The end of a road

Almost exactly two years ago, Roger and I entered the Department of Orthopedics at UNC Hospitals carrying our sleeping five-day-old son in an infant carrier. We were, as most parents of newborns are, sleep-deprived and exhausted. But beneath the fatigue was anxiety: We were about to start an unknown journey, one that would take baby Dominic from club-footed to, well, normal.

When we walked out that day, we had a clearer picture of the road ahead of us. We also had a son who had suddenly gained two pounds in plaster -- double leg casts, toe to thigh.

Yesterday morning, at Dominic's two-year check up, we followed the red flashes of Dommie's light-up sneakers as he jumped off chairs and ran down hallways. And we rejoiced in the good news: For all practical purposes, Dominic is cured. His feet are completely normal. Our journey is almost done.


If he had to have a birth defect, bilateral club feet was a good choice. It is the most common defect, occurring in 1 in 1000 births. Some children have just a single club foot; in a way, Dommie was lucky to have two because his feet, smaller than a normal child's, match. No need to buy special shoes or different sizes for each foot. He can wear his light-up sneakers all he wants.

I could tell stories -- horror stories, you might call them, except that his deformity was minor compared to those suffered by millions of children around the world. To recount how his tiny toes once got bent and mangled in a cast, or how his casts, and then his brace, prevented him from ever developing a regular sleep routine, or how much it hurts to get kicked in the mouth with the orthopedic brace he wears at night -- well, to recount those seems an awful lot like whining now that we're done. And now that I can look back and say, It wasn't that bad.


It just seemed like it at the time.

In truth, having a baby with "special needs" gave us a lot of reasons for gratitude. I am grateful for the wonderful nurses and doctors and UNC, for their compassion and skill and humor. I am grateful for the support and prayers of family and friends. I am grateful for all those people who babysat while we made the every-two-day, then weekly, then bi-weekly, then monthly trips to UNC in the early morning hours. I am grateful to everyone who brought us meals, who took the kids on looooong walks, who made emergency trips to the library. I am grateful to the people who made me laugh.

I am grateful for the long car rides through the quiet Jordan Lake wilderness. I am grateful that I had that time to spend with my husband, just talking. In our hurried life, we don't get enough of that.

I am grateful to God that we have Dominic. I am even grateful that he had clubbed feet. It is all part of God's plan.

At this latest appointment, the big question was how much longer he would need to wear the shoes and brace at night. This was the first appointment where Dommie had some inkling -- if two-year-olds are capable of inklings -- that he was at a doctor. He kept saying, "Dot-tor?" and then, pointing at this feet and asking, "Weet?"

When Dr. Henderson finally came in, the conversation went something like this:

Dr. Henderson: "Dominic, can you show me your feet?"

Dommie: "No."

Dr. Henderon: "Can I see your shoes?"

Dommie: "No."

Dr. Henderson: "Will you walk to me and show me how well you walk?"

Dominic: "No. Done."

On a side note, a couple weeks ago we visited the Rembrandt exhibit at the art museum. About twenty minutes into it Dominic suddenly announced, "Done!" and made for the nearest exit.

So apparently he thought it was time for the appointment to be done. No more dot-tor.

Dr. Henderson's recommendation was that as soon as Dommie outgrows his current orthopedic shoes and his brace, he can stop wearing them. Right now he still wears them at night, and every night I go through the routine of buckling him in and snapping on his brace. Then he and I cuddle for a while. He sucks his thumb and holds on to my hair while we watch TV. Every night he and I have the same conversation: I say that it's time to put on his special shoes, and he waves his arms wildly and says, "No. Done."

Around age three we'll make another UNC visit to check his muscle balance -- club-footers usually have smaller, and sometimes unequal, calf muscles that can affect balance. But until then, we just wait for his feet to grow, and the night will eventually come when I sit on the couch with him and tell him, "No more special shoes."


And while we cuddle, while he sucks his thumb and yanks my hair, we can both say, "Done."

Finding JOY

For over a year now Catherine has belonged to Little Flowers, which is a Catholic girls group that meets monthly to study a specific saint and an associated virtue. This past Friday when I picked her up she presented me with a Christmas ornament she had decorated and solemnly informed me the ornament should remind us to be joyful. "The way to be joyful," she explained, pointing to the large J-O-Y running down one side of the ornament as an acronym, "is to remember that joy comes from serving Jesus, Others, and then Yourself."

