Stones

Like a billion other people across the globe, I like to scroll through Facebook a couple of times a day. Posts about dogs, vacations and food are my favorites; first and last day of school photos, not so much. No shade, parents, but these homages to your kids’ educational progress make the rest of us feel like we’ve lost a grasp of time.

How is that kid in middle school now? Didn’t I just attend her baby shower?

What you never want to read during your early AM Facebook-stalking scroll is that your daughter is in an emergency room in excruciating pain. But that’s what I found a couple of Fridays ago.

Exit Facebook, open text.

A few minutes later I learned that Laura, who lives west of St. Louis, was awaiting a scan of her gallbladder, the suspected culprit for the pain. She seemed OK while we were texting, but for reasons beyond anyone’s control she was there alone.

This is when having your daughter live almost eight hours away really sucks.

Whether she realized it or not, she needed her mother. Or at least, her mother needed her to need her.

I started throwing a few things my overnight bag planning to make the drive nearly 500 miles west on I-70 on my own. While deciding which sweatshirt to pack and if I needed an extra pair of shoes, I was texting with Phil.

He was coming with me. Gratefully, I packed a bag for him. We dropped the dog off at the kennel and we hit the road.

Before we even made it to Indiana, she texted the test results. The scan showed that her gallbladder was full of stones. That’s bad enough because OUCH but also the scan showed the damn thing wasn’t able to pass the shards.

Shit. My DNA made my daughter a faulty gallbladder.

As she was being prepped for surgery and I was Googling “gallbladder removal”, Phil was piloting us westward. Having gallbladder surgery, as it turns out, is a common procedure. According to Dr. Internet, it’s one of the simplest things to have removed and recovery is easy.

We could have turned around, but that was an unconsidered option. We kept going.

She had the surgery while we were somewhere in Illinois. The doctor called to let us know that she did great, that she was in recovery and that she will likely be kept overnight.

When we arrived she was in her hospital room, ordering dinner and her voice had that post-anesthesia gravel tone. By the next morning, she was achy but otherwise OK and ready to go. We took her to pick up her prescriptions.

Now she’s an adult with a home of her own that she shares with her boyfriend and three cats. She has a support system. So there was no reason really but, instead of her going home, she came back with us to our two-bed hotel room where she spent the night.

Something about clean, crisp hotel sheets was appealing. Something about watching her during those hours of deep, post-surgical sleep was soothing. Something about having her a mere stone’s throw away was comforting - more for me than for her, I am sure.

She showered and she slept and she recovered. We all shared take-out food, watched a little college football and made plans for Thanksgiving.

For one night only, she let me mother her as much as 32-year-old woman should.

We have not always been close and I made a ton of mistakes as a single parent. Her teenage years were tough for both of us. We are not of like-mind on many things.

But she is my daughter and I am not sure I will ever not want to mother her when she’s sick.

I am just grateful she let me.