January 8, 2018
11:19 p.m.

Haven't slept in awhile, but I'm not presently suffering a fever, so I have high hopes.

At some point the crazy little dog here is going to have to eat the food she leaves behind when she picks out her favorite morsels. The bag will not last forever. I can't seem to trick her. She kind of cracks me up. She's doggedly determined to wait me out, leaving uneaten portions until I give in and get her more food. I know that, like a picky kid, if she gets hungry enough, she'll eat it. But I'm no better at the "You'll sit there til you clean your plate" scenario with her than I ever was with my kids. It always seemed mean to me to make someone eat something they didn't like.

Oh well, bagging the "leftovers" and when that's all that's left, she'll just have to deal with them until I can be persuaded to buy a new bag. Ha ha.

I can only afford to spoil the babies up to a point!
_________________________________________________________________________________

Fear, Part Six

I have to tackle this, because sooner or later you have to admit the biggest and worst, right?

Once upon a time I was a young married woman with small children. It was Memorial weekend in 1984. I was 24-years-old and very pregnant. I had just put my 20-month-old daughter on the front porch step and turned to lock the gate. When I turned back, my baby was toppling over, her eyes rolled back in her head.

I snatched her up and ran into the house with her, where I nearly lost my head in panic. Somehow I collected myself enough to remember CPR training and went to work on her. Between breaths, I was on the phone to an ambulance and then to my parents to get help ASAP.

Forever passed a few hundred times, while I carefully palpated her tiny chest and puffed air into her nose and mouth and waited, and prayed.

Help came. First parents, then the professionals. It was my father who managed to get that first breath response, and then the EMTs were there to take over.

I called my husband's boss's wife, and she went to the work site and sent him home. She later told me that he said whatever was happening, I could handle it. I could handle anything, he told her. I was good with that stuff.

In retrospect, it was actually a vote of confidence; he really did think I was good with "that stuff", and that I was capable of handling emergencies. He probably doesn't know to this day how close that woman came to knocking his head clean off. And he was quite shocked when he arrived home and found an ambulance, police cars and and a fire truck in front of the house.

It turns out that I am pretty good with emergencies. I've handled more than a couple over the years since then. But none have ever been so urgent, so terrifying, so paralyzingly frightful as that one.

She will be 36 this year. She has three children of her own now.

Thank God.

There was never a really satisfying explanation of what happened that day. She just...died. She did. She had no heart beat, no respiration. Her eyes had glassed over.

I can never forget.

She was almost lost. It was so close.

And that's the worst of my fears, that fear of losing an innocent child. That is the nightmare that repeats itself over and over, the one I wake from drenched in sweat, shaking uncontrollably, in tears.

The dream isn't always the same; it doesn't necessarily replay the events of that horrible time. Sometimes it is one of my other children, or one of the grandchildren. Sometimes it's a random unknown child. The details differ greatly.

Except that a child is lost.

I'm not alone; parents the world over fear losing a child. Some live in a state of constant terror, I'm sure. I cannot imagine the days and nights of parents with a terminally ill child. I cannot imagine the constant vigilence of parents raising their children in war-torn regions of the world. I cannot imagine the sorrow of the parent who watches as their child wastes away from hunger and thirst.

What a horror.

How blessed am I? My child is alive. All my children are alive.

My children eat every day, have a place to live, have clothes upon their backs.

Yet I fear their loss. I, who am blessed, still have that fear. When I know they are out and about and I hear sirens, I call to make sure those sirens are not for them. When they leave my home, I sometimes feeling a sinking in the pit of my stomach, knowing that it's all too possible that it might be the last time I see them.

Unreasonable? Maybe. But...

The world is not a friendly place.

I fear.

About nine months ago a driver lost control of his vehicle, drove right through the walls of a home and into a living room where a little girl who had just celebrated her first birthday was playing on the floor at her grandmother's house.

They have both crossed over.

No, the world is not friendly, not when you can be killed by a car in your own living room.

I fear.

I doesn't eat up my days, but it can certainly mess up my nights at times. It isn't any wonder I let the television play so I won't be disturbed by my own thoughts.

I'm not always the happy go lucky soul people often think I am.

I fear.
_________________________________________________________________________________

January 9, 2018
12:48 a.m.

Cheerful, huh? I have got to start watching more comedies.

I think the next thing I will tackle is hope. That's a lot more pleasant than fear, don't you think?

And...

Good night.