When he finally arrived, I met my new grandson over FaceTime – a common scenario played out every day, especially for families who live far apart. Only that wasn’t the case for us. My daughter was in the hospital four miles from my house, but it might as well have been a million miles. I was too sick to be there. Life-altering chronic illness (LACI) had robbed me again. I had a lingering respiratory infection that had landed me in the hospital the week before. I was angry at my body for interfering with my plans once again. I was heartbroken over missing this miraculous moment with my daughter. Why couldn’t my body cooperate just this once?
I comforted and encouraged her over the phone while she was in labor, but I couldn’t be the mom I wanted to be. I couldn’t stroke her hair or hold her hand like I had the first time. I looked at the two-dimensional scene of my strong, exhausted daughter holding her newborn. “He’s just beautiful,” I cried, tears running down my face. I wanted to hold him in my arms, but the screen was all I could touch.
That beautiful baby boy is now five months old, and we’ve had lots of snuggle time. But only now, with the passage of ordinary time, can I bear to write about his arrival – a profound moment for our family. I still get teary-eyed when I think about not being there with them. Those red-letter days, the ones we remember forever -births, weddings, graduations, big trips, and holidays- are charged with the electricity of hopes, dreams, and anticipation. We expect to be fully immersed in the experience. We want them to be perfect souvenirs we carry with us when they're over. But that’s not how life works for most of us, especially those of us who live with LACI. Often, pain, limited stamina, medication schedules, and fatigue detract from the fullness of those moments.
What is the balm for missing those once-in-a-lifetime moments? Ironically, it’s ordinary, unremembered ones. My daughter and I both felt the distance between us and wished it were different. The thousands of times I was present during unremarkable moments of childhood, like playing together, nightly family dinners, and reading books, formed an unbreakable bond between us that bridged the four miles. They’re the reason she calls her sister and me on the way home from work every day. The three of us share the tedium of our days that no one else cares about, the small frustrations, the funny things that happened that no one else would laugh at, and sometimes we solve the world's problems.
We need both kinds of time – memorable and unmemorable - yet most of us reduce our lives to the best and worst moments, leaving much of our time unremembered. We can’t really appreciate those seminal moments without the quotidian. The commonplace is where time can do its work if we let it. Then, when the big days come, we can honor and appreciate the wondrous nature of what’s happening, even if it’s not a perfect Instagram moment and isn't what we’d hoped for. Those unremarkable remarkable moments mingle together and make red-letter days perfect, even if they aren’t.
