Fun in the sun came at a cost and unsurprisingly, a cold of some kind seems to have followed us home to Colorado.  It was Spring Break in California and a solid number of the young population there seemed to be hacking everywhere we went.  So when our daughter started a small cough on the day we were traveling home, my husband and I looked at each other knowingly.  It isn’t anything serious.  She incidentally had a check up scheduled with her regular pediatrician for a few days later, having just turned four.  So while we were in the office, I mentioned the cold.  No one was concerned.  And it has played out as many common illnesses before it.  Runny nose, ugly cough.  But otherwise a happy kid.

The worst the sickness became was a couple of nights ago when she just could not stop coughing.  She had been asleep for about an hour when it kicked up terribly.  She could not settle in for longer than five or ten minutes before another coughing fit would start up again.  I lay in her room beside her, rubbing her back and doing my best to stay still and quiet as I hoped she would drift off in to a more peaceful sleep.  I wasn’t frustrated, but I was definitely tired.  On and on it went, as I came in and out of alertness and thought of when I could call it a night.

It was about two in the morning as I considered how little sleep I was going to get by the time the sun would come up.  I was looking down at the clock and let the still moment wash over me.  Just my child and I, alone in her room.  As I did, I had the slow melting feeling of self awareness as words I had spoken in the past came back to me.  A lament I had often sung during Beckett’s lifetime.  That upon her coming home after birth, I got to be Moira’s “only nurse.”  Aside from the lady we see approximately twice a year at the doctors office and the three day rotation who cared for us before we were both released from the hospital when she was born, no other nurse has ever cared for her.  It took a team to provide for a child like Beckett was.  It took surgeons and neonatologists.  Cardiologists, nurses, and respiratory therapists.  Countless other people and positions just to make sure his heart was beating and his lungs were breathing.  Please don’t misunderstand me.  These people were among the greatest I have ever had the dignity of meeting and I am deeply honored to still call many of them my friends.  But no person knowingly conceives a child with the hope of raising that child in a hospital.  I had told many of them how I remembered being Moira’s parent and how the freedom of that position compared to the one we were in with Beckett was so enviable to me now.  My mind had been broadened by our situation.  I said these things, often, and yet I could a mere four months later stand in my daughters room with her in my arms alone and my thoughts endlessly drifting away from her and to getting back to bed.  Again, I wasn’t upset to be taking care of her.  But I certainly wasn’t being grateful either.

Beckett has taught me about strength and fear and so much about love.  But this late night lesson was in gratitude and to not be quick to forget about that which you so desired when it comes to pass.  We humans have short memories.  Once one need or desire is fulfilled we are often immediately drawn to something just beyond it.  But in the soft blue light of my sweet child’s room, I remembered how special this was.  I never spent a quiet night alone with Beckett.  Each evening was shared with wonderful caretakers, but often much less wonderful moments.  Monitors and beeping on the mildest of days, blood transfusions and emergency surgeries on the worst.  And I would close my eyes and weep and think back to simple days with my first born and the feeling of her effortless childhood.  To care for her, to sweat and ache and doze as her father and I relied on ourselves and the love of our friends and families to carry us through the common yet grandest of beginnings.  Raising a child.

It was not long ago that I slept on a fold down sofa bed in a hospital and the best parts of my days necessitated a bare minimum of two people to transfer my only son in to my arms.  My backside would ache when I rose five or six or seven hours later.  And every time it did, I felt flushed with gratitude.  I had held baby Beckett, and that was incredible.  Because I didn’t always know that I was going to be able to do that.  And of course now, I can never do it again.

How disappointing that I was so quick to forget days not far in my past when I would cry while imagining being lucky enough to again have moments like the ones I have had this week with my eldest.  The opportunity to care for her intuitively and in our own home.  I was reminded, and I am carrying gratitude in my heart presently, almost as a token in my pocket.  With presence of mind, and duty.  If I will bare my sorrow with pride, I most certainly will do the same with my miracles.

A few nights ago I held my daughter in her own bed and cared for her with my own hands.  She was ill and I alone soothed her.  Her needs were met, and they were met without fear and in peace.  Our neighborhood was quiet and my bed lay down the hall to be rested in when she was ready to part with me for the night.  I would rise in the morning and make breakfast for the two of us in our own kitchen as her daddy kissed us goodbye as he left for work.  We would make a plan for our day.  And I could make all of the decisions (with her constant opinion of course).  Without a medical professional present and without needing to sort my way though information most people get an eight year degree to understand.  I’m a mother to a child who I have the opportunity to mold to the best of my ability.  She catches common colds and requires some extra love and attention before she is once again running wildly and freely.  What a gift.  I am alive and living a life filled with simple, complex, and outright wonder.  And the gratitude I should be feeling over all of these things should not be a feeling.  It should be who I am with every fiber of my being.