last week zoe asked me a question that i've asked myself a million times. a question i knew one day she'd ask. a question that i hoped she'd ask out loud and not just keep to herself. but a question i dreaded.
"mommy, what happened? why do i have these problems? how did i get nonverbal learning disorder? and scoliosis?"
it's a question that has haunted me since the beginning. i have walked through the days of my pregnancy, my delivery, her infancy, i have walked back to my life then- over and over. those months of medical school rotations. those months when it was hard to sustain one. was it what i ate or didn't eat or or drank or didn't drink enough of? was it my lack of sleep and the OR gases of my surgery rotation when her tiny pin sized heart started to beat? or was it the trauma of what i saw in the middle of those nights- the trauma of what one person can do to another- the trauma of the world that i was bringing her into. was it the night that the boy came into trauma bay 2 with his brains foaming out of his skull, and his eyes bulging from the pressure from the bullet that was delivered to his 16 year old head by his dad- execution style. did my uterine arteries clamp down when i tried futilely to stuff his brains back in through his nose before his mother came in, while i stuffed my tears back? did my internal effort to protect you cut off the oxygen to your developing right hemisphere? or was it the night the 2 year old came in DOA, his parents claiming he'd fallen off the top of their car- at 11 at night? did i throw up that night because of morning sickness or the sickness of the world? was it betrayal? did i not have enough life to sustain both of us those months?
perhaps it was later. was it your forced premature delivery? the medicalization of your birth. did your head get banged when they upended you voodoo style from your breech position? when that scalp electrode was screwed into your little furry head to monitor your heart beat better during labor- did your little body forever become extra sensitive- a reaction to an unexpected pain. or was it just that your process was interrupted 5 weeks early- forced to come into the world before your time. is that why you take your time now? is that why time is hard for you to grasp? or was it that it took you 5 weeks to gain your birth weight back? was it my naivete that kept refusing to add the bottle- wanting you to have your mothers milk alone? was the milk sour- soured by the trauma that you see in late night ERs, the trauma self inflicted- other inflicted- just plain illness inflicted. soured the night we opened up the back of a man with diabetes and let his muscle reduced to pulp pour out into bags, eaten by flesh eating bacteria as we tried to evacuate what we could?
or was it later still? was it years 2-4 when you were taken care of by others 10 hours a day? was that a time when you needed to be one on one and got one on eight instead? was that a time when you didn't need overwhelm and over stimulation to develop? was that a time when you needed a mom who wasn't gone every 4th night and all day in between?
" i don't know honey. i've asked myself that many times."
"so, what do you think? does anyone else in the family have it?"
"nope. it is what it is. believe it or not, you are perfect, just the way you are. this is exactly who God wants you to be. you couldn't do what God has planned for you if you were any different. this is who you are meant to be and i'm so glad you are you- just as you are."
"really?" smile.
"really." smile.
my mom tells me there is something called 'false guilt'. we push replay on our lives, trying to assign blame to ourselves, assuming responsibility for things that happen, for things that are accidents, things that are random. she says false guilt can eat you alive if you let it. it does no good. it only does harm. i try to remember that. i try to remember that it is what it is. it is exactly how it was supposed to be. we are all shaped by all sorts of things. we are all imperfectly perfect.
she is a beautifully orchestrated soul.
