I want us to be better

Seven years ago, my four-year-old son went into sudden kidney failure. And by sudden, I mean sudden, following what seemed like a typical end-of-summer cold. Matt took Isaac to the doctor while I prepared to start another school year. His doctor thought it could be a virus, but he took one look at our son and ordered a urine catch and blood work. When the tests came back a few hours later, the doctor called and said the safest place for our son to be was the hospital. Immediately. So we found ourselves tossing toothbrushes, pajamas, and Isaac's stuffed beagle into a backpack and the soup that hadn't finished cooking into the sink. My brother and sister-in-law came over to stay with Suzannah and we drove to Mary Bridge Children's Hospital, where I spent the first few days of the new school year.

Instead of meeting my students, I met with a pediatric nephrologist. I held my sobbing son through an EKG, many blood draws, an IV, a failed attempt to get him to drink a huge cup of sludgy medicine to lower his potassium levels, and albuterol treatments. 

We spent that first night in the Emergency Room, waiting for a kidney ultrasound. Isaac fell asleep on the padded exam table behind a privacy curtain and we wrapped him in Matt's sweatshirt to keep him warm. I watched the clock discard the minutes, my eyes burning. By the time a bed was ready, it was five o'clock in the morning, and I was covered in my son's dried tears and the remnants of the medicine he had thrown up all over me. We tucked him in with his stuffed beagle, and Matt and I curled into each other on a small pull-out couch where we dozed for an hour or two.

It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, but all things considered, we were so lucky. We took him home a few days later, and several months after that, all his tests came back clear. 

Last week, I took him in for his well-child visit and middle school immunizations (the ones that are required for school, a mandate which people do not seem to be protesting, interestingly enough). I am grateful for every single one of those vaccines, and I am grateful for my son's health. He is a boisterous, active, healthy, hilarious, absolutely wonderful kid and I am grateful for him always, but particularly every September now, when I remember the moments in the hospital when Matt and I were brought face-to-face with everything we stood to lose. 

And the thing is that I never believed we would lose him, because such a loss is unsurvivable. Right? 

But here's the other memory that stays with me: the children we met that week on our floor who would not be sent home with their families after a few randomly frightening days. 

I still almost can't breathe typing this. 

I remember, for instance, sitting in one of the game rooms with my son and a child in a purple bathrobe, completely bald, smaller than my son, dragging an IV pole over to a table with coloring books and games. I still think about that child all the time. Where are they now? Are they okay? Are they also getting ready to go back to school? Fourth grade, maybe? Fifth? Sixth, like my son?

When I think about hospitals filling up with COVID patients these days, I think of that child. 

When folks who showed nothing but love and support for my son seven years ago post on social media now that we need to open up, get back to normal, and live -- I think of that child. I think of that child and I think of my son when those folks post, "If you're scared, you should stay home!" I am honestly too afraid to ask these people if they believe that our "right" to not feel uncomfortable in a mask is more important than a vulnerable child's right to an education. Or to a place in our society. Just stay home. Don't inconvenience us with your "underlying condition." Don't ask us to value your life as a necessary part of our community. Don't ask us to care about a person we don't know.

You cared about my son then. What if things had turned out differently? Would you say the same things?

We're starting another school year, together again. We need it so much, and I will do anything to return safely in person. I will wear the mask, even though I don't love teaching through a mask. Teaching through a mask beats teaching through a screen, and all of that beats spreading a virus to folks who cannot be vaccinated yet. To vulnerable folks. We are going to have to take some risks, yes. But we also have the tools to protect each other, and some of us just don't want to use them.

I think of my son and all the what-ifs. I think of that child in the purple bathrobe. I think of the parents holding their children in a hospital room, or waiting for one.

Today I looked at the pictures of my son in the emergency room, small and swollen and wrapped up in my husband's gray sweatshirt, and I cried and cried. I looked at the picture of my son curled up with his stuffed beagle in his hospital bed. I thought about how lucky we are, and how it could have been otherwise. I thought about the folks who love him, and about all the folks who don't know him, and about all the other children currently tucked into hospital beds, or waiting for them. I thought about how in a week ago in Dallas County, Texas, Judge Clay Jenkins said, "If your child's in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect...and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have Covid and need an ICU bed, we don't have one. Your child will wait for another child to die."

Don't fucking talk to me about percentages, because those are children. You are talking about someone's child. 

I thought about how terrifying it was to rush my son to the hospital seven years ago. I cannot fathom how terrifying it would be now.

Percentages don't mean a lot when you're a terrified mother holding your baby in a hospital. 

I think of the parents of that child with the purple bathrobe.

I'm so thankful -- so far beyond thankful -- that my state now requires vaccines for school staff and masks for everyone, regardless of vaccination status. Anything less is failing our kids. Period. But I see protests even in my city, because some people believe that individual comfort matters more than someone's life. And I see what's happening in other parts of the country. This is why my anger is spreading like a can of spilled red paint. This is why I cannot fully embrace the back-to-school joy I've missed so desperately. 

My son still sleeps with that stuffed beagle. I think mothers understand this: sometimes I tiptoe into his room after he's asleep, even now, even as I'm preparing to send him to middle school. I still need to see the steady rise and fall of his chest, to ground myself in the gift of his presence, to offer a desperate prayer of thanks that we still get to have him, and beg the universe to show mercy to our babies when the adults around them turn away. 

I want the world to be better. I want us to be better.