Since my daughter, Erin, is so much on my mind this week and I've already written about Jen and Nick (if briefly), I wanted to post this old journal entry from almost 4 years ago. (It includes another miracle for those of you who've been asking for another one!)

The scab never heals. At least not completely. For eight years (eleven now), it hasn’t healed. Maybe it never will.


I heard the song today and the bleeding started all over again.


She’s in love with the guy…
(shoo-be-do-waaah…)
She’s in love with the guy…
(shoo-be-do-wah…)


It has been forever, yet one measure of that song, and I am instantly back. Back to easier times. Back to days of completeness. Days of sharing music with my 10-year-old Erin.

She had a magical way about her, my Erin. She was my joy. She loved music and having me tickle her feet… or arms… or whatever. 

We would sit on the couch and she would say, “Tickle me, mom…” and I would, and she’d smile. She shared my love of reading too, and had my quick wit.


She was my miracle baby. A surprise. I wasn’t ready for another baby, I thought. Her dad said, “Get an abortion.” I was floored, and for the first time realized I didn’t know the person this man had become. Even if I wasn’t ready for another child, this was my baby. No one was going to tell me to get rid of her.

When we talked names, her dad was disinterested. At the time, I was so naïve. 

It never crossed my mind that he was screwing around behind my back. I just thought he didn’t want another child. 

Not that he didn’t want a family at all. I tried again and again to get him into the name-the-baby mood. To recapture some of the magic from my earlier two pregnancies. 

His response was, “This baby is yours. Name it whatever you want,” and he walked from the room.

The first baby we thought would be a girl. April Victoria, we were going to name her. Instead, after 37 hours of labor, I delivered Nicholas Edward. Nicholas just because I liked the name, and Edward for his dad.

When number two came along, we couldn’t agree on a boy’s name at all. Eddie didn’t like any of them. I wanted his middle name to be Amado for his grandpa who I loved so much, but Eddie said absolutely not! He hated that name.


By the time she arrived, we had still not even considered any boy’s names, so it was good thing she was a girl! Jennifer Catherine joined the family. Jennifer for my older sister and Catherine for my mother, long since taken from us.

So, I set out to decide on a name for this new baby that was growing every day within me, wiggling and kicking to let me know it had a definite opinion about everything. 

I decided Jordan if it was a boy. And if it was a girl, Erin Elizabeth. Erin, because I thought it was one of the most beautiful names on earth, and a tribute to her Irish heritage. 

And Elizabeth, because the others had been named for someone, and since her dad said she was my baby, I would give her my name to let her know that she was very much loved and special.


The first time I heard her heartbeat in the doctor’s office, it made me cry. I’d heard that rapid woosh-woosh sound for the first time twice before, but it still sounded miraculous and amazing to me. Overwhelmed, I lay there in awe and tears ran down my face. The doctor (whose name was Michael Jordan!), bless his heart, just squeezed my hand and said, “Isn’t it a miracle?” He quietly held my hand, and we listened together in silence. I so wanted her father to be there to hear it too and marvel. But he couldn’t be bothered.

Then, when she was born, the heartbreak. The doctors said she had a heart murmur. “Heart murmurs are not uncommon with babies,” one doctor told me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. 

In the next breath, she stole away my calm. 

“But this is the worst heart murmur I’ve ever heard in a newborn….” 

There was talk of heart surgery. My world slanted at an odd angle and fractured.


I went from doctor visit to doctor visit, carrying my little bundle, and towing my two toddlers along, wrestling with heavy doors and elevators and strollers, my heart in my throat. I begged their father to come with me, but he was too busy. From the pediatrician to the cardiologist to the pharmacist. I never felt so alone or afraid.

“Lets wait until she gets a little stronger,” the pediatric cardiologist said. If she doesn’t get any worse, we should wait for her to put on a little weight. If she doesn’t gain weight or if her heart weakens, we’ll have to go right in and do the surgery.”


I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone carving up my tiny little Erin Elizabeth. I prayed incessantly. And twice a week we went to the doctor’s office to hope for progress. The doctors were hoping for at least six weeks before surgery.

Week five came, and I was a nervous wreck. I buckled each of my baby girls into her car seat, strapped Nicholas into his booster seat, and headed for the cardiologists. 

Another EKG. I waited, holding my breath. The doctor shook his head, puckered his lips in disappointment and said, “I’m sorry. Still no change. I am afraid this is not going to fix itself. If she is not any better by this time next week, we will schedule the surgery. Make an appointment for a week from now,” and he walked form the room. A sense of desolation flooded me.


Five days later I stood in room #3 at the pediatrician’s office, fidgeting nervously as I waited. I rocked from side to side trying to soothe the crying of my little baby girl.


Finally, the doctor came in and examined Erin. She listened with her stethoscope, looked sideways at me and repositioned the stethoscope. Again she listened and looked at me oddly.


