The Taste of Waiting

Issue #24

Welcome to the Good and Beautiful Things newsletter, where I write about creativity, curiosity, and courage. I hope by sharing my experiences (or as my friend calls them, my “true stories”) you will find inspiration or encouragement. At the very least, I hope you’ll feel less alone.

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(Present Day)

We are counting down the days until our second-born daughter arrives. In the meantime, my husband installs shelves in her closet and I order a new comforter for her bed.

The day by day countdown and flurry of preparation in the house reminds me of the days just before each of our children were born.

Are we nesting, I wonder, resurrecting a term I haven’t thought about in fourteen years. Isn’t that for expectant parents? Our daughter is twenty-years old.

I look at the date on my phone and do some quick math. Seventeen minus eleven? We’ll see our daughter in six more days. For her sophomore year of college, she spent both semesters in France and after ten months, she’s finally coming home.

I guess, in a way, we are nesting.

Back when this daughter first entered the world, it turned out the waiting wasn’t over, it was just beginning.

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(2002)

I scoot to the part of the bed closest to the door and watch the handle. I’m perched, partly because all of my sitting parts are on ice and partly because I’m waiting for my ticket out of here. The handle turns and my husband enters the small room carrying a single-serving container of Lucky Charms and a small carton of two-percent milk. 

I try to make sense of the items in his hands. Miniature milk cartons and sugary cereals belong to a childhood version of me, a version that existed some twenty years ago, not the present-day-me who is sitting on this bed. Having just given birth to our second child nine hours earlier, I am mother, not child, in every aching, swollen cell of my body. My husband peels back the lid of the cereal, pours the milk, and hands it to me.

With my focus narrowed on the door, I eat my Lucky Charms, the crunchy pink and purple marshmallows mixing with the milk and dissolving on my tongue. My mind tugs me back to the moment just hours earlier, when news about our daughter altered the course of our lives.

Early this morning, the pediatric cardiologist had entered our world, disheveled but ready to do her job. She’d been called in from the children’s hospital down the street. She got straight to the point.

“It’s her heart. It’s a big deal. And it’s going to mean surgery.”

Without any time to process the news, a medical team rolled a gurney into our room, carrying our tiny baby, who lay tubed and padded and ready to be transported to the hospital down the road. One of the ambulance drivers took a polaroid picture of her, handed it to me, and told me to say goodbye. I had barely said hello, how was it time to say goodbye?

For two-hundred and eighty days, my daughter and I had shared every heartbeat, every breath and hiccup, even the pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food I’d eaten last night, before I went into labor. When they disappeared with her around the corner, I was left holding a photograph.

It’s been six hours since the ambulance left and we’re still waiting for our doctor to arrive and sign for my release. My uterus aches and my breasts fill with milk and I eat Lucky Charms, while the Child-me and the Mother-me grapple with the truth of what is happening.

The door handle turns and this time its our obstetrician. He wasn’t on call for the delivery, so he doesn’t know the circumstances. “It looks like you had a good delivery.”

I could lose it completely right now but instead I explain the situation in short, forceful sentences and the doctor begins to mirror our own urgency. “I’ll take care of the paperwork immediately.” 

Minutes later we are finally on our way to be reunited with our daughter.

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(Present Day)

We would wait to be with our daughter many more times. Three days later we waited through her open-heart surgery. Eighteen months later we waited through another open-heart surgery and then other surgeries and procedures sprinkled throughout her life. Oddly enough, there always seemed to be a bowl of Lucky Charms. It’s been twenty years since the morning of that first bowl of cereal, but the texture and smell of Lucky Charms will always remind me of the taste of separation, the taste of waiting.

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And now we wait again.

Anyone have some Lucky Charms they want to share?

What about you? Is there a time of waiting that stands out for you? Is there a food that brings up a certain memory? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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From the Sketchbook Archives

A few sketches of my daughter that I’ve done over the years.

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Words to Remember

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."

- Elizabeth Stone, teacher and author

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Blessings from the Guest Nest,

-Aimee