Growing Edges
alexa lopezArchive for Parenthood
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
Hot Breakfast
One thing…one fantastic memory from my childhood…is that I could always depend on my mother to be up before us ~~ humming in the kitchen, no less ~~ preparing a hot breakfast before we left for school. She has always been an early riser.
She didn’t always cook oatmeal, but I did eat enough oatmeal as a kid to gag on the first bite of it as an adult.
Comparing oneself to others may be counter-productive in life, but that understanding never stopped me from listening to that voice in the back of my mind that said, “You really should cook a hot breakfast for your kids before they go to school. Your mom did it for you every morning!”
Well, all of our kids have vastly different tastes ~~ one detests eggs, one won’t eat sausage, another isn’t fond of pancakes and still another won’t eat French Toast (what’s that about? Who doesn’t eat French Toast?) ~~ and since I refuse to be a “short order cook” in an already bustling home, I simply haven’t been making the effort to cook breakfast on school mornings. I hate the feeling of failure in that.
Also, I really like being a night owl, and I’m up so late most nights that it is all I can do to keep my eyes open long enough to see my kids safely board the school bus before I climb back into bed and sleep way later than any mother should. Man, that’s some good sleep, too.
Enter my amazing problem-solver husband, whose solution has changed the dynamic of our household mornings and helped me feel like I’m a real mom. 
One evening two weeks ago I expressed to him how I would love to do for our kids what my mom did for us ~~~ preparing breakfast each school morning ~~~ but I just wasn’t willing to contend with them (we’re on a time schedule, here, kids!) about what I was cooking, about whether they liked it.
Richard’s solution: each night I tell them what I’m preparing the next morning, and they decide whether they’ll have it, or whether they’ll choose one of two “everyday” options: cold cereal, or oatmeal. Problem solved!
Guess what? Mornings are full of giggling over breakfast.
Guess what else? No matter how hard I try, I can’t fall back to sleep after making breakfast for the kids, so I’m more productive.
And you know what else? I actually like oatmeal again. It’s my favorite breakfast.
Richard, you rock! How I scored a genius like you, I’ll never know.
© Alexa Lopez, 2008
