moment.
It was a perfect moment. Comically, almost embarrassingly perfect: the sun fading behind the pine trees, casting a glow on my daughter's head as she swung up and down. I pushed her higher and higher, at her request, my hands gently pressing into the back of her little white t-shirt covered with hearts, her sparkly red skirt glinting with the sunlight, her still-uncut baby curls rising and falling with each push. I looked around at our lush green lawn, our white fence, our brown dog resting in the last slivers of sunlight. I hadn't make extraordinary choices in life, and yet here I was, surrounded by such goodness, my daughter's squeals of delight rising and disappearing into the air like vapor.
*
A couple hours earlier, I'd been talking to my mom on the phone. She and my dad were preparing to pick up their first foster child that evening, an elementary aged boy who did not know his house was unsafe. How he and my parents would respond to each other was unknown, as was the length of stay, as were so many other factors. There was an understanding that later that night, everyone's lives were changing, almost in an instant. When the mass text message went out to ask for prayer, I could utter only the simplest of prayers: Help this boy to feel and know that he is safe.
*
A few hours before talking to my mom, I'd been in the NICU. My day of clinical was spent in the cardiac ICU, where I mostly helped care for a man with heart failure and a host of related complications. But another nurse on the floor was caring for a woman in her 30s. She'd had an emergency C-section, gone home, and had a stroke. Now she was in the cardiac ICU, and her baby was in the NICU. She was stable enough to go down and visit, so my fellow student and I followed the nurse as she pushed the woman in a wheelchair down the hallway to the elevators, her IV bags hanging on a rolling stand beside her. The NICU was quiet, and warm, and I was flooded with emotion as soon as we entered--my own memories of delivery danced in my head, along with vivid imagined stories of all the babies here. We got to the baby's room, and his mother picked him up, held him close to her, and seemed not to mind at all that two nursing students and an ICU nurse were part of this sacred moment. After an hour of watching her bond with her baby, we pushed the woman back down the hallway as the NICU nurse arrived to re-attach the tiny wires that monitored the baby's heart.
*
My husband joined us at the swing set. Now my daughter's joy was twofold: we pushed her from the front and the back, her cries of "higher, higher!" barely audible over her laughter. Then, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, my hands over my mouth, my husband rushing forward as her body flipped forward and off the swing, my panic mounting and my brain somehow having time to filter through broken bones, broken neck, emergency room, in a nanosecond. Then time froze, and she screamed, and we rushed over, and her arm had small scrapes from elbow to wrist, surrounding the blue bunny tattoo she'd been so excited to show everyone. Can you move your arm, can you move your leg, do you see any blood, does this hurt, are you ok, are you sure you can move your arm, does it hurt when I do this? Then time slowed, and we carried her inside, and an M&M helped, and we washed off the dirt and she agreed to get into the bathtub once we assured her that there was no blood and the water wouldn't sting. Later, lying in her bed under her elephant blanket, my husband reading her a Frog and Toad story, she had questions: Why did I fall off the swing? Why did you push me too high? Why did mama put her hand on her mouth? She was fine--more than fine--but I kept replaying the scene. My wonder at the safety and beauty and contentment around me. The reflection of that in contrast to the uncertainty of the boy coming to my parents' house and the boy and his mother in separate ICU rooms. Then my own almost-moment that could have changed everything, but mercifully didn't.
And yet this is how these moments go. An innocent push on a plastic yellow swing. People arriving to say that your home isn't safe and you'll be going to a new house with some nice people you haven't met. Waking up in the hospital without your baby, because your blood has sent a clot to your brain and you've had a stroke even though you're not even 40 years old yet.
*
We mostly go through life moment by moment, forgetting how fragile our bodies are, and the homes and societies and countries that enclose them. Until there is a break. And in the break we have a choice: either safety is an illusion and not to be trusted, or the moments that feel safe are gifts to be received gratefully. I'm not sure we can live in any meaningful way believing that safety is not to be trusted, so instead, I'll go to bed tonight thinking about the little boy at my parents' house and the tiny baby in the NICU and my scraped-but-happy daughter in her bed. I won't think myself into despair by wondering about the inequity of it all, but instead will think of how many chances I had today to make a few moments a little safer, a little better, for a handful of people--and how many chances I'll hopefully have tomorrow.
