Jorge was
visiting family in Florida recently and when Abby forwarded me a photo he’d
sent of his view during lunch one day
Way back
when I was in labor with Leslie, as the waves of contractions became stronger
and more frequent, my desire to have more than one child became weaker and
weaker. Siblings are overrated. I’m never doing this again. Never, never, never, never. Of course Dean had no idea I’d made the
decision we were going to be a one-child family because, since I didn't speak for about six hours, all this was going on
in my head. Not that it mattered. He had about as much control over whether I was going to have
any more children as he’d had over whether I was going to have any
children. But then, not long after I’d
told the nurse, I’ve had enough. I’m not doing this anymore! I wrapped my arms around Leslie, and as the pain-free
glow of new motherhood intensified, the memory of the past few hours instantly
receded. That wasn’t so bad. I can do
this again. I just need to get that
breathing figured out so my hands won’t curl into claws when I
hyperventilate.
A couple of
years later, because my memory was
still wiped clean of those hours of labor before Leslie’s birth, and because I was still blissfully
unaware that parenting was a roller coaster ride beyond compare— right after I
raised my head from the delivery table, glared at my dutiful Mormon doctor and
said, How could you have done
this to your wife eight times? — Abby was born. Who knew 28 years later, the little girl who
once didn’t even want to move four blocks to a new house, would move to
Ecuador.
Four times I
joyfully planned a trip to see Abby and arrived in Ecuador filled with
excitement, blissfully ignorant of the lurching and plummeting that lay ahead for
my stomach. Who knew every time I
visited I was going to get sick. And that
each time, I’d get a little sicker. On
my first trip the worst of my suffering was over within two or three
hours. Unfortunately it was the two or
three hours on my way home during my layover in Panama where the bathroom had a
constant line of women snaking out the door waiting for their turn at one of
the too-few stalls. Try telling your
intestinal tract to wait your turn
when it’s insisting you get in there now!
A few months
later as I prepared for our trip to Ecuador for Abby & Jorge’s wedding, I
was so happy to welcome Jorge to the family that the memories of my little
affliction in Panama weren’t even a blip on my radar. There were a couple of blips during the wedding ceremony but the reception, where I politely ate every last
bite of my shrimp cocktail (because that’s what a good mother of the bride does
even though that mother of the bride really hates seafood) was perfect. Since nobody else puked up shrimp cocktail
later that night, and I felt fine the next morning, I decided I was allergic to
shrimp. And even if I’m not, I am going
to use that excuse for the rest of my life.
A year later
when we visited Ecuador again I stayed far away from shrimp. But at one point I thought
I was going to be choking down some fish because that’s what a good mother-in-law
does when her new son-in-law’s eyes light up with joy after stumbling upon a remote
fish stand where you can eat fish so fresh their big eyes are still blinking in
surprise. I’d been feeling a bit queasy even
before we discovered that fish stand and when a very nice woman showed us how
she prepared the fish for cooking ...
... I began to anxiously prepare my
stomach for this delicacy by furtively scoping out the best spot to quietly
puke my guts out without offending her. Fortunately she told us there was no extra
fish for us to eat since she was expecting a large tour group shortly so I was
able to postpone the inevitable until the middle of the night, and by morning I
was feeling much, much better.
A year after
that, memories of my illnesses once again barely a flicker in my memory, and again
blissfully unaware of what I was in for, I was ready to visit Ecuador again. True to form, on this trip I got sicker than
the last trip. Only this time I wasn’t
just a little sicker. I was a lot sicker,
for a lot longer. One minute I was
sleeping peacefully and the next my knees were banging onto a cold, hard bathroom
floor. I felt like the snake I’d seen a
few days earlier — one minute minding his own business, swimming tranquilly in
the ocean, and the next, grabbed by a grubby eight year old hand and slammed,
over and over and over, like a whip, onto the hard beach.
During that volcanic vomiting, bed shaking chills,
and fever, I laid curled in a ball in the hotel thinking, I don’t
think I can come here again … I’m pretty sure I can never come here again … never,
never, never, never.
I didn’t
know then that I had taken my last trip to Ecuador. Five months later Abby moved back to the States
and six months after that Jorge followed her.
So now we don’t need to travel to Ecuador to see them. But that photo of the beach in Florida
reminded me of Ecuador and what a beautiful country it is, and how friendly and
courteous and happy the people are. It made me feel a bit sad we won’t need to go
to Ecuador to see them again. It made me
want to go back.
And maybe someday we will. Maybe we will eat plantain chips and drink
Pilsner on the beach again. But it might be a while. It’s taking me a
lot longer to forget that last gut-wrenching illness than it took to forget the
vice-like labor of childbirth. Wrapping
my arms around porcelain just doesn’t seem to have the same memory vanquishing
effect as wrapping them around a baby.
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