Fast-forward an hour. I'm struggling to get the coconut-crusted tilapia in the oven, the asparagus roasted, the potatoes baked. Dominic is running around naked, the dog is yapping at squirrels, Vincent is trying to tell me his idea for some complicated boat that involves motors and propellers and sails and do I think we can build it right now? Meanwhile, my joyful little angel is writhing on the kitchen floor swearing that she is about to expire from hunger, because, after all, the ONLY snacks she had this afternoon were frosted cupcakes, iced petit fours and two bowls of popcorn at Little Flowers.

Then -- miraculously -- dinner is ready, and I drop her plate on the table and tell her she doesn't have to wait for the rest of us to eat.

And what does she do? She becomes very, very quiet and just sits there.

And Vincent gets out the balsa wood to start building his boat.

And Dominic takes his clothes off once again.

"Mommy?" Catherine says. "I don't want to eat yet."

"Well, then go find your brother's clothes before he pees on the couch."

"At Little Flowers we learned that joy comes from serving others before you serve yourself, and I just got served first. I'm going to wait and make sure everyone else is served before I eat."

Yipes. It was one of those moments when the world slows to a crawl, when a naked toddler and a mess of balsa wood and glue doesn't seem to matter because your child is teaching you something far more important than your own distracted rushing. Something about what really matters -- joy.

Even if she doesn't quite understand what is meant by "serve."

"You know," I said, sitting beside her at the table, "'serve' doesn't mean just serving people at dinner."

Shock. "It doesn't?"

"Serving means doing things for others. It means thinking of what others need before you do things for yourself."

"So I can go ahead and eat my dinner?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because I was really starving."

But it sunk in, because that night she announced she was going to spend the next day serving others, starting with raking the neighbors' leaves while they were out of town.

"And I want to bake gingerbread cookies for our neighbors," Vincent chimed in. "And then build my boat."

Fine.

Saturday, 7:11 a.m. I'm enjoying a quiet morning, drinking my coffee. All the kids are asleep -- until I hear, "Can we bake the gingerbread now?" and Vincent stumbles out in his Spiderman pjs holding an arm across his eyes.

Ummmm... no. Let me reiterate -- I'm enjoying my quiet morning. I'm not interested in cracking eggs and flouring the kitchen floor. And anyway, I have about 3,792 things I need to do today. "How about TV?" I ask.

"No. Gingerbread. You said we could serve others."

So we do the gingerbread, and then Catherine gets out everyone's boots (never mind that it's 60 degrees) so we can go rake. Luckily we discover that we own four rakes so we can avoid fights. But having an au natural yard (read= no raking) means I don't have a clue how long it takes to rake a normal-sized yard. Hours. And then some, because as soon as we finish raking the wind comes along and drops another carpet of leaves on the grass.

As the boys depart for haircuts after lunch, Catherine looks out the window at the neighbors' yard and says, "I think we need to rake some more."

Very little gets accomplished on my task list that day. I'm too busy baking gingerbread cookies and raking leaves. The laundry piles up, the dishwasher sits unloaded. Our own yard badly needs some attention. The dog needs a walk.

But the kids are happy. And Catherine, as she tells me that night, is joyful.

And you know what? So was I. Because although I got nothing done -- nothing that I had deemed important, anyway -- the kids, through their desire to serve others, had given me an opportunity to serve them. And that, as my daughter reminded me the night before, is what joy is all about.

A final thank you to a soldier

This July, my grandfather, a World War II veteran, engaged in his final battle.

Cod never spoke much about the war, at least not to me. Or, if he did, I didn't listen. I wasn't much interested in battle stories. What I do know is that he was a tank commander, that he gave candy to German children, and that in his closet he housed a German Luger of whose provenance he would only offer a gruff, "Well, I got it somehow."

This summer, though, I was listening. Listening, as the weeks stretched on, to the daily medical updates by phone and email from my grandmother, mother, uncles, cousins. Listening to the predictions of the doctors and then of Hospice. Listening, praying. Checking flights. Making reservations. Understanding the ultimate outcome: He would lose this battle.

Thinking about how to say goodbye.


