I admonished him (he’d been in front of the TV far too much today!), and became distracted and stabbed myself in the finger with the paring knife in my hand. I yelped and blinked back tears.
My husband set the table and fixed drinks while I drained the potatoes, added butter, milk, salt and pepper. I opened several kitchen drawers in succession and wondered aloud where the beaters for the mixer had disappeared! My husband opened the drawer I’d just searched and quietly produced the beaters. I accepted them from his outstretched hand and looked around the kitchen again, almost frantically. In answer to Brad’s curious look, “Now I can’t find the mixer!”
“Honey, it’s right in front of you, on the counter.”
And with that, I just leaned into him. Right into the hollow of his shoulder. I rubbed my cheek against his T-shirt and tried to just . . . breathe. And he put his arms around me, kissed my temple near my hairline, and let me just breathe.
Something inside me unfurled. My stomach ache became more of a butterfly feeling. I remembered for a moment who I am when I am not recovering from surgery and worrying about work and being uber-cautious with my child’s health.
There’ll be another day when the thought of a beautiful flower wilting and dying will completely undo me. But God willing, there’ll also be a shoulder to lean against at the end of the day that happens to be attached to a man who loves me, even when I can’t see what’s right in front of my face.
