Amy was hospitalized at twenty-five weeks and one day in her second pregnancy. I was out of my league on the parenting front without a partner. My hope lay in two things: I serve an awesome, big, and powerful God and the pregnancy had already surpassed the necessary point for a baby to possibly live outside the womb: 24 1/2 weeks. Amy could give birth and God could perform miracles, with or without the doctors’ help. The goal was to deliver after thirty weeks. Alas, she only carried the baby to twenty-seven weeks and two days.
In order to survive as a quasi-single dad, adhered to a crushing schedule. I woke at 4:30 each morning; made and packed two lunches and dinner; and then headed for the shower. I woke my son at 5:30 for his bath. We ate breakfast and were out the door by 6:15. I dropped Micah off with a friend or family member for the day, complete with a diaper bag ready for Armageddon, and had to arrive at school for morning staff meetings by 7:15. After school, I picked him up and we went – along with the dinner I’d stashed in the staff lounge – to the hospital to see Mommy. Traffic prevented us from arriving before 5:30 p.m. We’d eat dinner while Micah babbled about the fun things he’d done that day with Grammy, Lisee, Miss Ali, or whichever family friend he’d been stashed with for the day. At 7:15 each night, we would hug Amy and head home. By 8:30 my son was fast asleep and I still had dishes, laundry, and grading to complete. By 11:00, I had usually passed out asleep on the table or in the recliner where I’d been grading papers, usually having just consumed three or four scoops of Rocky Road for comfort. Wash, rinse, repeat four days a week. Fridays we didn’t go to the hospital because I was utterly exhausted. To make it up to Micah, we spent four and six hours at the hospital on Saturdays and Sundays respectively. The rest of the weekend was spent going to church, mopping and vacuuming the floors, and more grading. Grocery shopping happened when I could squeeze it into the schedule. The local Safeway had just been remodeled, and, for a blessed week, half-gallon bricks of ice cream were only one dollar, limit two per customer. I gave my little giant (who was eye to eye with the check counter) two dollars and sent him down the line next to mine each night on the way home from the hospital for a week. I consumed 9 1/2 gallons of ice cream myself while Amy was in the hospital.
One week into the regimen, I realized I could not keep up with an energetic 3 1/2 year-old boy who loved life and lived it hard all while juggling a home, a job, and a wife in the hospital; I just couldn’t. I begged God for a miracle without specifics since I didn’t really know what I needed. He answered my plea by providing prayer warriors and working hands – many unseen to me at the time, and a few very visible – to help me cope. My first Thursday night without Amy happened to be “Back to School Night”. I was mobbed by parents who wanted to bring meals, mow my yard, or clean my house. Amongst the fray of bills piling up and a tight checkbook, we were given fuel cards by two different families in order to keep our family physically together as much as possible. Amy took all the grading from me she could possibly take and I rearranged my lesson plans to avoid long essays until later in the year. Daily I woke feeling an encouraging hand pushing me through my day; I thanked God for the prayer warriors I knew and the ones I didn’t. And on the days when I felt I would break completely, God showed up in an encouraging note, delivered groceries from an anonymous source, or some other creative way.
After a week, I bought paper plates and plastic silverware and stopped folding clothes out of necessity. These two decisions bought me another hour of Z’s a night. I still had a few dishes to wash – pots and pans and the like; and I still completed one to two loads of laundry a day. I just upended the basket onto the couch. It became Micah and my dresser/closet for the month. Amy named the pile “Mt. Washington” when she arrived home to witness the carnage of her once beautiful, neat, organized home.
On Friday nights Micah and I ate dinner on TV trays while watching a movie. We sat together on the couch but I usually fell asleep within fifteen minutes, sometimes before I’d even eaten my dinner. Micah would always wake me up at his favorite parts: “Daddy, ya hafta watch! Dis is da bess part.” By that time, we’d amassed a cache of videos complete with singing vegetables, a skidoo-ing blue puppy, and singing animals who danced with princesses “Once upon a dream”. With such a variety, what did Micah always choose to watch?!? Disney’s Cinderella or
Roger’s and Hammerstein’s…Cinderella starring Brandi, Whoopie, and Whitney! Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we watched those movies – or at least they were on while we played on the floor, unloaded and/or reloaded the dishwasher, and performed a sundry of other tasks. By the end of that month, my dreams were replete with mice singing while they helped me clean the house
(“Cinderelly, Cinderelly…”). Sometimes my students, family, and friends joined into the nocturnal foray, hounding me of many different tasks I couldn’t complete in the day, or sometimes I found myself arguing with a wand toting, diva fairy-godmother trying to convince me that Impossible was Impossible. Today, Micah’s favorite films include both these movies. He even nicknamed his newly minted brother “Gus-Gus” when they first met!
When Amy came home, I began joking with her: “You cannot die until our kids have all graduated from high school! I can’t do this alone.” There was a bit of truth veiled in that joke. I barely made it through that month and I didn’t want to become the “barely made it” dad my children would weep to their therapists about during their 30’s. Silently, I lived with the fear of losing my wife while my kids were still kids. It became an overwhelming terror multiplying inside of me. When Amy was diagnosed with kidney failure, I choked on that joke once, never again. In that moment I realized I would most likely become a single parent soon, and I wasn’t the daddy I wanted to be.
…to be continued in pt. 3…
I stood stone still staring at that picture for an unknown length of time. My collar was wet from the tears when Amy found me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even speak. God gave her a revelation of her own. I had never even imagined Jesus as a toddler, let alone a nearly red-headed toddler with curls. The toddler in the picture looked almost like my youngest; it was overwhelming. Amy pointed out the shadow behind the toddler; that was the moment when God brought it all to a point. The concert. The desire to be a daddy. The three moments, one with each of my three boys. I was wrestling with it all while looking at one of my now heroes – Joseph of Nazareth – as he lived life with his “son” at his feet. We bought the picture and have had it in our home since. Today, the juxtaposition of the toddler Jesus playing with a spike while the cross looms in the foreground has me choking on yet another difficulty related to being a daddy: the world is big and scary and my children will get hurt – it’s my job to be the daddy they need when they are hurt.
Good Grief?!? 