Growing Edges
alexa lopezArchive for January, 2009
Just What I Needed
The NICU paged me during the time when they were to be running an EEG on my baby girl. They needed me back in her room.
I entered the room to loud cries. “Mrs. Lopez, is there any way you can calm her down without nursing her right now while we apply these electrodes to her head?”
“She’s not hungry; she’s angry,” I said. Her “feed me” cry was very different. I leaned over the side of the NICU crib, touched her hand and placed my right cheek on hers, and whispered, “It’s okay, Riál. Mommy’s here.” I left my cheek there and kept whispering to her so she could feel me near. Her crying stopped immediately and she fell asleep, and the hospital got its EEG.
That was one of many bright mommy moments during a dark, uncertain time in Seattle’s Children’s Hospital…that my suffering four-week-old found comfort in my touch and my whisper, and that I knew what she needed at that moment.
About six weeks after she passed into glory, our two-year-old son somehow managed to lean just right (or just wrong, depending how you see it) on our piano bench, which then slid from under him and landed on his big toe, splitting it wide open. It bled so much and we feared it may be broken. At 8:30 on a Tuesday night, we had no choice but to take him to the emergency room.
Once we crossed the threshold of the ER entrance I found sorrow rushing at me. This was where we brought Riál three-and-a-half months earlier, the first day of our eight week journey through Citrobacter Freundii’s effects on our newborn’s brain.
Those walls inside the ER…inside the examination room where we awaited a doctor…oh, it was just too soon to go back there, but I held it together for our son who was in need of a calming presence; I kept reminding myself that this ER visit wasn’t about me confronting the great sadness that started there and ended in Children’s Hospital NICU.
I held Abe on my lap and just hugged him close, speaking words of comfort and praying silently for the strength to keep it together for his sake. The funeral home had just placed the headstone we had ordered for Riál and we saw it for the first time that day — and now, to be at this ER again…
Abe suddenly turned around on my lap to face me, then gently placed his cheek on mine and kept it there — for his comfort, I’m sure, but he couldn’t have known how profoundly beautiful it was, how perfectly this random act ministered to my aching heart. Somehow he was tuned-in to my anguish and returned to me the comfort I gave his sister. This was his divine appointment that day: to pass along a message that my Lord knew would give me what I needed.
I found renewed clarity in my soul as Abe and I awaited the doctor’s report: no broken toe and no stitches necessary (no kidding!). We were so outta there!
© Alexa Lopez, 2009
Party In My Head
Sometimes I start laughing about a funny memory that pops into my head.
But it doesn’t just make me smile. My visual recall of the event takes me back to it, as in re-living the moment.
These are the kinds of memories that are funniest after-the-fact; the kind that aren’t all that amusing at the moment but are great for inducing a flood of endorphins upon later reflection.
I don’t quite know why this particular memory about taking my daughter to jazz band before school two years ago entered my thoughts while I was scrubbing a baking dish at 1:00 AM last night…but there it was.
First I giggled. Out loud. The husband and kids were all sleeping.
Then the more I thought about it, the more visual the memory was and I laughed even harder. Soon I was leaning over the sink and cracking up. Tears streamed down my face, my stomach muscles were hurting, and I could hardly believe that the laughter simply wouldn’t stop. My mind could not stop “seeing” it.
I must have looked like a madwoman, so loud and hearty was my laughter. My cats even glanced at me as if to say, “You’re such a freak.” I don’t know…it happens often enough that they’re probably used to it.
Had anyone awakened, could I have answered the ensuing question, “What’s so funny?” Probably not. The visual recall part of me makes re-telling a funny story incomprehensible…which pretty much means that they laugh at my laughing since they can’t understand what I’m trying to say.
It’s just so silly in a feel-good way. 
© Alexa Lopez, 2009
