I am writing this on the Notes app on my laptop from the backseat of our Yukon at 11:05 pm

The Yukon, aka the Walter Family Mobile Ambulance.

Today, Archer broke her arm. While there was no gory broken skin or anything, it was displaced and required surgery. Just like that, my plans for the day (and the start of summer) went out the window.

We drove the 3 hours to Spokane, waited almost four hours to go in for surgery, and then waited for Archer to come from under anesthesia and be well enough to drive home.

From getting the text from my mother in law about Archer’s broken arm to starting to write this was only 12 hours, but it feels like lifetimes. What happened this morning?

A few take aways from a day full of misadventures.

Perspective

Something like this very quickly and easily clears your calendar, because this is non-negotiably the Most Important Thing. My team kept things moving on the business front and we were surrounded by the most supportive and generous friends and family back home to take care of the sisters and big bro. From rides to baseball games and sleepovers and pizza deliveries and moral support, we have a pretty phenomenal village and I’m feeling very grateful.

Surrender to Waiting

But WAITING. Ugh. I’m not a fan. Waiting for X-Rays, waiting for somebody to make the call about whether we’re driving or being life flighted, waiting in the ER to be admitted in Spokane, waiting to talk to the surgeon aka the Bone Doctor (whose name pleasantly was also Erika), then waiting to see if they’d have an operating room for us, waiting to get an anesthesiologist for the operation, waiting the 20 minutes to hour and a half that we were told the surgery would take, waiting for Archer to wake up from anesthesia, waiting for a wheelchair to come transport us from the recovery room to the exit. So. Much. Waiting. And surrendering to it all. Allowing the time to cuddle, to be held, to talk a little, to exist in a moment even though it wasn’t pleasant, because all of it was outside of my control except for how I chose to act.

Finally, how tough my daughter is.

Archer told grandma at the ER ‘I just want to go home and take a nap.’

She was crying, but it wasn’t panic scream crying like you’d expect from a break like this. Just whimpers and big crocodile tears. She was cracking jokes in the ER, named the hyper colored stuffed bear they gave her ‘Cracky Bear’ (because she cracked her humerus), and specifically asked to walk out of the Walla Walla ER instead of being carried. The doctor who saw us there said she was the toughest 3 year old he’d ever seen. The ER nurse who admitted us in Spokane told us she had been on the phone with the ER nurse in Walla Walla (to give them a heads up we were on the way) as we were leaving and said in astonishment ‘Oh! She’s just… walking out of here.’

Perhaps in large part thanks to the morphine, Archer got in pretty good spirits and just a bit talkative for a while, before she got hungry. And then she was making Zeb and I laugh with her fixation on food every time the TV in our room cut to a commercial about food.

A LOT of Olive Garden commercials: “MM I LOVE Spagheggi.’ And ‘I also love Mac & cheese.’ Then a commercial for Goldfish crackers came on, which I would argue isn’t in her top hits of snacks. She said, ‘I can eat goldfish. They’re cheesy AND they’re crunchy.’

Children are so remarkable. Watching Archer completely captivate an entire ER and everybody who came in contact with her in pediatric surgery helped ground me in the predominantly GOOD-ness of our world.

And sneaking up out of nowhere was the reminder of the other child we surrendered our time to in this very same hospital nearly 13 years ago… her big sister, Hudson. We weren’t in any of the same areas, really –  except for our glamorous dinner date out of the cafeteria. We waited until after Archer was brought back to surgery to finally eat for the first time all day, not having the heart to eat some vending machine treat in front of a hangry 3year old. But there was a moment when I walked down a hallway eerily similar to the one we walked down when Hudson died. Our friends and family lined the hallway with tears in their eyes and I walked past them with the weight of my beautiful baby heavy on my shoulder to a room where Zeb and I held her and cried and sang and wrestled with the reality of the fact we would not be bringing a baby home that day. We would not be bring this baby home, ever.

And now, we are bringing our last baby home from that same hospital. We’ll walk into a a home full of siblings who adore her and will treat her like a queen for the next 4 weeks, instead of an empty home full of baby things we can’t bear to look at. There will be so many excuses for extra cuddles and slow days thanks to Archer’s immobility, a far cry from holding a mold of my dead daughter’s feet sitting in a rocking chair and weeping.

As Archer was about to be wheeled back for surgery the nurse anesthetist mentioned that they would be giving Archer Versed – a drug that essentially erases the moments heading in for surgery so that they aren’t traumatized by future visits to the hospital. I mentioned off hand that I honestly didn’t realize that was an option and the pediatric nurse whispered under her breath, ‘Oh it’s the good stuff. It’s magic,’ We even joked it wouldn’t hurt to get some for Grandma, who was ‘on duty’ when the whole thing went down and was fairly traumatized herself. 

But I’ll be honest, despite the horrific outcome we had with Hudson, I would never want those moments to be erased from my memory. The magic in life is also (and I’d argue equally) in those moments. The sharpened awareness of life in all its fleetingness, the sheer presence these moments require of us, the surrender, and even the painful waiting.  Life has an astonishing ability to surprise you with synchronicities and catastrophes that can be beautiful or horrific depending on your view. 

My view, as I look to my right at our sleeping daughter who refuses to let go of the broken arm with her good arm, is a beautiful view.