cat named pig

[Ed: I wrote this post Thursday morning; posting was delayed while I tried to look up the quote from Catherine Newman’s book Waiting for Birdy. Also while I changed several of the grossest diapers in human history. The doctor’s appointment I discuss here went fine, at least in the most important sense: she’s totally healthy. Yet the appointment was also a total train wreck, in the social-interaction-with-two-children-out-in-public sense. Post on that mess coming tomorrow. I remain both grateful and optimistic.] ….. 

I just got done filling out a stack of questionnaires longer and more detailed than my college applications, in preparation for Siena’s four-year physical this afternoon. There is nothing that makes me appreciate our amazing good fortune more than answering question after question about my child’s health and abilities. Whole forms (TB risk, lead poisoning) were dispatched with in mere seconds (“No, no, no, nope – none of these symptoms or issues – done.”). Other forms have sections that appear to be screening for autism or ADHD (questions about eye contact, repetitive behaviors, activity levels) and we breeze right through those, too, without a single check in the “This Is A Concern” column. The majority of my answers for everything from communication to gross motor skills are solidly in the “Fantastic! She’s Great At That, Too!” column. (I can barely type this without feeling like I’m bragging, like I’m going to be struck by a lightning bolt from the gods for my hubris, Greek-myth-style. Give me a minute, Greek gods; I’m nothing but grateful. I’m just trying to express it in my usual long-winded way. Please don’t strike me down.)

Anyway, these appointments and the many things they screen for always serve to remind me of how much could go wrong, of how much hasn’t gone wrong, yet, for us, and of how lucky that makes us. We didn’t even know if we’d be able to have kids, and now we have two of them. And we get to check “No” on the scariest parts of their health forms.

When Siena was about a month old, she was diagnosed with both RSV and a heart murmur. As infant diseases go, RSV is a scary one, especially for preemies. We were lucky she had been born full-term, with lungs that were fully developed. The heart murmur, while perhaps less of a threat, also terrified me. “She has a hole in her heart,” I would repeat the doctor’s phrase to myself, “That can’t be good.” I worried about the worst that could happen, too awful to put in words, and I worried about better-case scenarios like a lifetime of turning blue when she ran. Of not being able to play sports. (If you know Matt’s family, you know what a tragedy that would be.)

We had already won the life lottery, I kept thinking. We had already conceived, and carried to term, and given birth to a beautiful baby girl. Already more good luck than some people experience in a lifetime. When the heart specialist told us her VSD (ventricular septum defect, the hole in her heart) was likely to close on its own sometime in the next eight months, I could hardly even wish for that much continued good luck. When her nine-month recheck revealed that it had closed, I was amazed. It was like being given a free car after winning the lottery. Only better.

At this point in our lives, Matt and I don’t attend any sort of religious services or use a religious framework to process life’s ups and downs. We have our beliefs, but we haven’t adopted a formal means of expressing them. Catherine Newman, one of my favorite writers about parenthood, describes her secular version of prayer in an image I often think of, ever since I read it when Siena was a baby:

If I prayed, I would pray now, of course. Instead, I send my hope up into the stars, like an invisible paper airplane. Like a carrier pigeon with a note tied to its leg. And the note just says, “Please.” And, “Thank you.”

I think of this, a paper airplane or carrier pigeon with messages of hope and gratitude, every time we head into a doctor’s appointment. “Please,” let nothing turn up that shouldn’t be there. And, “Thank you,” for each illness they’ve recovered from, for each box I didn’t have to check in the “Concern” column. I send imaginary carrier pigeons into the heavens as I drift off to sleep each night. “Please,” another day as good as today. “Thank you,” for letting us get this far in our journey as a family. “Please,” the patience to appreciate our good luck in the midst of all the chaos. “Thank you,” for the healthy family that creates such chaos.

Maybe one day I’ll stop worrying so much. But not if it means I stop appreciating so deeply.