Change

Well, aren’t I a goddamned idiot? I knew it. I posted about the relief in seizure activity. And guess what happened this morning?

Bingo.

And then again in the car midday. And then six more times just to make it clear what happens when I open my big fat mouth…

It seemed so strange, like it had been months since I had seen one (really it was seven days)…I almost couldn’t understand what was happening. It was new all over again.

Our capacity to adjust to change is really awe-inspiring. I adjusted to two months of such frequent seizures…and then I adjusted again to a seven day relief felt as though we would never see another seizure. It is so silly, really. I knew better than to hope, but I did anyway…I changed my pace accordingly.

And now I will change again.

As I sit on my seizure night all-night vigil, complete with candy and Pretty Little Liars, I am thinking about how we show the changes that occur inside of us. I know that bags under my eyes grew like crazy over the two months of monster seizures…and they seemed to on the mend this week–until today.  There are the extra pounds I put on and shed depending on stress levels, the gray hairs that appear….But I mean more than that.

I guess after the last two years I feel as though I should have some battle scars. You know, something really badass like the type of scar you get from a knife fight in a back alley. Something permanent. Something jarring. Something that says: “Just try me…you won’t believe what I did the last time someone messed up my kids meds…or tried to take away nursing hours. I am one cold blooded mother…”

But, alas, the scars I have from the last two years are the kind you talk through in therapy…and I don’t have time for or the inclination toward that.

So, it seems I am taking another route.

Almost a year and a half ago Esmé was admitted to the ICU after a severe aspiration event that caused cardiac and respiratory arrest. It was a miracle that she survived…The day after she got out I got a tattoo on my wrist. It was her four month “birthday.” I felt so sure that I needed to mark my change having gone from a mother with a sickly child to a mother whose child had cheated death. But as much as I wanted that tattoo, wanted to feel marked physically, wanted to feel that sting of the needle, to be changed, I didn’t have the heart to “finish” the tattoo. I mean, it’s not like its half done or anything; it looks completed. But it isn’t.

Arguably the tattoo wasn’t finished because of my failure to adequately explain–or the artist’s failure to adequately understand–what I wanted. And I needed that tattoo then…so I got as close as I could and figured someday I’d find the right artist to help me finish it.

But that is the boring story.

I would like to think that it is not done, because I am not done growing into being this new person…and Ezzy is not done changing me yet. I think this tattoo is not something that can be finished. Rather, it needs to grow, to change, to be a map of a journey.

And I think it might be time for a new marker on that journey…

Know any good tattoo artists?