OK. So we’ve established that we have the most annoying dog in the world.

But then we got chickens. Unless you have chickens, you may not understand this but chickens change you.

Pretty soon, four wasn’t enough. And I wanted geese. And goats. And a larger garden. And an orchard. And chores. And wide open spaces for the kids to run and play and be free. I remembered a childhood dream and we seized upon it.

Hunter greeted the new property with his customary enthusiasm.

Except he learned quickly that if he barked in the house, someone would just open the door for him. Gone was the mad scramble for the door any time it looked like someone might be trying to leave. Gone was the pile of children knocked this way and that along his path of escape. Gone was . . . Well, I’d really like to say the barking but that isn’t true. But it was so much less stressful out in the country without neighbors’ nerves to worry about.

Then we had our first visitors. That we knew of.

That’s when we noticed that his barking wasn’t random. Every morning and every evening, he trotted along the property line barking out his warnings. And that circling and barking thing? It looks a whole lot different at two in the morning when you’re surrounded.

All of a sudden, I understood my dog.  He was our protector, our guardian. He had a job to do and he took it very seriously. He wasn’t going to let little things like my sanity, the neighbors’ nerves or a nylon leash stand in his way. He was going to do everything within his power to stand between his family and The Big Bad World in order to keep us safe.

Within two months, he had pushed the coyotes back. Though our property had been abandoned for two years and poachers had turned it into a deer carcass smorgasboard, they stopped crossing through our land. We would find tracks and droppings all along the boundary, but not within the area he patrolled.

Then he stopped the nonstop barking, found a spot at the top of our hill where he could see our entire property and lay down to survey his kingdom. And we never lost a chicken to a predator while he was looking over the flock.

Hunter was the best dog we had ever owned. Someone even asked me if they could stud him because he so clearly had such beautiful instincts despite my best efforts to train them out of him. But that wasn’t a possibility.

I started to wonder what we would ever do without him. Then one day he came in acting just a little weird.

It took him two days to collapse to the ground and not get back up. He stopped eating. He stopped drinking. He lay on his pillow and looked as if he were waiting to die. We got him a wheelchair but remember his affinity for chewing through leashes? Well, one . . . two . . . three harnesses later, I gave up. I carried him to his hill where he seemed happiest, made him a bed on the porch to carry him to at night and wondered just how long a dog could live on what I could force feed him.

Perhaps it was time to put him down.

But then we had another visitor.

This time, I was getting something from the car and when I turned around there was a coyote standing at the edge of the driveway just watching me. I barely had time to comprehend what it was and Faithful was on it, chasing it back into the night. Back on the porch, Hunter was alert. Suddenly, the night came alive with the howls of the coyotes and he took off.

On two legs and dragging his useless hind legs behind him, he took off across the lawn and toward the coyotes in the soybeans across the road. I had to run to catch him and drag his fifty pounds of fury back to the porch where I had to chain him to make him stay.

Hunter was back. In the morning, he wolfed down his breakfast, drank two bowls of water and went on his morning patrol of the property. It was a long slow walk to the lilacs and he cut his circle short at the edge of the hen house, but he came back to the top of his hill with a vibrance I hadn’t seen in weeks. He was exhausted, but he was alive.

And then came chore time. Chore time around here . . . well, let’s just say chore time is difficult. I frequently send the children to take care of the poultry because sometimes it is just too hard to deal with the little hand that isn’t there.

The little hand that wanted to help. The little hand that reached for mine to slow me down. The little hand that reminded me that there is so much more to chore time than just getting it done.

And now, though part of me wants to rush through the chores to keep from thinking too much about that little hand, a tip tap slide holds me back. Tip tap slide, tip tap slide and Hunter catches up to me. I scratch him behind the ear and we walk slowly down to the hen house together. Because there’s more to chores than getting them done.

And I wonder what we’ll ever do without our Hunter.

This is the story of our dog Hunter, the most annoying dog in the world. This is him now.

