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Of Big Toes and Holy Ghosts |
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Dear all,
People, Karl is doing amazing things. I will get right to the punch line. Yesterday, in the pool, Karl took his first steps; two with his right foot, and one with his left. I was standing about three to four feet away from him, saying, "Alright, little boy, come to Mama!"--just like with little girl Else, who is about to motor around the world herself. Karl grinned, and then it happened. "There it was," said Lois, our physical therapist. "A step with his right foot." And then a little later, "There was another one." And a little later, "There went one with his left."
God is good, and God is healing my sweet baby boy Karl.
Yesterday was a big day, for he also got to ride on a tricycle. Mom saw that, and said that he grinned like never before since the accident. He was supported by Lois, but held on himself to the handles. The pedals moved up and down to give Karl the sensation of movement, and he was moving, just like a three-year-old ought to.
Peggy, the speech therapist, said that she has never seen a child improve his eating skills so rapidly. They have reduced his formula feedings through his stomach tube by half, because they are convinced that he is getting more than enough calories through normal food. I fed him this evening, and do you know what he did? After having drunk at least two ounces with a straw, Karl took another sip, paused, spit it out, looked at me out of the side of his eyes, and laughed. And did it again. Now before, he would have definitely gotten a time out, and a long one at that. This time, I laughed, and let him do it again. And again. And again.
And he knows that he is three. When we ask him how old he is, he smiles and says, "Th."
He continually proves to us that he is cognitively with it. Little Else helped make the point tonight. The two take a bath with one another at the hospital, and Else, lovely, teething Else, was playing nearing Karl's feet. Suddenly, I saw her blonde head shake, and noticed that Karl's big toe was attached to it. "Else, Else, NO! You can't bite Karl's big toe, honey!" I cried. "Karl, are you O.K.?" Delay, delay, delay, and finally, "NOOOOOOOOO." When we got back to the room some 30 minutes later, we had to tell Oma, my Mom, what happened. "Karl," I asked him, "what did we have to tell little girl Else when she bit your big toe?" And with just some delay, he said, "NO."
Do you know, I have been ruminating in these days about my anxious feelings about Karl's recovery. For example, the other day, I was so excited that Karl said, "D!" as he was trying to say, "DEAL," when we were shaking hands that he would be quiet while Else slept in the early a.m. On the one hand I was discouraged, almost to the point of tears, that I was excited about "D," when four months ago he could say "Heilsgeschichte," "salvation history," in German. But on the other hand, Karl did say "D," when the day before he couldn't.
I have told a few people here that the more that I think about such things, the more I think that I am living a distilled version of what any of us live, though most of us have the luxury of putting such thoughts at the periphery of our consciousness. My questions about Karl's recovery that play about in my mind every minute of every day, namely, "Will he keep getting better? For how long? To what extent?" are achingly pertinent, but vary only in nature from the questions I should have had, and did, at some level, before the 19th of June; "Will Karl be O.K. tomorrow? Will Bill be by my side in Sioux Falls?" Even now, the temptation is to think that at least I've gotten my Big One out of the way. But it's not so. Something could easily happen to any one of us to and from the hospital, and such a possibility is no longer unimaginable.
Now that's depressing. And to live like that is not to live, or to live with suffocating paranoia. And it is again to let the devil win.
My son did say D. And I choose (and often it must be a very intentional choice) to make my question instead, "What new will Karl give me today?"
Today he gave me "G." We began our prayers as we always do and have done, beginning them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We invoke God's name twice, for two reasons: One, it makes great right arm exercises, moving the hand two times to the forehead, to each shoulder, and to the heart; and two, because he prefers, and always has, to say, "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy GHOST." And tonight, he said with a smile, "G," as I said "Ghost."
Thank God for the Holy Ghost. I know that this Holy Ghost is breathing through my little boy Karl, and is sighing deeply on our behalf.
I am convinced of this. Here I have no question.
Peace,
Anna
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