Bowl

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Johnny has run a fever above 101 every day since last Wednesday (it's Monday afternoon, as I write this).He seems to be suffering no injuries from his fall, but he is lethargic and congested and not his usual cheery, smiling self. We went ahead with his baptism on Sunday, and it was lovely, but my poor boy was sort of hang-dog throughout the whole event and slept all afternoon. When he woke up at 4pm, his fever was back up to 103. At Katryna's urging, I called the pediatrician and the nurse initially said to bring him in Monday. Then five minutes later, she called back and said, "I have a weird feeling about this. Bring him in. Now."

So on Easter Sunday, my wonderful pediatrician found a grade 3 ear infection that hadn't been there on Friday when his ears were last checked. We have him on amoxicillan, but he still spikes a fever every twelve hours or so. I am holding him and telling him that Mama is here, telling him that he will feel better soon.

Nothing else matters when your child is sick. And I think I understand why parenting can be so discomfiting. It's because the love we feel for our kids is so much bigger than we are; it's too much for this container of a human body. The love comes from God, or from some source that is much greater than our mortal selves. The love is unconditional, universal, huge; as big as the sky. Yet I am a small human who needs eight hours of sleep and proper nutrition in order to function. I have limits, while my love is limitless. And I have two kids! So I go around all day feeling like I'm inadequate for each of them. (On good days, I remember that it's not all about me, and that the best gift I ever gave each of them is each other. But on days when I am worried silly about my son's fever, all I can see is how I am not tending to Lila, and on days when I'm focused on Lila and her dazzlingly growing world, all I can see is how I'm not paying enough attention to that sweet baby crawling across the room.)

But let me linger for one moment on that baptism. At our church, we baptize babies with water from the local river. The minister's wife is a potter, and the bowl used is the color of water: blue green, with three feet to hold it off the table. We pass it around during the service, and each of the congregants places his or her hand in the water and blesses it, or asks for a blessing for the baby. I asked my seven-year-old niece, Amelia (who is also my goddaughter) to bring the bowl from pew to pew, which she did with such grace and reverence. At one point, right after I had blessed the water, she spilled a tiny bit, then simply resumed collecting blessings from the bowl. The superstitious part of me jumped a little in my seat, worrying that those specific blessings I'd asked for my son were spilled along with the bit of water. Then I remembered my insight about the divine love being stuck inside a human meat suit. The blessings were not spilled any more than the love will be lost on the days when I am tired and cranky or busy or being a less-than-perfect mother. And I'm not the only one who loves these kids. It's not all up to me, and it never was. So I nuzzled my nose into the necks of my two beautiful children and took it all in.