His hind legs are paralyzed, but not his spirit. That’s why I want to tell you his story.

It started when he was just a puppy.

His mother was the most annoying dog in the neighborhood.  She spent most of her time chained in her backyard barking. The rest of the time she spent roaming the neighborhood barking. At least until her owners got her a present. Or maybe it was one of the neighbors. One can never be too sure about these things.

That ended her barking. But not her wandering. Every six months or so there was another sign about free puppies as you drove into town and every six months or so the remainder were taken to the pound. How we ended up with one is a whole ‘nuther story. Maybe I’ll tell it to you in the comments if anyone wants to know.

Anyway, he apparently took careful notes from his mother because when he came to live at our house, he displayed one great talent.

If I put him in the backyard, he barked.

If I had him in the front room, he barked.

When I had enough and put him in the kennel in my room, he screamed.

When the kids went out the back door, he would knock them over to get out.

Then I had to go out and chase him. Not that I could catch him. He would run in little circles around me, always just out of reach, always barking like his life depended on it.

And I thought all sorts of horrible things.

I knew he wasn’t getting enough walks. He was a big dog and a high energy dog. I resolved multiple times to take him for more walks and longer walks to just try to wear him out.

But I just couldn’t afford it.

So I resolved to take him to the pound. Over and over and over. Sometimes, I fantasized about it. While chasing him across the field behind our house, I’d imagine myself driving around with the minivan and opening the door, the one trick that almost always worked. Then I’d drive to the pound and leave him, the barking and the three leashes he’d eat on the way behind me. Sometimes I even told him all about it.

I might have even carried through if it weren’t for one thing.

He wasn’t my dog. I mean, he lived in my house and ate my dog food and got on my nerves, but he had chosen my son as His Boy. And my quirkly little boy had a lot of trouble fitting in and needed all the unconditional love he could get. Even if it came in the form of the most annoying dog in the world.

To be continued . . .with Part II.

I have discovered the art of tear free hair brushing. I know, I know. I was skeptical at first, too. You don’t know my four year old. She’s a sweetie with the finest, wispiest hair that forms this little matt on the left side like every twenty minutes. And she hates having her hair brushed.

But she likes pretty things.

So when Brandi sent the girls and me each a flexi-clip from Lilla Rose, we had to have some girl time and try it out. I gave LE hers and she just sat there looking at it’s sparkliness.

And I brushed.

And brushed.

And pulled.

And voila!

Hair brushed and neatly pulled back with nary a tear nor a complaint. In fact, she smiled through the whole thing. And now the first thing she asks me in the morning is if I will brush her hair.

Because she likes pretty things.

And now for the best part: You can enter to win TWO of your very own over at Mine For the Making, a wondeful little craft blog I just discovered. Plus if you decide you want a clip so much you just can’t leave it up to chance, Brandi is donating 100% of her commissions made through this link to Tiggy’s House (through January 15, 2012)!

Help build a home for the street children of Nepal, beautiful hair jewelry and four year olds who suddenly enjoy having their hair brushed. How cool is that?

______________________________

Disclosure: I received four free flexi-clips, though not in exchange for any sort of review. We just really liked them. I did not receive any monetary compensation, however commissions from sales generated is going to a ministry project close to my heart.

. . . continued from A really bad day of vacation (Part I) That just doesn’t end (Part II) . . .

I looked in the rearview mirror and saw my son’s eyes in the dimness of the dome light in the back of the SUV. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach returned, I felt nauseous and like all the oxygen had left the air in my lungs. I had seen those eyes before.

“What does it all mean, Mommy? What does it all mean?”

“What does what mean, sweetheart?”

“All the bad things. Everything that went wrong today. Oh, Mommy, what does it all mean?”

“I don’t know that it means anything. I was just making a joke, honey.”

“Mommy, my tummy feels sick like it did the night Tiggy died. Like something really bad is going to happen. Mommy, something really bad is going to happen.”

