Second star to the right…

I’m sorry for slipping out right in the middle of a series. Josiah had some complications with his cecostomy tube that necessitated a late night emergency department visit Tuesday night and subsequent admission on Wednesday morning. Amazingly and gratefully the surgeons were able to get to him early in the day on Wednesday and fix things and we got to come home. It was certainly unexpected. I ended up being awake for over thirty hours due to our normal day on Tuesday plus the ER for 13 hours and so on. By the time I thought I’d get to curl up and rest at the hospital, they were releasing him. Needless to say, I don’t recommend it. It definitely sent our week spinning about!

I plan to draw the winner of the Restful Teaching series tomorrow, February 2nd. Every comment on any of the Wonder and Inquiry posts is an entry- I will also grant entries for shares on social media (please tag me so I can see it). You have until tomorrow to enter!

The series itself will not come to an end, but I will draw the winner. To be honest, I feel as if I’ve moved a bit fast and crammed a lot of information into a few posts which probably feels overwhelming. Coincidentally, I felt the same way leaving the workshop. It was a good way to make one’s brain hurt, so much to think about and consider and contemplate- but it is a tremendous lot to take in. It has taken me three months to even begin to “narrate” what I’ve learned! So, I’m going to apply the brakes a bit and have a post a week dedicated to the Wonder and Inquiry series and return to a more eclectic mix of posts so that there is time to digest and talk together. Above all, I’d love for it to be a conversation- what we’re all learning on this journey: what pitfalls we’re struggling with, what we’ve found to go well, our favorite resources. I’m not just standing on some box here, jabbering. (At least, I hope! 😉 )

I was thinking about this path we’ve chosen during the crazy pre-dawn hours in the ER. (It was so slammed. That pneumonia/cold virus hit very hard in our area and it was certainly reflected at the ER. So many little ones, struggling to breathe! The nurses and doctors were run near ragged.) We were pretty sure that Josiah was going to be admitted, so he stayed awake at first, even though it was creeping past his bedtime. I usually bring a small collection of things to entertain him, but he was interested in none of it- he wanted to do math homework, of all things.

Math!? I wondered at this at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. He is at an age that he understands exactly what is going on when we get to the ER, that there will be pain, and eventually (a loonnnng eventually, in most cases) they will fix the discomfort and pain and we’ll get out. But there is never really an answer one way or the other as to the timing of things. The only identifiable characteristic of these hospitalizations for him is their very uncertainty. And he’s also at an age that he is falling madly in love with math- with numbers- with the very language of it, the certitude that this and this is always that and if you do this the number always does that. When I saw it that way, his late night craving for math made sense- his way of controlling the uncontrollable. It made me think of the Apollo 13 movie and Jim Lovell’s wife saying to him that when he was on the far side of the moon [on a previous mission] she vacuumed the living room floor over and over until they made radio contact. The ways we find to cope.

Later on in the wee smas, they wanted a contrast dye x-ray of his port and tube. He had been asleep for awhile, angry and groggy. I hated waking him up. He began “coming to” as we were passing from the ER into the Radiology ward, which is decorated in an undersea theme. There are fish, dolphins, manta rays, coral, and a bunch of other things painted on every surface. The windows are even shaped like port holes. He looked about and asked me if I thought that Professor William Waterman Sherman would have seen creatures like this on his trip [across the Pacific before he crashed on Krakatoa.] The tech of course is giving us quite a funny look, a bit lost. I answer Josiah that I thought maybe he might have seen the bigger ones looking down from the balloon, but he wouldn’t have been able to see the smaller ones. At this, the tech is looking at us both with a positively quizzical look on her face.

I sheepishly explain to her that it’s from a book we’re reading together, called The Twenty One Balloons. “It’s a made up story about a guy….”- Josiah cuts in and starts telling her the story. He continues telling the story as more techs and a doctor file in, sucking them all into the story as they work. It completely distracted him from the not-so-fun stuff, and when he got a bit queasy from the dye process, he compared himself to the Professor, who at one point makes the mistake of breathing in yucky gases from the volcano while riding a balloon airy-go-round. [You’d have to read the book!] He had the whole room asking him what happened next, at which he gave his classic joyful grin and said, “I don’t know, mommy hasn’t read it to me yet!”

More than one tech remarked on his recall of the story, and one even said, “Now I have to go find that book! I want to find out what happened next!” They all asked me how he could remember such an involved story. I just shrugged my shoulders, because it’s not like I make a regular practice of having them narrate. We use narration within an Institute for Excellence in Writing framework, but I do not require them to narrate everything they read to me. I was impressed myself! He was remembering details I had already forgotten.

Later, after he had been released and we were headed home, I got stuck in traffic due to some boffin DOT workers. He said (with perfect comedic timing, I might add) “what fools these mortals be!” in his best dramatic voice. The line is from Act 3, Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of Shakespeare’s comedies. We’ve been learning small sections using How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, and this particular line has sort of become a running joke in our family, each kid putting his own spin on how Puck might of said it. I’m including Ellianna’s below because it is just too cute! But it was just so funny! His sense of humor lightened the frustrating situation. I was on hour thirty one of no sleep at that point and it made me laugh so hard I cried.

A video posted by Joy (@artoftheeveryday) on Jan 6, 2016 at 1:21pm PST

For such a difficult time and a particularly long, wearying week, all these moments that happened with Josiah were such shots of encouragement to me. I’m so grateful we have this family well of stories and culture to share in the hard moments.  This path of wonder leads to moments of joy. I can keep on keeping on when things get difficult if there are moments like this to be had, even in the most unlikeliest of places and hours! Second star to the right and straight on till Morning! 

This is the seventh entry in the Wonder and Inquiry Series.