When my name’s called from the hallway by the nurse in green scrubs, I forget to mark my page, just scuttle my books into bag and step high over the legs still waiting, because I know she’ll be waiting, all eyes.
My sandals clack down the hallway, Mama clucking for a lost chick. She's ten without tonsils, and I'm aging old in hospital waiting rooms.
The door into post-operative swings soundlessly and I find her amidst the lines and tubes, her long and angled under cotton. Her eyes shine. I’m still holding bags and books and purse when my lips find her forehead, child of our one flesh, and I press her with love, relieved and long.
A nurse pulls the curtain. I let bags and books slide off into rocking chair. I stay close, pulling close, but the bed’s side rail digs into my ribs, a fence for a Mother Hen to scratch around. And so I reach, fingers combing long strands off cheeks flushed, and lean hard to whisper into ear found, “So good to be with you, Hope.” Her cheeks glow, embers stoked and I try to cool them with bits of me, fingertips smothering flames.
“You okay, Hope?” She nods, certain. I know the determined set of that chin, know how those eyes swell to the outer rim with cagey fear, know how that brave heart marshalls on anyways, always on. She is aunt, father, father’s mother and she is child.
“Sure, Hope?” How do I tell her it’s okay to be weak? I lay a palm cooled on stainless steel rail over on her far cheek, flesh afire.
And when I’m leaning over her, she feels covered, and just for me, just for a moment, she exposes a sliver of heart always valiant. “I missed you.” Her eyes well with first raspy words and a tear slips down. I catch her sadness falling and cup her face and nod all of me into all of her. “I missed you too…” She is still child, here in my hands.
“After they called you for surgery, and you walked out….” She had stood so tall, walked so serene… “I had to look up to the ceiling to hold onto tears.”
She smiles faintly, sorely, squeezes my hand.... then drowses off. I lace my fingers through her hair, keep cooling her cheeks, and beds roll past us and vitals are recorded and IV poles wheel in and she sleeps and the screen behind her bed strips it all back and her naked heart talks.
As long as we tear off a bit of oxygen, stuff our lungs with heaven’s veil, we’ll scale and we'll fall. It’s how we’re shaped to exist. Heartprint on the screen gives away our DNA, the nature of the journey as souls encased in flesh: we are made to climb mountains, valiant. And to travel valleys, sadness slipping. Every flex of arteries pushes us on, always on: Mountain… valley… mountain. This too shall pass, always.
Bleep… bleep.
Her eyelashes flutter and she stirs and I rub the small of her back. She is brave heart and she is weak and together we will rise and fall.
And rise again.
But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. ~Deuteronomy 11:11
Lord God, cause me to embrace the terrain of a life: mountain... valley... mountain. We'll be weak and we'll be brave and Your heart will lead us Home.
The door into post-operative swings soundlessly and I find her amidst the lines and tubes, her long and angled under cotton. Her eyes shine. I’m still holding bags and books and purse when my lips find her forehead, child of our one flesh, and I press her with love, relieved and long.
A nurse pulls the curtain. I let bags and books slide off into rocking chair. I stay close, pulling close, but the bed’s side rail digs into my ribs, a fence for a Mother Hen to scratch around. And so I reach, fingers combing long strands off cheeks flushed, and lean hard to whisper into ear found, “So good to be with you, Hope.” Her cheeks glow, embers stoked and I try to cool them with bits of me, fingertips smothering flames.
“You okay, Hope?” She nods, certain. I know the determined set of that chin, know how those eyes swell to the outer rim with cagey fear, know how that brave heart marshalls on anyways, always on. She is aunt, father, father’s mother and she is child.
“Sure, Hope?” How do I tell her it’s okay to be weak? I lay a palm cooled on stainless steel rail over on her far cheek, flesh afire.
And when I’m leaning over her, she feels covered, and just for me, just for a moment, she exposes a sliver of heart always valiant. “I missed you.” Her eyes well with first raspy words and a tear slips down. I catch her sadness falling and cup her face and nod all of me into all of her. “I missed you too…” She is still child, here in my hands.
“After they called you for surgery, and you walked out….” She had stood so tall, walked so serene… “I had to look up to the ceiling to hold onto tears.”
She smiles faintly, sorely, squeezes my hand.... then drowses off. I lace my fingers through her hair, keep cooling her cheeks, and beds roll past us and vitals are recorded and IV poles wheel in and she sleeps and the screen behind her bed strips it all back and her naked heart talks.
Mountain…. valley… mountain… valley… bleep….bleep… bleep… Neon green line pulses out pixels of existence across the monitor. This is the way she always is, like this, pounding, pounding. Under luminous epidermis, under chest wall cavity, in a knot of sinews and veins, blood roping around and through, who she is, who I am, who we all are, drums. I watch her staccato. Mountains drop sheer. Depths string to heights. Valleys bridge the mountains. Bleep… bleep.
As long as we tear off a bit of oxygen, stuff our lungs with heaven’s veil, we’ll scale and we'll fall. It’s how we’re shaped to exist. Heartprint on the screen gives away our DNA, the nature of the journey as souls encased in flesh: we are made to climb mountains, valiant. And to travel valleys, sadness slipping. Every flex of arteries pushes us on, always on: Mountain… valley… mountain. This too shall pass, always.
Bleep… bleep.
Her eyelashes flutter and she stirs and I rub the small of her back. She is brave heart and she is weak and together we will rise and fall.
And rise again.
But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. ~Deuteronomy 11:11
Lord God, cause me to embrace the terrain of a life: mountain... valley... mountain. We'll be weak and we'll be brave and Your heart will lead us Home.
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