“Bear, that night you knew Tiggy was hurt really bad. You saw something horrible and you knew he might not live. That’s why your tummy felt sick then. Right now you are just worried and your tummy remembers that night so it is feeling the same way. It doesn’t mean anything bad is going to happen.”

“Mommy, I’m so scared.”

“You know something? Nothing bad actually happened today. We were blessed with one good thing after another all day. It was only frustrating because our plans didn’t go the way we wanted.”

“But what about the car? And not being able to pick us up?”

“Can you imagine what would have happened to us if the idler arm had come off while we were driving on all those windy roads? If we suddenly couldn’t steer? We would have lost control and maybe had a really bad accident. Sweetie, that happening when it did might have saved our lives. And we were helped so much by strangers, we can’t really say the frustrating part was really ‘bad.’”

“And your purse?”

“It wasn’t stolen. It was stressful for a few minutes, but nothing bad happened. And honey, for all we know, God had that little boy pick up my purse to keep us at the park.”

“What do you mean?”

“That tree hadn’t been on the road for long or someone else would have moved it. What if we were held up just long enough so it wouldn’t fall on us?”

“Really, Mommy?”

“I don’t know, but it could be.”

And the fear left his eyes as he recounted an episode of Paws and Tales where Papa Bear and his young friend endure multiple set backs that lead to them being in the right place at the right time. He was happy, chattery and went to bed without a single complaint about his tummy or how he wanted me to sleep with him.

I went to bed in a somewhat more somber mood.

My little boy trusts me. I make a careless joke at the end of a stressful day and he becomes sick with fear. I tell him God is looking over us and he rejoices. The words I speak into his life are powerful and I am not sure I am equipped for that level of responsibility.

I don’t have all the answers.

I’m not even sure how I feel about what I told him.

I’ve always had a sort of uneasy relationship with the idea of divine intervention. It isn’t really what the Bible says so much as all the problems we so faithfully commit to the Lord with the assurance that “the Lord will find a way” though they are hardly problems at all. At least not when you think about the problems a mother on the other side of the world must be facing when she decides to sell her daughter into slavery.

And there is that one moment in our story where God withheld His protective hand. Where our prayers went unanswered. Where we, for a moment, felt lost.

But mostly I think it is because in my daily walk, my life gets so cluttered with all the things I’ve thrown in my path that I lose sight of the destination. I let my eyes fall from the promise and start to behave as if this right here is all I have.

My stomach gets tied up in knots and I wonder what it all means because I forget that the worst that can happen is death and after that comes the prize.

__________________________

This post is entered in the Lessons from the Road (Trips) link up over at I Live in an Antbed.

So where was I? Oh yes. Driving back to the campground after trying to figure out how to pick my children up from camp without a car on the Fourth of July. If you haven’t read about that already, you should. It will quite possibly help you understand the little breakdown I’m going to have later in this post.

Maybe I should throw in the bit about losing the cabin key the day before and rehiking the trails and tearing apart the cabin looking for it before resigning myself to the fact I was going to have to buy a replacement as well. And it wasn’t just the key, but this nifty electronic lock box thing that was attached to it so you could actually leave it at the cabin and not lose it out on the trails. Someone actually found it out on the trails, thought it looked odd, asked a ranger about it and he delivered it to us.

“Today’s your lucky day!” he said. “You should go into town and play the lottery!”

Yeah, well, we only got luckier, I guess.

Back to the story. It was the Fourth of July. And we did want to see the fireworks. So we did. Well, we more heard them while we stared just above a line of trees where some of the more ambitious fireworks occasionally reached. But it was a pleasant evening and it felt nice to just relax in the cool evening air, watching the children scuttle about and just enjoying doing nothing for awhile.

Until it was time to go. And my purse was nowhere to be found.

My purse with my keys, my cell phone and my credit card.

