The Gift on the Other Side

When my youngest was a baby, in her first year of life, she was dealing with severe eczema. No big deal, you might say, if you know nothing about eczema–– before this trial, I knew nothing of eczema. I heard eczema and I thought dry skin on your knees and elbows, maybe a little itchy, whatever.

I learned that there are different types of eczema, that had varying symptoms of varying degrees caused by many different things. G had weeping eczema with an insatiable itch. This meant that she could scratch herself till she bled and still, scratching the itch would be the only thing that would satisfy it, even if she was cutting through her skin and bleeding, which she did.

I rarely slept as all of my waking hours were spent caring for her, being attentive, carrying her almost non-stop and watching her like a hawk when I couldn’t so she wouldn’t start scratching, because I knew she couldn’t stop once she started. I could barely sleep even when she slept because I was listening for any little stirring that would indicate she had woken up and would start scratching. I swaddled her, tightly, for longer than you would swaddle most babies, in attempts to keep her from scratching in the night. I kept her little nails trimmed at all times. I would put little mittens on her but she quickly learned how to remove them. More than once I would awake to find her sheets bloodied and her cheeks scratched raw. Her siblings all had to be more patient and settle for less attention. Our marriage required a lot of patience. Diets and activities were restricted. Everything revolved around trying to keep her safe and give her some sort of relief. Needless to say it was a trying time for all of us.

The 3:00 am feedings were spent researching everything I possibly could. One night I came across mitten sleeves! I couldn’t seem to find any stores that carried them in my city, but thankfully that week my dad happened to be in Chicago. I found a store there that carried them and asked him to bring me some. They were exactly what they sound like, a sleeve with mittens, made of silky satin, on either end. Because it was a sleeve, she couldn’t get them off; they did have openings that could be folded back during the day for play time or eating when I could be right there with her. Hallelujah!! I could finally take a shower that lasted longer than two seconds or put her down to cook dinner without worrying if her face would survive. My dad had brought me two pairs of mitten sleeves; it was what he could find, and they got non-stop use. It didn’t take long before they began to form holes from the constant use––she would still rub her face, which would give her some relief but also save her cheeks; they had to be washed and kept clean all the time. Thankfully, one of our wonderful neighbors made her two more pairs and a friend of mine was able to repair the originals. I can still remember how it felt, the relief of getting back some semblance of “normal” life when those sleeves came on the scene. I had already forgotten what it felt like to not live on edge, concerned all the time.

It hadn’t always been like that. Her first three months were amazing. She was the happiest little smiliest baby I’d ever seen. Always laughing and giggling. A very good sleeper, at about 8 weeks or so I could get a good 5-6 hours of sleep each night, but that didn’t last long. Right around her third month she began to develop eczema––I’ll talk about the whys and hows of this in another post; including why I believe those first 2-3 months were so great. From there, it was about 9 months before we would finally be able to start unravelling our tightly wound nerves from being on constant edge and alert.

I spent so much time with her, but I feel like I missed a lot of it––measuring progress on her recovery rather than growth milestones. (Thank goodness for the first-year baby calendar I kept for her, as well as a little journal; at least we can go back and read about the life we were living as opposed to the disease we were experiencing.)

One of the things that added to the difficulty of the whole situation, was that it was so visible, you could see it all over her face. All kinds of well-meaning people would approach me telling me the things they tried when their kid or grandkid had eczema. Others, would stare, some of them probably judging me with whatever reason they needed to tell themselves for why a parent would dare to leave the house with their kid suffering like that, wondering what I was doing wrong . Others I could see the pity in their eyes, and I just felt even more pitiful, because I felt there was nothing I could do and that I had already tried a million and one things.

I remember one time, while making supper, after having obtained the mitten sleeves, looking over at G in the Exersaucer where I had placed her, and my once jolly, smiley baby looked forlorn and depressed. I had never before seen a “depressed” baby. She just looked so sad and hopeless. It broke my heart. It was such a contrast from the happy, smiley baby she was in her first three months. Now, a few years later, G has beautiful skin. And, as the baby of the family is always goofing off and doing stuff to get a laugh out of us. She is a very happy, healthy little girl. (I will talk about the natural healing side of that journey in another post.) But I wondered at that moment, if I would ever see her smile again.

That’s how it is, isn’t it? When you’re in the eye of the storm, it can be very hard to see anything beyond. While I would never, ever wish to repeat this experience, nor wish it on anybody, I am grateful for the lessons I learned. Coming through this trial, and many others, has taught me to have faith in the gift on the other side.

Summers at Grandma’s Farm

My summers at Grandma’s farm are some of my most cherished memories. I loved spending all day outside running around the yard with my sister and/or cousins.

I know memory is malleable so my memory of Grandma’s farm is always sunny. I suppose by law of averages it had to have been raining at least once or twice while I was there but I have no memory of that, just pure sunshine and happy days.

At Grandma’s farm there was a sandbox, which I don’t think we ever played in, but we used to walked around balancing on the narrow edges. There was a large, squeaky swing set that had one of those two-seater see-saw swings. My cousin called it the pee-pee squeezer because when you got going high enough the angle of the swinging poles met the metal of the seesaw poles and, if you were sitting close enough, well you can imagine!

My grandma had a very large garden that she would weed early in the mornings, she was always barefoot in the garden––I remember my her telling me about how she loved to run around barefoot, even though her father had spent good money to make sure all the kids had shoes, (she grew up in the Great Depression); I still remember the look on her face as she told me, I could tell she was reliving the joy of those barefoot moments while also appreciating the sacrifices her father had made to provide shoes. I mean, wow, it was a beautiful moment and I treasure that she shared it with me. She rarely spoke of her childhood or her past. She was very good at living in the moment.

There was also a long row of crab apple trees all along one side of the garden and my sister and/or cousins and I could spend all day outside, climbing those trees and eating as many apples as we wanted. We would pull kholrabi out of the garden and take it inside for Grandma to peel it for us so we could walk around eating it like a lollipop, holding it by the stem and chomping the crunchy turnip.

The big door to the garage was always open and inside the garage there was a freezer/fridge. The fridge was always full of Grandma’s cannings and yummy pickles, as well as spooky things like head cheese––I was going to say this is spooky for kids, but let’s face it, even for adults it’s spooky; some people love it though, weirdos! BUT… The best part of that freezer/fridge was the other side, the freezer side that was always fully stocked with Freezies, Revel-O’s and Drumstiks! There was no limit to how many we could eat. We could go back to that freezer again and again if we wanted to. Even though you’d think a kid would take advantage of that, I would say we still ate way more fresh carrots, kholrabis and apples, etc than we ever did freezies. I believe the wisdom of being connected to nature like that and eating fresh from the ground kept those nasty sugar cravings in check. Unfortunately, due to commercial farming and other unsustainable practices, I don’t think a lot of our food has the same nutritional content nowadays as it once did.

There were a couple of tricycles at Grandma’s farm, a big one and a small one, also a few of pairs of old roller-skates and skipping ropes; sometimes we would tie the skipping ropes to the pole supports in the basement and then whip around them on rollerskates. There was no shortage of things to do at Grandma’s farm, it was never boring. Actually, the phrase “I’m bored” probably only ever came out of my mouth once in my life, maybe twice; my mom always said “only boring people get bored.” It’s true.

When I imagine Heaven, it looks a lot like summers at Grandma’s farm.