A Last-Minute Gift Idea

“Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart” – Winnie the Pooh

I’ve taken a lot of tests in my life. Sometimes I had to pass to get into graduate school or to keep my job. That’s a lot of pressure. Failure is never an option. Except on the COVID test. I gladly fail that one every time. No matter how much I study and how prepared I am, I always get unreasonably nervous before an exam.

Two nights ago, I sat at the kitchen table and watched Audrey pick up a Ritz cracker with peanut butter and take a bite. I got a little teary because my mind rewound to a memory about the time I was the most nervous (heck, downright scared) before an exam.

A little over a year ago we drove to Cook’s Children’s in Fort Worth so the doctors could give Audrey a swallow test. When Audrey was six weeks old, the doctors sewed a feeding tube to her stomach so we could feed her. A lot of kids with CHARGE Syndrome are tube-fed, some of them for their entire lives. The results of the test would show us if she was able to swallow. If you think you’ve ever had a lot riding on an exam, give that one a try. One test to show if you would ever be able to eat by mouth. Only one parent was allowed inside the hospital due to COVID, so I sat outside on a park bench by myself during the test. I brought a book and my phone, but I couldn’t focus or concentrate on anything but that exam.

I don’t know why, but the pathway of my thoughts always starts down the road to doom. My life would be much less stressful if I would just put “hope” as my destination in the Google map of my thoughts, but I always start down the wrong path and have to take a hairpin turn to get to my mental happy place. So, I sat on that park bench imagining what life would be like for her if she failed. I thought about Audrey going to a birthday party watching all her friends eat birthday cake as we filled her feeding bag and turned on the pump for her. I thought about movie night when every member of the family sits on the couch eating popcorn except for her. Would she enjoy Thanksgiving dinner if everyone was eating except her? I wondered if the ushers at church would be able to pour the grape juice in the feeding bag for communion. That would still count as taking a sacrament in God’s eyes, right?

As Audrey does with every test, she passed. She still has the feeding tube, and we have no idea how long she will have it. It took a lot of feeding therapy, but she is able to eat on her own now. There are a lot of boxes to check on the CHARGE Syndrome to-do list, and removing the feeding tube is a big one. Something so common as watching a child take a bite of food might seem insignificant, but it isn’t to me. Winne the Pooh was right. A bite of a Ritz cracker takes up a big chunk of real estate in my heart.

If anyone needs a last-minute gift idea for me for Christmas, just give me a Ritz cracker with peanut butter on it. Nothing else would bring me as much joy as that processed, empty carbohydrate-filled buttery wafer of greatness.