Stranded again. I wanted to scream. I probably would have screamed, but once we had searched the area and everyone else had left, I was overcome with an urgent need to get my credit card cancelled. My purse was stolen once before, and while we ended up out nothing but a purse and a wallet, it still irks me just a tad that the lady in the white escalade got a zebra finch. I want a zebra finch, but there have always been more important things to do with our money than spend it on a zebra finch.

So anyway, no one had left before the fireworks were over and there was a ton of traffic. If I could just get to a phone, maybe I could call home and my husband could stop my credit card before anyone managed to buy an abyssinian guinea pig, another inexplicable desire I’ll likely never attain.

I looked around and saw someone pulling up to the storage sheds across the street in a golf cart. Hoping he was some kind of security guard and in possession of a phone, I determined to chase him down, pausing rather impatiently for the car that was coming.

The car that was slowing down, I thought waiting for me to cross. Except that she stopped right in front of me.

“Are you guys looking for something?” she asked as she held up my purse. “I’m so sorry! When we left, I told the kids to grab everything, but I guess they grabbed this, too. I was hoping you’d still be here!”

I stood, mouth agape, holding my purse, not sure what to say.

“Thank you. Thank you! We’re down from Nebraska and my phone and keys and everything were in there. We didn’t know what we were going to do. Thank you!”

By the time the adrenaline had worked itself out of my system, I had to stop for a downed tree across the road back to the campground. Discussion of what could have caused that left images of an injured mountain lion hiding in the underbrush in my children’s minds and my daughter less than enthusiastic about coming out in the dark to help me.

To be honest, they left me less than enthusiastic about clearing the road in the middle of the woods in the dark.

So I let her get back in the car. And as I worked there in the dark, I began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as the frustration level increased. Why did everything EVERYTHING have to be so hard? This whole year has been one setback, one obstacle, one failure after another.

• The neighbor’s dog and ours tore through a chain link fence and took out all my geese and four of my ducks.
• We had to give up our dog because there was no way to keep anything safe if she was going to do that.
• We lost an entire shipment of chicks to who knows what as they died one after another, always with the same symptoms, until they were all gone.
• Faithful broke into the run and herded several ducklings to death.
• Something broke through the weak spot of the night pen where we had repaired it and took out several more. (I started out the season with 25 ducks and now have only three.)
• Our best farm dog came in one day acting a little stressed. Then he wandered in a circle, stumbling more and more until he finally fell over and didn’t get back up. His hindquarters are now paralyzed.
• The tree we planted in Tiggy’s memory looks like it is dying.
• And of course there are the weeds that left me screaming in an onion patch.

I don’t know that the challenges of this year are really any different than they are any other year, but I seem unable to handle any of them. As I tossed branches to the side of the road, I realized that I viewed challenges differently than I used to. They used to just be a part of life, an obstacle to be overcome, a step that, while often difficult, always led to higher ground and a future better for the knowledge and experience gained.

Now they are each just one more voice in the chorus telling me to give up. Asking me why I even keep trying. Telling me that I can’t do this. And I realized that in coming to Texas, I just wanted a break from all of it. From chores. From expectations. From troubles. From grief. From life. I realized that deep down inside somewhere, I felt like losing Tiggy was enough.

I felt like the weeds and predators and car troubles should all just go away so I could take one long deep breath before learning how to live again without my son.

“Well, this has been an adventurous day,” my mom said as I got back in the car.

“Yeah, I guess you could call it that,” I answered, somewhat more subdued.

“Maybe the ranger was right. We should have bought a lottery ticket.”

“Maybe. Or maybe this whole day has been one warning after another whispering to us, ‘Get out.’ ‘Get Out.’ ‘GET OUT!’”

We laughed and I felt the tension in my stomach ease.

At least until I looked into the rear view mirror.

. . . aaaah! I hate to do this again, but it is turning into a book. I know. I know. I really need to take seriously all that stuff I read about keeping blog posts to 600 words, but I had barely left the firworks at 600 words. So here goes. To be continued . . . and here it is: In which I scare my son out of his mind and try to come to terms with my own words, or The End.