*
A couple hours earlier, I'd been talking to my mom on the phone. She and my dad were preparing to pick up their first foster child that evening, an elementary aged boy who did not know his house was unsafe. How he and my parents would respond to each other was unknown, as was the length of stay, as were so many other factors. There was an understanding that later that night, everyone's lives were changing, almost in an instant. When the mass text message went out to ask for prayer, I could utter only the simplest of prayers: Help this boy to feel and know that he is safe.
*
A few hours before talking to my mom, I'd been in the NICU. My day of clinical was spent in the cardiac ICU, where I mostly helped care for a man with heart failure and a host of related complications. But another nurse on the floor was caring for a woman in her 30s. She'd had an emergency C-section, gone home, and had a stroke. Now she was in the cardiac ICU, and her baby was in the NICU. She was stable enough to go down and visit, so my fellow student and I followed the nurse as she pushed the woman in a wheelchair down the hallway to the elevators, her IV bags hanging on a rolling stand beside her. The NICU was quiet, and warm, and I was flooded with emotion as soon as we entered--my own memories of delivery danced in my head, along with vivid imagined stories of all the babies here. We got to the baby's room, and his mother picked him up, held him close to her, and seemed not to mind at all that two nursing students and an ICU nurse were part of this sacred moment. After an hour of watching her bond with her baby, we pushed the woman back down the hallway as the NICU nurse arrived to re-attach the tiny wires that monitored the baby's heart.
*
My husband joined us at the swing set. Now my daughter's joy was twofold: we pushed her from the front and the back, her cries of "higher, higher!" barely audible over her laughter. Then, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, my hands over my mouth, my husband rushing forward as her body flipped forward and off the swing, my panic mounting and my brain somehow having time to filter through broken bones, broken neck, emergency room, in a nanosecond. Then time froze, and she screamed, and we rushed over, and her arm had small scrapes from elbow to wrist, surrounding the blue bunny tattoo she'd been so excited to show everyone. Can you move your arm, can you move your leg, do you see any blood, does this hurt, are you ok, are you sure you can move your arm, does it hurt when I do this? Then time slowed, and we carried her inside, and an M&M helped, and we washed off the dirt and she agreed to get into the bathtub once we assured her that there was no blood and the water wouldn't sting. Later, lying in her bed under her elephant blanket, my husband reading her a Frog and Toad story, she had questions: Why did I fall off the swing? Why did you push me too high? Why did mama put her hand on her mouth? She was fine--more than fine--but I kept replaying the scene. My wonder at the safety and beauty and contentment around me. The reflection of that in contrast to the uncertainty of the boy coming to my parents' house and the boy and his mother in separate ICU rooms. Then my own almost-moment that could have changed everything, but mercifully didn't.
And yet this is how these moments go. An innocent push on a plastic yellow swing. People arriving to say that your home isn't safe and you'll be going to a new house with some nice people you haven't met. Waking up in the hospital without your baby, because your blood has sent a clot to your brain and you've had a stroke even though you're not even 40 years old yet.
*
We mostly go through life moment by moment, forgetting how fragile our bodies are, and the homes and societies and countries that enclose them. Until there is a break. And in the break we have a choice: either safety is an illusion and not to be trusted, or the moments that feel safe are gifts to be received gratefully. I'm not sure we can live in any meaningful way believing that safety is not to be trusted, so instead, I'll go to bed tonight thinking about the little boy at my parents' house and the tiny baby in the NICU and my scraped-but-happy daughter in her bed. I won't think myself into despair by wondering about the inequity of it all, but instead will think of how many chances I had today to make a few moments a little safer, a little better, for a handful of people--and how many chances I'll hopefully have tomorrow.