I want an easy button, like in the commercial. Where’s my easy button?
I feel like I do pretty well. Sometimes I get down, but mostly I am cheerful, and grateful, and I have a good sense of humor. We are a happy band of mutants, us Hills. We are doing alright.
Friday some doctors told me my son, who has a bleeding disorder, and has to be oh so careful, and can’t skateboard, and can’t ice skate, and can’t wrestle with his friends, now he has a condition that makes it dangerous for him to be exposed to cold temperatures. He could quit breathing. He needs an eppy pen with him. He can’t go swimming in cold water.
Great.
When I say he can’t do these things, like skateboarding, I guess he could, but is it worth it, you know? Falling once means the hospital and meds and pain. So he reads instead.
Which is okay. Reading is good. A person wants options, though. Opportunities others take for granted.
Sage always had to wear this big helmet to protect his head, and he hated it. This year we let him quit wearing it, because he is older, and calmer. He has enjoyed the normalcy of running on the playground with his friends.
Last night, after a day of doctors telling us yet more ways he could die from normal activities, speaking casually as if they were talking about the weather, my son, my sweet son came in my room and snuggled close, like he did when he was little, and I asked him how he felt.
“It’s the revenge of the helmet,” he sighs.
I laid there with my son and told God silently that I really didn’t appreciate this. I wish I got some sort of credit for being cheerful during all the crap we put up with and that I could get a break, just once.
And I look around the room, and there is my husband who loves us and never, ever complains, and we are safe and warm and fed and loved and those are breaks, I forget but they are, and I’m sorry, God. And we have something in common, right? We both love those who must walk through pain, and stand back and let them deal, and hope they remember we love them. Only you see the big picture, what’s up around the bend, and what matters, and I am railing and pouting again.
I wonder if God wants to fix it, but knows better, like when Jude is struggling to put his socks on. Real love watches and waits, and loves and believes. It makes me feel better to help, but it doesn’t do Jude much good.
So I guess we’ll hang in there a little longer, and watch and wait and love and believe, and try to recognize those breaks when they come along, and I know in my heart there are more than we ever knew, blessings as far as the eye can see. Forget the easy button, the mutant family is doing just fine. We might just be okay after all.