So it was the Fourth of July and I was supposed to pick up the children from their grief camp. No later than 11:30 AM. This was emphasized in the letter they sent out. It was emphasized in an email. It was emphasized on the phone when I called to ask a question. It was emphasized when I dropped the children off.

It was the first thing they said when I called and told them there was no way I was getting there on time, too, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I got it. I really did. 11:30. I’m really not in the habit of rocking up whenever it suits me to pick up my children. I was missing them before we even dropped them off, before we even left for Texas. I was happy to pick them up at 11:30.

But at 9:00, as we were pulling out of the parking spot at our campsite to make the not quite two hour drive from our campground to theirs (see how I left an extra half hour + there for any little thing that might go wrong?), the car made a horrible noise, pieces flew out from underneath and it stopped working.

Just. Like. That.

I was stunned. We hadn’t even made it far enough to block traffic on the little road to the cabin. For a moment, I just sat there, not sure what to do. This couldn’t be happening. I had to be at the camp at 11:30. I was in a strange town in a strange state. There was no one to call, no one to help. We were stranded and my children needed me.

I called the camp because I knew that whatever we figured out, the problem was unlikely to be solved within thirty minutes in order to get us there on time.

I called my husband because he at least had access to Google.

My mom called my aunt in Dallas, because who knows? Maybe she’d know someone in the area.

But my aunt didn’t know anyone. The camp at first told me the children needed picked up by 11:30 and then absolutely by 12:30 because another group was coming in and they couldn’t be there past that. I understood. Really I did. But there still wasn’t much I could do about it.

And then my husband called me back.

“Sorry. There’s nothing I can do.”

“What do you mean there’s nothing you can do? I have to pick up the children.”

“I’m sorry. No one’s answering. It’s a holiday. The only car rental place that’s open is at the airport.”

I got a sick feeling in my stomach. As it stood, my husband could probably fly into Austin quicker than I’d be able to get there and I didn’t even know what to do next.

But we finally got a plan hatched. We found a taxi company in San Marcos, about 45 minutes away. The driver had another call to pick up and then he’d pick up my mom and take her to the airport. About $145. There she could rent a car. There was no way she could get to the camp even by 12:30, but the camp photographer lived near the airport. There was the problem of getting them a signed slip allowing them to do what they so graciously volunteered to do, but they finally decided that an email from my husband combined with a voicemail from me would be sufficient.

About this time, the park host pulled up in his little golf cart. I asked if he knew a good mechanic. He asked me to pop the hood and informed me it was the idler arm.

“Let me make some calls,” he said and drove off.

Ten minutes later, he came back with his wife who took me into O’Reilly’s for a part that was waiting for me there. It took him a few minutes to put it on and the car was fixed. For $39.99 and the generosity of a total stranger.

Although it had now been over an hour, the cab never showed up. I called to cancel, and found out he wasn’t coming. He had called to verify the pick up and no one answered the phone, probably because I was trying to work out how to give permission to the camp to allow my children to be taken to the airport, but no matter. We arrived at the airport right at 1:30 as we had agreed to, and just a few minutes before the children.

Such a relief.

But it was the Fourth of July. And we did want to see the fireworks. Perhaps we should have known better than to test the day any further. Perhaps we should have been content to spend the evening at the campsite, making s’mores in the microwave because the EZ-lite charcoal wouldn’t light and telling stories around whatever you tell stories around when the entire state is under a burn ban.

Perhaps. But we wanted to see the fireworks and that was the next thing on our itinerary after everything that got crossed off due to the morning’s events.

. . . to be continued . .and here it is, Part II, In which I learn something about myself.

So I packed the kids, my mom and our stuff in a car and headed for Texas. I’m not sure why exactly. Maybe just because in the cloudiness following the loss of Mattias, I was willing to drive to the ends of the world to give my children something to look forward to. Even if it was for something as strange sounding as a grief camp. But it came recommended by someone a little further along in this journey and I took her word for it and made the reservations.

