Pause

July feels uncertain this year. We’re finally back in Italy, recovering from a stateside vacation I didn’t know how to write about, and my finger’s on the pause button. Only, time doesn’t pause; just myself.

Is today really a holiday? I vaguely remember promising our friends a hot dog cook-out, but I’ll be caught under the tide of jet lag and personal culture shock until well after supper. Tomorrow’s a holiday for us too—our fifth anniversary!—and more than any other time of year, I want to bounce and sparkle… but I get the distinct impression I’m still going to wake up as a human bathmat. Enthusiasm today on a scale from 1 to 10: Flubbb.

I can’t be sure on this of course, but I think this vacation may have been the toughest we’ll ever have to pull off. There were relaxing bits and fun bits, and the two even coincided from time to time, but they were sandwiched between the longest, cryingest plane rides ever a Sophie was taken on.

Re: that –
6/28/08
Dear incisors,
I understand your innate need to poke out of my daughter’s tender gums; it’s gotta happen sometime. But did you really have to make my baby scream and flail and refuse to sleep for five whole days? And which of Satan’s minions possessed you to wait until our LONG LONG INTERNATIONAL PLANE RIDE to saw your way out? Thanks to you, I’m going to have to buy Benadryl for all our fellow passengers on the return flight just to satisfy my conscience.
If you need me, I’ll be in the lavatory giving myself 30,000 feet swirlies,
Bethany

So, long trip, teething, Texas. Soon after arriving, we ran headlong into some old family tension—the complicated, spiderwebby kind that leave tendrils of guiltpitydisgustangerbetrayalremorsesadnessannoyance sticking to everyone’s faces. However, there were also important conversations and Krispy Kreme excursions and rollercoasters and tiramisu and so very many activities including the extreme wearing of leather pants.

Re: leather pants –
Dear [14-year-old brother],
I want to be as cool as you when I grow up.
Love,
Bethany

Besides the teething and the tension and the lack of sleep, we had fun… but it was mostly the kind of frantic fun that requires intense scheduling and secretarial help. And then catching the 6 a.m. flight to Florida? The English language needs a new word to describe our level of exhaustion at that point. Like “death.” Anyway.

Re: vacation part 2 –
Dear Florida,
You divide my heart. On one hand, I kind of hate you. You’re freakishly hot, everything is at least half an hour away, and room-service cereal costs $22. All this, and your drivers are really, really bad. I mean, terrible.
On the other hand, I love your glittering beaches and blue, blue water. I love the thunderheads piling above your oceans and the warm nights. Your wildlife is great—pelicans and herons and ‘gators, oh my!—and you make relaxing effortless.
If you would just work on the driver thing, oh, and maybe give me a lifetime membership to Disney World, I think we could have a future together.
Sincerely,
Bethany

Time with the in-laws was great as usual—Natalie’s never had so much fun in her long three-year-old life—and Dan’s and my getaway to the beautiful Marco Island was just what we needed (even though I was lame and spent vastly more time reading in bed than sunning at the beach, but you have no idea how lovely it felt to read in bed! hello, lame).

Re: my main inspiration for reading lamely in bed –
Dear Sony “not Kindle” e-book reader,
You have just exempted me from other birthday or Christmas gifts for the next nine years, but I have only this to say: I love you madly.
Yours,
That person who spilled crumbs on you because she wouldn’t stop reading Dracula during breakfast

So we were finally so relaxed that we were smiling on a regular basis again and enjoying the last few days of our vacation when we found ourselves rushing to the emergency room, trying not to panic, praying breathlessly that we would be able to take both girls back to Italy with us.

Our little Sophie sat limply in her car seat, her face bulging and purple, eyes rolled back in her head, breathing heavily like an animal – “hunh hunh hunh.” I had never felt such a rush of fear before, terror instead of adrenaline coursing through my blood. I still don’t know how to describe that drive to the hospital except that I hope never to experience it again.

The doctors assured us later that it was no big deal—“only” a seizure, “only” a spike in fever—and I couldn’t figure out if their words were meant to comfort or belittle. Neither mattered, though, once we could look into her eyes and see our baby there again.

I don’t think anyone really relaxed after that point. Amidst the flurry of packing up, my mind swam with the image of Sophie’s purple face and the ludicrous hospital bill and all the What Ifs that I couldn’t not think about. I felt a thousand times more a mother than before yet hopelessly inadequate, and I shook the last hours of our plane trip back to Italy while Sophie wailed in my lap.

That brings me here—back, but not really. Suitcases are still piled around the house, and I fully intend to unpack them once I can drag myself out of the Twilight Zone. If only time would pause for a day or two or seventy-four…