Motherhood’s Toughest Test

The Boston Herald

You wonder how much people can stand. How they get up and go on under the worst of circumstances. How faith isn't enough sometimes and hope is fickle and how sorrow wears you down. I see her walking the hall, holding her baby. She passes the room where my family waits with my daughter's baby for more tests and more doctors with their maybes and possibilities. 

I see her going in circles, not just on the physical loop that brings her past the nurses' station and then our door. I see her going around and around, over and over, all day, every day. You look at her, head down, shoulders bent, a young woman,  but not anymore, her baby held tight against her chest, and it seems as if she is going nowhere. As if the circle has no end.

This is what it's like when you have a very sick child. One problem is solved and another is created. One specialist says goodbye and another is waiting at the door.

Her baby is 11 weeks old and doctors saved his life. He has brown hair and beautiful brown eyes that don't show a hint of pain or sorrow or despair. He is in his mother's arms. He is content.

But her eyes are tired and sad and scared because her whole world is "This could happen" and "You have to watch out for that" and "Things look good for now, but let's take it one day at a time." Her world is white coats and disinfected floors and too much coffee and cafeteria food and bells dinging and phones ringing and pages going off and no sleep and no comfort.  

And the constant fear that at any minute it could all get worse.

Sometimes her husband takes the night shift. Sometimes he brings in their 3-year-old son for a visit. But mostly she's alone holding her baby, day and night, walking the floor, walking in circles.

She was supposed to have gone home Monday. Brought her baby outside for the first time. Buckled him in his car seat. Let him feel the fresh air. But at the last minute there was a change in medicine, one more "Let's try this" so there she was again, looking lost although she knows the route well. 

I don't know her name. But we've talked and I know that she lost her mother not too long ago and that her aunts are trying to fill in the space. But the space is a hole in her heart that no one can fill. And I know this because my aunt tried the same trick with me.

I also know that 11 weeks ago, this young woman was certain that she couldn't miss her mother any more than she was missing her because when you're having a baby you ache for your mother. You want to share things with her. But then you have a baby and you don't just miss her anymore. You need her. You need her to mother you. 

I know in the end this woman will be OK. She has to be. You don't get a choice sometimes. So you learn to deal.

She'll learn how to give her son the shots he needs and she'll learn when to rush to the emergency room and when to see if the problem resolves itself. And she'll learn that she is stronger than she thinks.

They are all strong, though they don't feel it, all these mothers and fathers who sit beside their sick children, who carry them around in their arms, who push them in wheelchairs bedecked with balloons. Who keep right on going, walking in circles, while longing for a way out.