Then came the drive. The long, hot, miserable drive.

And finally the destination. Vacation at Palmetto State Park, just outside of Austin, Texas. And judging solely by the frequency with which they appeared on my camera, these are a few of their favorite things.

The artesian well just outside the cabin. They spent hours just poking sticks in it. Now that is vacation.

The ant lions. My son spent more time tapping on the edge of their traps to cause a minor cave in just so he could watch them flick the sand back out than he did on the playground.

And of course he had to eventually dig one out of its hole to see what it looked like. (It’s the little gray thing next to the pill bug.)

More water, this time with some of the palmettos for which the park was named.

Their baby brother.

Even if he did try to eat Heather’s baby’s head.

Animal scat. In all the nature center, was there nothing more interesting to take picture after picture after picture of?

The most impressive part of the stuffed bear in the lobby of the Austin Nature Center.

Cliff swallows.

Seriously. How many pictures of this guy did they think I needed? I have a complete study in the striking snake. Thankfully, he’s dead and behind glass.

A few skeletal remains.

Some ancient footprints.

1.5 million bats. Flying right over our heads.

And who can resist the “kick off your shoes and linger a bit in our wading river” invitation at the San Antonio Zoo?

We did have a nice time. A relaxing time. Except that one day. But I shall write about that later.

Five children, my mom and I packed into a car with all we need for almost two weeks on the road. A cooler separates two children in the back. Bags, chairs, odds and ends take up the leg room for everyone not fortunate enough to still need a car seat. There’s no room because my one rule for traveling is that nothing can be packed higher than the seats. I don’t want a deer or a minor fender bender or even slamming on the brakes to turn our stuff into deadly projectiles. Tired, uncomfortable and irritable, our vacation begins.

As did the bickering. The arguing. The poking. The kicking of seats. For 350 miles to our first stop at a little campsite in Oklahoma, the children argued.

“Do you want to go to camp?” I asked. “Is it worth the drive? Or do you want to turn back?”

Yes, they wanted to go. They all agreed. But as nine became ten and ten became eleven and no one showed any signs of sleeping, I began to wonder.

A little after midnight, I finally pulled into the campsite. As I tried to make myself comfortable somewhere between a toddler seat and a steering wheel, I wondered some more.

“Is it worth the drive?“

This journey through life is not easy. I am often cramped in a position I see no way out of, sitting next to someone I don’t always get along with thinking all the while that somehow everyone else has it a little better. And if only I could change this little bit, everything would be better.

And now that I have had a taste of real suffering, the veil has been lifted. The veil that allowed me to say, “Smile and be happy!” while all of creation groans under the weight of sin has been lifted and I groan alongside it.

I used to look forward to the future, to the adventure each day brought, to the fulfillment of dreams painted on a canvas of late night conversations and musings about all that life could be. But the color has gone out of my dreams as I realize just how unimportant most of my pursuits have become. How unimportant they always have been, though I never recognized it before.

But now I look forward to a different future.

The children are better at it than I am. LE sometimes prays that God would let Tiggy sleep in His big bed. Bug wants to know if Jesus plays chase with him the way we did. They talk about Heaven the way I used to talk about this property: full of work and play and loved ones and life.

Sometimes I listen to them talk and I get glimpses of Heaven. Of eternity. Of life with God and the saints and Tiggy. Forever. I imagine the brilliance of Heaven and all I ever hoped for in this world pales in comparison. Standing at the gates of eternity, it is hard to imagine that the temporal struggles of this world will have quite the same importance as they seem to now.

Isn’t it worth the drive? Through the inconveniences, the struggles and the heartache, isn’t Heaven worth it?

Teeth brushed, pajamas on, prayers said, bedtime. Then it begins.

“Mo-om! LE hit me!”

“Mo-om! LE dumped her water on my blanket!”

