Storms Come

Trees, brittle under the weight of icy snow, used to frighten me. I would hide, holding my babies close, avoiding the bitter damp. But storms come.

My giggly toddler fell off a chair and broke her arm. Our doctor was flummoxed. Then her back molars failed to form. “Did you fall while you were pregnant?” the dentist asked.

I did not, but the question sat beside me in the waiting room as tiny crowns were made so she could chew. I pulled out a tissue to blow my nose. Bones form in utero, so if they grow awry, it began in utero. They didn’t cover this in prenatal classes.

 Next came the maxillofacial surgeon. Her jaw was being reabsorbed, shortening when it should lengthen. “Good news: we can build her a lower jaw once the malabsorption ends.”

I forced a smile. “When might that be?”

The doctor shrugged. “For a girl, somewhere between eighteen and twenty.”

How do you explain that to a first grader?

“Did you fall when you were pregnant?” they asked at the next doctor’s office.

I pressed my lips together and shook my head, but I began to doubt my memory. My husband assured me that I was a terrific mother, particularly when pregnant. “You didn’t even eat sugar, for Pete’s sake. You would have remembered falling.” But if I hadn’t fallen, what had I done?

She was a model student, competing with her siblings for top grades and the solutions to Clue games, but her eyes were big compared to her chin. I worried that people might notice, might comment.

Entering middle school, her spine turned a c-curve that a brace could not fix. More X-rays. A new set of doctors. “Spinal fusion is performed every day,” they assured me.

“Is this related to the pain when her bones grow or the lack of enamel?”

They looked at me, confused. “No.”

Orthopedic surgeons don’t care about temporomandibular joint inflammation or quality of sleep. Each doctor focuses on one issue. Each gives one solution. They offered an umbrella for every type of rain that fell: spine, jaw, ortho, joint. Winds would shift and I’d tilt the appropriate umbrella in a new direction, trying not to drop the others. It’s hard to grip multiple handles and still have arms to hug.

Spinal fusion is a heavy umbrella.

While my daughter swung her legs, too short to touch the floor, my husband and I signed paperwork outlining the risk of paralysis. She gripped my hand as they wheeled her away.

Another waiting room. I paced as they inserted metal through half her vertebrae.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea is a real place: an icy sofa at a children’s hospital. I woke every two hours to help shift my daughter’s body. As nurses changed IVs, I smoothed the hair from her face. She cried in her sleep, and I switched the damp pillows for dry. Days bled into one another. Medically, she was “doing great.”

Her back knitted together, leaving a fat, blazing scar as her jaw continued its malabsorptive meander toward her neck. If I hadn’t fallen, what had I done? God can be surprisingly silent.

Doctor’s appointments and X-rays interrupted holidays. I hunted for flavorful baby foods and explored a forest of physiotherapies, but no one can create a normal childhood in waiting rooms. I would smile in the mirror, checking that I looked happy. It wasn’t an unraveling so much as a hardening, a malabsorption of hope.

Meanwhile, the reality of my daughter’s world was colored by and saturated in pain. While I drove her siblings to football or swimming or theater, I drove her to another clinic, another artificially cheery waiting room. Then there were times, too many times, when the appointments ran late.

My son walked five miles home from a frisbee tournament because a doctor’s office was running behind. I rushed to orchestra concerts and missed first acts of plays. Her siblings swore that it was alright, but I knew it was not. They said they understood, but understanding does not lessen the hurt, the sting that mom has chosen a different child to parent today.

Juggling a family is hard. I ran between the high school and the middle school, hauling cellos and signing permission slips. I wanted to volunteer but worried that I’d have to cancel. I taught Sunday school with a co-teacher, just in case.

Then came the darkest day. It started with bustle and scramble, a surge of chaos, “love you” and “bye” as six people tumbled out the door. Husband, kids, all grabbing backpacks and shouting. All except my daughter. She was dragging, lethargic and quiet. “Hurry,” I insisted. “Time waits for no man.” But instead of shaking off her lethargy, she sat.

“Sweetie, what’s up?” There was no reply. “Do you need to bring something to school?” She simply stared, unseeing. “Come on, just… just stand up, Honey.” But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. I tugged on her arm and she swayed back like a marionette, unresponsive. No one prepares you to parent a non-responsive child.

I dialed old doctors and new doctors, my hands shaking as I begged for help. Another clinic – the most frightening yet, because they took her away. I didn’t fall when pregnant, but I plummeted sixteen years later.

