Juxtapose

One year ago today we spent labor day together as a family. It was good to have a break from the craziness of kids going to school and my husband at work and just try to catch up. I had the camera out and was posing Bridget with her new blanket. I used the outfit that her older sister had worn home from the hospital because the cream satiny collar matched the cream satiny blanket. Bridget didn't seem very happy about the photo session, but she didn't complain too much either.

Later in the day I put her in the new little dress I'd bought her. I'd seen it several times but always felt it was overpriced and admired it without buying it. Then I noticed that it had been marked down half off, so I decided it was time to stop simply admiring it. The only size left was a preemie size, and I wasn't sure it was a good idea to buy it when I thought Bridget was finally getting big enough to wear the newborn sizes. But she was also still small enough to wear it, and I bought it anyway.

It was white with bright colored embroidery. I had to ask my husband if he thought it was too funky, and when he said it was fine I was excited to get it home and try it on Bridget.



Bridget was so exhausted. I looked at her in her bed and I remember thinking, "she looks like she should be in a casket." I was taking her picture and thinking such a horrible thing, and I remembered when Dominic had looked so sick and I'd pulled out the camera then, too. As if somewhere inside I knew I wouldn't have very many more chances to capture these images, while hopeful that I was just being dramatic about how sick they really looked.

One year later I look at Sarai. I take her picture, and I have to be hopeful that there will be plenty more chances to capture these images. But I pull out the camera anyway. Just like Bridget and Dominic, she seems so completely sick, and then seems so completely normal. When they're normal you try to believe that they were just a little extra tired for this reason or the other. But now with Sarai it's just so hard to pass off that way.

We had her in the hospital and hoped for answers. We really didn't get any. They called it encephalopathy, but no one could tell us what was causing it, how to fix it, or how serious it could be.



And then when we are about to give up hope, she comes out of it. Hiccups and sneezes is what I first realized I had taken for granted beyond the obvious bright eyes and interactive smiles. Just like a normal baby. My husband had once said maybe we named her wrong. Maybe we were supposed to name her Norma L. NormaL. Now he says he regrets saying that because so often I am asking where Norma is. But when we thought that maybe we wouldn't see her again, Sarai perked up.



And when a year ago I worried and hoped that I was just being paranoid and exaggerating what I saw in Bridget, I never could have imagined that today I would sit and hope that I am just being paranoid and exaggerating what I see in Sarai.



At least my husband made me laugh, though. The marks on her forehead from 48 hours hooked up to the EEG being prominent, he said, "...and this is where we had her horns removed..." I try to find something light about the heaviness that weighs on me, and I was so grateful for his offering. But I wish that I could keep my grasp on those hopeful, lighter moments. Because they seem so fleeting. When I start to think that maybe I'm just exaggerating it, maybe I'm just seeing things because "it's that time of year again", then the heaviness weighs down again.