Growing Edges
alexa lopezArchive for November, 2007
Expectations
Twenty-four hard-boiled eggs, soon to be 48 deviled eggs.
That was my pre-Thanksgiving feast plan, anyway.
The plan was that I would let my 15 and 11-year-olds peel the eggs and I would talk them through the rest.
Those eggs did not cooperate. The shells didn’t peel off; they pulled off chunks of egg white. I had to step in and do it. Peeling them took three times longer than it should have because, according to the Food Network, fresh eggs don’t peel well and it is best to hard-boil eggs that are a week to 10 days old.
I already knew that, but I had forgotten. The eggs I boiled yesterday were brand new, resulting in a near-futile attempt to provide munchies for my husband and kids while Thanksgiving dinner was in the works.
Forty-eight planned deviled eggs became more like 30 — and they weren’t pretty. Ninety percent of them were dimpled so much they resembled golf balls.
I kicked against the goads with those stubborn eggs, trying to force them to surrender their shells and membranes to reveal the smooth, slick outside that is the perfect casing for the filling.
As I worked I think I used some colorful expletives in my mind that I would never say out loud. That surprised me.
I asked myself, “Why would I let something like this — eggs that wouldn’t peel — get to me in this way?”
The word “expectation” came to mind.
Each day we have expectations. We expect our legs to move when we decide to walk. We expect our appliances to work properly. We expect traffic to be smooth enough to permit our passage to our destination when we need to get there. We expect that our friends and family understand us. We expect our sincerest, best-formulated plans to succeed. We expect others to see things as we see them, feel things the way we feel them, speak the way we speak.
Expectations may not be entirely reasonable, nor are they bad as long as they are put into check. In the end, when we admit we have expectations and own them as ours, we are able to move forward. Learn. Maybe even become more flexible.
Now about the eggs…quite frankly, I don’t care how pretty my eggs weren’t; they tasted great and they helped to keep my family’s tummies happy until dinner was ready.
That was my expectation. That was my plan. It wasn’t derailed, just delayed. And that’s not a problem, right?
Expectation with flexibility makes a perfect combination. They must dwell together.
Even better, our family has another memory to giggle about: “Dimpled Deviled Eggs” of Thanksgiving 2007.
© Alexa Lopez 2007
Seven Years, Eight Thanksgivings
Seven years ago today I let my infant daughter go.
She was our third daughter. Our fifth child. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
She was our brown-eyed girl.
I last looked into those brown eyes seven years ago tonight.
I last kissed those cheeks and forehead seven years ago tonight.
It is a story that spans nearly 10 weeks…that’s how old she was when she died — ten weeks old to the day. Perhaps I will chronicle that time in a page devoted to her on this site sometime soon.
Today, I simply want to honor her memory.
After all she went through, I wanted to tell all who would read this about one of my heroes.
She had survived a particularly aggressive form of meningitis and was released from the hospital (again, I may tell the story later) after a four-week course of an antibiotic cocktail, only to be re-admitted 10 days later for dehydration, a complication from the antibiotics.
That second hospital stay lasted 13 days.
The morning of November 20, 2000, I remember finally releasing her in my heart into the hands of God. I had been asking Him to heal her for nearly 8 weeks, wanting her to be done with illness and home for good.
It dawned on me that morning that I was wanting her to be whole and healthy on my terms.
After reading Psalm 91 over her each day believing she would eventually be through the woods and all would be well with the world, I somehow I found it within myself to pray this prayer that day:
“Lord, if healing for her means being with You, on the other side of the Cross, then I’m okay with that. I just don’t want her to suffer anymore. I want her to be free, whatever that means. Just heal her. She’s Yours anyway.”
She was doing so well that night when I left her bedside to go to get some sleep. She was sedated, but holding her own. She was in fact doing better than she had been the whole week prior.
So, sleep came easily to me that night.
Then…….the phone call.
The wall phone rang at 2:30 AM in our Newborn Intensive Care Unit parents’ sleeping room. Not our NICU parents’ pager.
The phone.
Middle-of-the night phone calls are never good. But maybe….?
The NICU operator needed us to come to the NICU immediately.
To her nurse’s surprise, she had taken a very sudden, catastrophic turn. Her neurological exam had been perfect only 20 minutes earlier. Then, unexpectedly, her alarms sounded.
“A catastrophic event” is what the NICU attending called it.
“Catastrophic” does not even begin to describe the “event”…..
I remember thinking, “Thanksgiving is in two days. How will our family be able to celebrate Thanksgiving and plan our infant daughter’s funeral?”
Emotional shock is a wonderful thing. I must have functioned on some sort of “autopilot” because I don’t much remember Thanksgiving that year. I remember that I, my husband and our kids shed many, many tears together that week.
Despite our family’s tragedy, I realized I had many things for which to be thankful: the fact that my eyes beheld her, that my arms held her, that I was able to nurse her and be by her side each day. That I saw her smile. That I spent all of her 70 days with her. That our children knew their baby sister, if only just a little.
And, I was thankful she was no longer in pain.
She was a hero. She was strong. She beat us to heaven. She fought a great fight and touched many lives during her 10 weeks.
We still cry. And we smile. And we blow kisses toward heaven, asking God to “plant them” on her for us.
We belong to the club of those who have out-lived their children for one reason or another. No parent wants to be a part of that club. But we survive it. We are stronger for it.
We get to celebrate and reflect, laugh and cry if we want….together. It’s Thanksgiving.
© Alexa Lopez 2007