The unit they put her in was locked down. I would leave my purse in the cabinet and walk through the metal detector to visit. I brought her communion in a Pyx and favorite treats from Target, worried if they’d be allowed. When I left, she would cry, and I would smile, “It’s okay, Sweetie. You got this. We are here whenever you need us.” Back in the car, alone, I wept. It took longer to hit the ignition in that parking lot than anything else I did that day. And the next day, and more thereafter.

Before they released her, we had to tear her room apart, looking for anything she could use to cut. I never knew people did these things. We removed picture hangers and pens, then the door from its frame. Behavioral therapy joined her litany of weekly appointments. At night, my husband and I held one another, a silent glue that kept me from shattering.

The carefree child I’d raised was gone, lost in a haze of tears and frustration. The naïve woman who thought love conquered all was dying on the battlefield.

“There must be something more,” I begged our doctor.

“Well, acupuncture can’t hurt.”

Enter Dr. Wu: five foot nothing with broken English. She examined my daughter’s tongue and eyes, felt her forehead and wrist, then wagged her head.

“So much pain,” she murmured. “Poor girl, so much pain.”

My breath stopped. Instead of finding some new idiopathic problem, this doctor saw my daughter as a whole person. I set all the umbrellas down and stepped into a foreign tent.

Dr. Wu inserted an army of pins, turned off the overhead lights, and left. Buzzing heat lamps bathed us in orange dark as bamboo flute music drifted around us.

The metamorphosis began in under a minute.

Red lines surfaced across her skin, lacing between the pins like bare branches in winter, a ruby scar for a trunk. As the spiderweb of lines blanketed her back, she dropped into a healing sleep. Soft breath deepened, rich and tranquil, rising and falling in rhythm with flutes.

I dug for a tissue, trying to hold back gulping sobs. When had I last seen her peaceful? The fight for silence led to hiccups and I began to laugh, noiselessly, then sob. There are no words for the splintering of a heart held together with surgical tape.

My daughter left Dr. Wu’s office cheerful and energized. We went every three days.

Art became my daughter’s outlet. Brushes and oils spoke eloquently of her pain so she didn’t have to. Finally, the summer after high school, x-rays showed that her bones were done growing. They could operate.

More paperwork. Mandible surgery carried a high risk for nerve damage, possibly affecting facial movement. Years of planning, and still I felt unprepared. I paced while they rebuilt her upper and lower jawbones with six metal plates.

When the doctors reappeared, they were grinning.

Her waking was less joyful. Jaws wired shut, liquid diet, ice packs, face swollen past recognition. She couldn’t feel fingernails scratching her cheeks. What if those nerves didn’t return? The storm was supposed to be over, but it wasn’t.

Days passed. She lost too much weight. She grew angry. Knowing you have done the right thing and believing you have done that right thing are not the same. I hid on the basement stairs, praying, doubting, weeping.

Once I was penny-bright, the golden mother, keeping my children safe and dry. I needed others to see shiny perfection. But life lies in the muddy roots, not the pretty blossoms that blow away. My daughter’s bones might not be perfect, even after surgeries. Her anxiety might not leave, even after therapy. I could not control these things. She needed to hold her own umbrellas, and I needed to let her.

There is no more difficult action than nodding in silent agreement. She knew what steps to take to manage pain, and I stopped reminding her. She knew how to shock herself out of negative mental loops, and I stopped nagging her. The switch from caretaker to cheerleader is hard. Watching your child fight herself is hard.

As bruising faded, pain receded with the swelling. My daughter’s new face came into focus, and only her chin remained numb. Before the year was out, she could sleep in multiple positions and eat sandwiches with hard, crusty bread.

Bones no longer directed the trajectory of our days. She spent hours staring in the mirror, learning her new face. I understood the confusion. The image in my own mirror was a stranger, too. When had my hair turned gray?  

I still want to hold back storms but have learned to weather them instead. I am not Zeus, or Indra, or Freyr. I am just me. I move through the world as it is and help my children as I can. It is difficult to admit that our family is imperfect, that I am imperfect. My greatest strengths and shiniest veneers cannot protect my children. Their journeys are for them to hero.

External casts and titanium bones work miracles, but the reality of trauma is that bodies heal more quickly than minds. I am back in psychiatric waiting rooms where God, again, has grown silent… but present. Now, when I see a deciduous tree in winter, I study it. It may appear brittle under the weight of icy snow, but come spring, its skeletal arms will remember how to bend and sway.

I will remember how to bend and sway.

No matter how long February seems to last, I know that bursts of fragrant vitality wait in brittle winter branches.