The Summer of our Discontent
Should dark times happen during dark seasons? I wonder. This summer began on a high note – the baby I had been dreaming about for the past 20 years was going to be born the same day my brother was born – June 8th. And we anxiously feathered our nest, got our major projects out of the way, and readied our loved ones for this new beginning.
And then a cloud on the horizon, the mother changed her mind.
T’s mother and niece were coming to America to help us with the newborn baby, instead they were now coming for a six week visit. They arrived to celebrity deaths – Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Walter Cronkite. We were saddened by the sudden death of a friend’s son. And then there was my mother, whose condition was spiraling downward at such a clip, I couldn’t even keep up.
In the midst of this, I was working on the baby book to send to a new mother who might choose us. Working on the book became a drudgery instead of a joy because we hadn’t fully recovered from the baby we were supposed to be welcoming home. Instead, an accidental phone call from the mother who had changed her mind, who thought she was calling for a job application, then the awkward recognition that it was us she had called. “How’s the baby?” “She’s beautiful.” Click.
And then mom went in the hospital and every day, she’s stable, she’s not. Well last night, Friday, TGIF, when I thought I had gotten through the week, the 2AM call comes and mom is headed to ICU and I’m back in the middle of the night on the I-10 headed to the unknown world of the hospital where no one knows really what to do, they only know how to react to what happens.
By 7AM, sitting in the ICU waiting room with the youngest of my four brothers, I listened to him tell me about the rough past year, the loss of his burgeoning mortgage brokerage, continuing issues with his daughter, his own mother dying last year, and how he was trying to cope but one day just burst out crying and couldn’t stop. And I told him, my tears just don’t come, every time I think they might, they just stop somewhere. He said, “I’m here for you.” Of course, that almost made me cry.
How did the Summer of Birth become the Summer of Death and Doom? Hard to say. That’s life, huh?