Nearly 70 years ago, many people never got to say goodbye. Sure, they kissed departing soldiers at the train stations, uttered hopeful "See you soon!"s and "Hurry home!"s. But in the fields of Europe and Asia, soldiers died alone. Their families grieved alone. It was too late for goodbyes.


Cod was lucky. He made it home. He came back and married his sweetheart. They had five kids. He ran gas stations, managed the St. Vincent de Paul Store. Stayed in the same Iowa farmland his entire life.


In his last days, he had children who could say goodbye. And grandchildren. And great-grandchildren. He had a legacy.

Those soldiers who never made it home, who never had their own children or grandchildren -- they left a legacy, too. Their legacy was one of freedom -- freedom for others, at any cost.

But sometimes legacies are only apparent in a person's shadow. On that July morning while Cod underwent a biopsy that would determine the remainder of his life, I wasn't thinking too hard about legacies. We were on vacation in Ohio, and I was watching the kids take their first cracks (literally) at putt-putt at a tourist attraction dairy where you could smack balls into holes, pet some goats and gobble down fresh ice cream.

Still, Cod was on my mind.

While we tried to keep Dominic from maiming his siblings with his golf club, Cod was in an operating room under a fluorescent light. While the kids clamored for bubblegum ice cream, doctors were biopsying his tumor. And while we sat there amidst other noisy families eating our ice cream, soldiers were dying in far-off places.


As I was thinking this, a group of five people in camouflage fatigues walked through the door. I watched them order their ice cream, then stand in a corner eating it. I thought of my grandfather, of boating on the Mississippi, of riding in the bucket seat of his station wagon. Of eating bowl after bowl of buttered air-popped popcorn. I thought of him hearing the results of the biopsy.


I left my family and walked across the crowded restaurant. The soldiers didn't hear me as I approached; only when I nervously broached an "Excuse me," did they grant me their attention. I can't say they looked pleased to see me -- I was interrupting their ice cream consumption, after all. I nearly scampered off back to where Dominic was hollering for more ice cream. But then I looked into the eyes of one of the young men, and I wondered where those eyes would ultimately close -- if it would be while looking into the kind eyes of those who loved him, or on a field in some far-off country. And I wondered if anyone had ever thanked him for risking his life so that I could eat ice cream with my children and husband.

And then I realized I had never thanked my grandfather. He was, to me, Grandpa first, a soldier second. He was the man who gave me his bowl of popcorn, commanded me to obey my mother, walked me through snowy streets on winter nights.

I told those soldiers about Cod, about his battle. I asked for their prayers on his behalf. I said, "Thank you for what you do. For keeping us all safe." I was horribly inarticulate. Then I slunk away, and I gave the rest of my ice cream cone to Dominic and watched him smear it all over his face.


A month later, Dominic was with me in Iowa. By then the family knew what the outcome would be. We knew it wouldn't be long. Cod, the former soldier, was confined to a hospital bed that had replaced the couch in the living room. Its presence was a testament to how much he was loved -- there would be no putting him behind closed doors, no hospital stays. He would die at home, his wife of 65 years at his side.

He would accomplish what so many soldiers never did.

It wasn't easy to watch. It wasn't easy for his children to rearrange their schedules for around-the-clock care of their father. Still, the house was filled with cheer as family danced in and out, a complicated but good-natured tag-teaming of coordinated care. It meant extended time off from work, late nights working on laptops, long drives after long days. It meant cutting short European vacations. It meant hours -- days -- without sleep.


I never heard a single complaint.

This is how death should happen. At home, with family. Knowing that you are loved. Not in a foreign field at the point of a stranger's gun. Not wondering whether the world will remember you. Not worrying whether your legacy will endure.

The soldier's legacies did, of course. We celebrate them today. Those brave soldiers exhaled freedom with their final breaths. Freedom for the world, for their families who would never get to say goodbye.
And as I prepared to say goodbye to my grandfather, I realized that he had left another legacy: one of love, of family unity. Just as he and others sacrificed on the battlefields of war, Cod's children sacrificed in the final days of his life. They would be there; their father would die at home, whatever the cost. They would honor a soldier's last wish.


I didn't stay until the end. I left four days too soon. But as I held my son, our bags packed and at the door, I kissed my grandfather's wizened forehead and I whispered my last words to a brave soldier. "Thank you."

Fun in Ohio

Priceless moments.