Sunday, June 19, 2016

Sunday Best



It looks like a beautiful day out there.  I'm sure it is hot and muggy, the breeze only strong enough to annoyingly move around the pieces of hair not sweating and clinging to your neck.  But it looks beautiful.

I was able to spend a glorious thirty minutes in the hospital's courtyard this morning.  I had been up for over three hours, but it was still early and cool and the birds were out, flying all around the enclosed space.  Before that, I had blood drawn, prenatal supplements and iron distributed.  I had been visited by three nurses and one attending doctor.  All of them asking me the same questions I hear every morning, afternoon, and night.  Any tenderness when I press here?  Any nausea?  How about blurred vision?  Can you still feel the baby move?

I read an article last night about birth control.  Apparently, my situation happens in only 6% of cases.

The bracelets on my wrist make me look like some sort of ACL attendee.  Except instead of getting me backstage, they alert doctors of my penicillin allergy, my blood type, and a bar code which is scanned a dozen times a day when any one of my fifteen nurses flushes my IV or gives me Tylenol or hooks the baby up to a heart monitor for 20 minutes (which always turns into over an hour because they have other patients too).

I have finished two books so far.  I wasn't very impressed with either of them.

I am trying to keep my spirits up, read books, write and think about baby names.  I'm trying to do my best.  But this week, I am going to allow myself to wallow a bit.  Just this week though.  Because had my life continued on the way it was supposed to go on, the way I thought it was going to continue, the way any just and kind God or universe or supreme being would allow it to go on, would still have allowed my boyfriend and I to be driving somewhere through Arkansas at this time.

I can still picture it.  I would be driving and looking for a friendly, grassy area to stop and walk Roxy around but edging myself just a bit further on,

Make it to 6:00pm.  

Keep going until you get to the next exit.  

Go another thirty miles and then you can stop.

I would be so excited and anxious to get there, to have a vacation from both of my jobs, to be able to get out of town and the heat and spend days and days with my family and old friends I haven't seen in years.  We would stop in Nashville tonight.  We would check into a cheap hotel, sneak Roxy in and walk around the city for a bit.  Then we'd crash and sleep hard but not long because I'd want to get on the road again.  We'd go to this little restaurant the boy had found, Biscuit Love (http://biscuitlove.com/) right as they opened and I would have bought a coffee mug.  We'd push the critter around the block once more before hitting the road again, our bellies full of benedicts and coffee.

Then it would be a race.  I wouldn't want to waste any time.  There is so much I have to do as the MOH and I would want to see my sister.  I would want to get this wild circus of a wedding week underway.  I would want to get everything started that we have been talking about for a year.

But instead, I can do little more than pick up a new book, read the first few pages and put it down again.  I count down the hours until I have to order another meal from the cafeteria.  I wonder what everyone else is doing today.  I've texted many; the boy, mom and sister and a few friends but haven't heard back from anyone yet.  It's so quiet.

My flowers are starting to die.  Some still look great and happy and beautiful.  But some have given up, no one to change their water, the window probably very warm there as they sit with nowhere to go.  It's been a week since they've all arrived.  But I don't want to get rid of them yet.  They add a lot of color.  They remind me of those who sent them, still out there, living their lives.



1 comment:

  1. Lovely writing as always. As I read this, Ethan stood over my shoulder doing the same. I shared my memories of our homeschool years where I pretended to try teach you something or at least share what I had learned. Your natural gift needed nothing from me. XO

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