“Mo-om! LE won’t stop screaming!”

“Mo-om! LE won’t stop talking!”

“MO-OM!!!”

Then little footsteps on the stair as LE comes up to the gate.

“Mommy, Bug hit me.”

I can’t count how many times I walked up and down those steps, each an interruption to feeding the baby, straightening the house, syringe feeding our dog suffering from sudden paralysis.

And now, as I sit down to the computer to do what I want to do I hear little footsteps on the stair.

“Mommy, Bug hit me.”

And in frustration, I answer.

“I guess she learned it from you.”

Silence. Then little footsteps going down the stair to quiet and in the silence I cannot think.

I want to be a better parent. To teach rather than manage, guide rather than direct, build up rather than tear down. But over and over I parent out of frustration and react out of my own troubled spirit. A moment of sarcasm and she turns and goes downstairs without a word.

At least for a time.

Then little footsteps climb the stair and stop next to me.

“Mommy, I want to kiss you.”

I wrap her in my arms for a hug and a kiss then take her back down to bed, to Tiggy’s playpen where she still wants to sleep every night. And as I lean over to adjust her blanket just so, her eyes shine and her smile glows. Tiggy’s playpen pricks my conscience as I realize how easy it is to forget that a little child is hurting.

Especially at bedtime.

And I just want to be a better parent.

The characteristic sound of croup has me watching a show on hulu while listening to a child sleep.

But it isn’t the cough so much that has me worried. It’s the breathing. It gets louder and I can no longer hear the dialogue in the show. I realize it has been awhile since she has coughed but the breathing just keeps getting louder.

I look up croup. Croup is nothing. A little irritation. A minor illness that sounds so much worse than it is. I recognize the cough, but I’ve never heard a child breathe like this. I scroll down to complications and when to call a doctor and find the word for what I hear.

Stridor.

And something to look for: retractions and bluish skin.

My heart leaps into my throat as I turn on the light  and look at LE, sleeping on the couch, propped upright to help her breathe more easily. Her lips, her nose, her fingers are all normal. But she’s straining for every breath. Her chest sinks with every breath. It isn’t as marked as the child on the video, but it is clearly there.

I don’t know what to do because it is two in the morning. These were the “call the doctor” signs, but it is two in the morning. Do I wait until morning or pack everyone up for yet another trip to the ER which will likely have me leaving shortly after arrival feeling slightly embarrassed though greatly relieved?

What do I do? I feel the fear clouding my decision.

She wakes up and clings to me. Her eyes are glassy, not really looking at me but she seems fearful. (Or is that me?) Her whole body seems to struggle for breath as I ask her what’s wrong. She’s delirious. (But is that just from being half asleep?)

“Did you have a bad dream?”

(She just clings tighter in answer.)

“Are you having trouble breathing?”

(She nods her head.)

“Just a minute, sweetie. I’m going to give you something to help you.”

I go for the infant Vick’s vapor rub because it is all I can think of. I tell her to hold the bottle and take a deep breath. She coughs and breathes and coughs. I decide to take her to the ER. I go in search of my cell phone, hoping John is off and close to home so we don’t have to wake everyone up.

I come back in the room to silence.

My heart is in my throat and I freeze. For a moment, I just freeze, too scared of what I’m about to find to turn on the light and then I run to her and it is all I can do to not grab her into my arms and jerk her out of her sleep. In my panic, I almost don’t even notice that she is just sleeping. But she is just sleeping, breathing quietly. She sounds congested, but her breathing is no longer labored.

And finally, I can breathe. I wonder if I’ll ever again be able to give Tylenol for a fever, soup for a cold and hugs and extra stories for long afternoons in bed. I wonder if I’ll ever again be able to sit through a child’s illness without the fear of everything that could go wrong gripping me with every cough. I wonder if I’ll ever again be able to get through a cold without a trip to the doctor.

But I still plan on calling the doctor in the morning.