“Well?” I asked, afraid of the answer.


But she didn’t answer. “What did the cardiologist say?’ she asked instead.


“He said that if she isn’t better by the day after tomorrow he will schedule the surgery.”


“When did he say that?” she asked, turning back to her stethoscope.


“On our last visit. Umm… five days ago.”


“Well, I don’t want to say anything,” she said, looking distracted, and suddenly seeming to avoid making eye contact. “I’ll wait to see what he says,” and she left the room.

*******

Two days later, I was on the verge of tears as I waited what seems an eternity for the cardiologist to come into the exam room. Nick wanted me to read him a book. Jen, envying Erin wanted “up!”, and I tried to please everyone while I waited anxiously for the doctor.

He listened to little Erin’s heart, moved his stethoscope and listened again. And he too looked at me sideways as he listened for heartbeats, just as the pediatrician had.


“How is she? Is she getting any better?” I asked anxiously.


“What did her pediatrician say?”


“She said to wait and see what YOU had to say” I replied, becoming frustrated and more anxious. “Will someone tell me what is going on?”


He listened some more, the silence seemed dragging on for an eternity.


Finally, he straightened and looked at me as he removed his stethoscope and hung it around his neck. He opened his mouth as though to say something and then stopped and shook his head. His brow wrinkled in thought and he scratched his head. He put the stethoscope thingies back in his ears to listen again for a moment. Then he looked at me again and seemed to make up his mind. He lay his stethoscope on the table and asked once more, “And her pediatrician didn’t say anything?”


“No. She just looked at me like you are looking at me now and said to wait and see what you said.”


His eyebrows raised in a look of amazement and he said, “Well, I can’t hear anything wrong with her heart at all. Not even a trace of a murmur. This is the same baby isn’t it?” He said he’d need to do another EKG to be sure, but it sure sounded like her heart was that of a perfectly normal newborn!

In one week’s time, this tiny little heart of hearts had gone from no change at all to miraculously healed.

“I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head.


I told him I did. That I had been praying ‘round the clock since the day she was born, and God had answered my prayers.

=========================

And so my Erin Elizabeth came into the world, a very special baby. She seemed to be born with wisdom beyond her years. She seemed to notice everything and knew things intuitively.


When her dad walked out one night without saying goodbye to the kids, it was Erin who came to me the next morning and asked where daddy was. I hemmed and hawed and tried to decide how to tell a three-year-old that her daddy had chosen to leave family for a sixteen-year-old girl, and had moved out. I didn’t know what to say, so I said he was out and would probably be back later.


But Erin knew better. At three years old, she was incredibly astute. “You know what I think?” she asked matter-of-factly. “I think Daddy just went to live at the school. Cuz he loves the school more than he loves us. I bet he is just sleeping in the gym.”


From the mouths of babes….

The next year was almost too difficult to bear. My “forever” had been shattered. Everything I thought I knew came into question. I no longer knew who I was.

Teaching all day, fighting traffic for another hour and a half, commuting, arranging daycare for the baby, making ends meet, and doing it all alone was almost impossible. I didn’t think I could possible be strong enough to do it. Most nights I cried myself to sleep, and was awakened by at least one of the kids (usually Erin), during the night having a bad dream. Whoever it was would crawl into bed with me and kick me all night. If it hadn’t been for those three precious babies, I would not have made it.


One morning when I had had a rougher than usual night, I got out of the shower and was blow-drying my hair, bending over as I dried it. I stepped on a sharp Lego and let out an angry yelp. Then I noticed someone had stuck a navy and gold sticker on the bathroom cabinet beneath the sink, and sighed in frustration. It was bad enough Jen had taken to drawing on the walls. Now I had stickers to scrape off the woodwork. I took a second look, and was warmed to the bottom of my very lonely, empty heart. There my little Erin had posted a note that the Lord knew I was going to need to help me face that day. It said simply, “Jesus Loves You.” I was not alone in this monumental task.


Erin always seemed to bring a smile to my face. Even in the darkest moments. One particular day, I had a long, hard day at school. I ran into worst-than-usual traffic on the way home. When I stopped to pick up the kids at the babysitter’s, they began to bicker about who had to sit in the middle. Nobody wanted to sit in the middle – ever! Some things never change. I remember giving my mother the same headache.


I was very tired and very impatient. My head hurt and my feet were killing me from standing all day. “Just get into the car!” I bellowed at no one particular, losing my temper.


The argument continued…


“But I sat in the middle last time!”


“Nuh-uh! I did!”


I didn’t have the patience to listen to any more of this, so arbitrarily, I pleaded, “Erin, you sit in the middle this time, okay?”


“Why?” she whined. “I ALWAYS have to sit in the middle!”


It was true. She did get stuck with the middle seat much more often than the others. One, because she was shortest and easier to see over. And two, she was a good buffer between the other two, as she was easiest to get along with.


But none of that came to mind in my exhaustion. When she asked why do I have to sit in the middle?!!!, I snapped, “Because if you don’t, I will make you ride in the trunk!”

Bless her heart, without missing a beat, she said, “No, mommy! Not the trunk again!!!” and giggled and did a little jig.


I stopped dead in my tracks and laughed for the first time that day. Leave it to Erin to come up with something like that! I ruffled her hair and let her ride in the front seat. She sat there and beamed.

===========================

Erin was the one who you could always count on to be intuitive. She could read people’s moods and know things without being told. She could always coax you out of a bad mood. She loved to snuggle and cuddle and just hold hands or be tickled. People would laugh and say whenever they saw me, Erin would be hanging off me like another appendage. And I loved it. She would love for me to sit on the couch with her in the evening and tickle her arms or legs while she watched Saved by the Bell and dinner simmered on the stove.


She loved to sing along with the radio. Her favorite song was She’s In Love With the Boy, by Trisha Yearwood. Whenever we listened to that tape, she’d make me rewind it again and again and sing along at the top of her lungs, making up pieces as she went, adding bits here and there…
She’s in love with the boy.
Oooh-oooh-ooooh
She’s in love with the boy,
Shhoo-be-do-wah…


We would sing it together at the top of our lungs as we drove down the road and giggle. Nick and Jen said it was stupid. But we did it anyway.


When the girls walked out of my life, I thought I would die. They were my life; the thing that had kept me going day after day. I had nothing to live for now. My heart shattered. Even though all the judges had said the kids would be better off with me, they said the girls were old enough to choose to live with their father above the decision of the court. Both the judge and the social workers said not to worry, that they’d decide to come back pretty quickly.

But they didn’t know. They didn’t know how bitter their dad and step-mother were. The judge even admonished their father and made him swear in a court order that he would not say anything negative about me any more, and he would actively foster their relationship with me. 
Puh-lease!!

I knew better. It was just a piece of paper and meant nothing to Eddie. I knew his word meant nothing. The last time we walked out of the courthouse I knew that I would not see those girls for a long, long time. And it broke my heart.


“He will be in contempt of court if he doesn’t let them see you,” said the judge, not understanding my anxiety and concern. “You are worrying for nothing. He has sworn to speak nothing but kind words about you in front of the children. And I have ordered him to carefully obey the visitation order. You have nothing to worry about. He wouldn’t disobey the court!”

Nick and I both missed the girls terribly and had to live with the cavernous hole their leaving created in our hearts and our home. But I don’t think he could understand my anguish overlaying my emptiness. Maybe once he becomes a father he can understand that immensity of it.

Together, alone, he and I celebrated each of Jen’s and Erin’s missed birthdays. Sometimes just sitting together on his bedroom floor with a plate of cake and ice dream between us. A sad celebration. We’d blow out a candle together and pray that the girls were safe and happy.


In June, 2006 I watched her graduate. Nick and Jamie and I joined the throng of attendees at Claremont High’s graduation. When they began to award the diplomas, we moved down along the outer edge of the crowd toward the platform. We stood together anxiously scanning the sea of cap-and-gowned students, trying to recognize a face, to no avail.

As the students marched down toward the foot of the platform, they were blocked from our sight by those students standing in the forward rows. As each individual student crossed the couple of strides of open grass before the platform, we had but a few seconds to see if there was any sign of familiarity. Any glimpse of the Erin we knew etched on the face of one of these young ladies. And we could barely make out faces from so far away.


“Is that her?!” we’d ask, clinging to each other. But one by one we dismissed each young lady.


I knew she would be tall. Probably taller than my 5’9”. (She’d been 23” long at birth!) I also knew she would be tanned and probably have long hair. We stretched and jostled in the crowd trying for a brief glimpse of each candidate. For no more than a couple of seconds, a tall, statuesque young lady stepped from the crowd and strode across the open space. Tall, tan, with long brown hair and a lei around her neck.


“Is that her?” I asked, so overwhelmed with emotion that I clung to Nick’s arm to steady myself, fearful I would collapse. “I think that’s her!!!!:


“Where? Where?!” he asked, his voice breaking too.


“Right there! The one with the leis!”


But before I finished the sentence she had moved out of sight. And at that moment they announced, “Erin Elizabeth Rosas!”


We both craned our necks and pushed forward, anxiously striving for just one more glimpse. But she had disappeared out of sight, and the moment was past.


Both of us sighed in disappointment. And tears filled my eyes. My knees went weak.


“Well, at least you got to see her, Mom,” Nick said, noting my sadness.


Suddenly I was overcome with panic. What if I never see her again?! What if that is it. From here, she could move away and disappear forever! Unexpectedly, tears streamed down my face. And Nick slipped an arm around my shoulders and said, “It’s okay mom. Don’t worry. You’ll see her again some day. I know you will.”



And I cling to that promise.




Liz Carson Rosas
4 December 2009