Wednesday, August 24, 2011

F3-Cycle 45

With Love
~This week’s prompt was to write a story about a protagonist’s determination to not be defeated, and what happens to them as a result~
                The trail behind our house that led up to our big barn was one I traveled often as a child. I used to sit for hours with my dad up in his wood workshop. The way he could sculpt and mold his materials into items of such beauty amazed me. The hum of his tools, or the hum of his voice, was peaceful when intermixed with the laughter of me and my two brothers, the only other of my 5 siblings that cared to accompany dad. The bright sunlight would stream through the cracked windows, illuminating the sparkling dust particles that floated through the air. They were always fascinating to me-how they could just hover above me and then fall so serenely to the floor.  
None of us had any idea then the detriment our summers in the woodshop would cause. I found out soon after I had my baby girl. A hefty scientific name was given to my poor respiratory condition, which had progressed through out my high school years, and then, once I had to begin living for someone other than myself, I had to fight for that freedom.
She came 8 weeks early, weighing barely more than two pounds, and being just over 13 inches long. The experience of having her pulled from my numb body was surreal, it felt so odd. My circumstances weren’t normal, and it was a wonder either of us survived at all. She was so tiny, her daddy could hold her in the palm of his hand, and she remained in the hospital for months after her birth.
When the full weight of my problems descended, I remember being greedy for my daughter’s life. She had made it home, and now I was dying. I wasn’t ready. I wanted to live at least until she was 18. The thought, though, was ludicrous. The doctor said if I made it three years, I would be lucky. Numbers and milestones I would never see swirled around my mind. Until she entered high school, when she became a teenager…13 is a good age. No, I thought, even that is hoping for too much. I finally settled on 10 years old. I wanted the bulk of her childhood.
It was that decision, the choice to live for my daughter long enough to make it count, that propelled me on through the worst and weakest times. Several instances I thought I wouldn’t make it. The exhaustion, even while doing nothing but talking, was overpowering. My disease pushed me to my limit, but my daughter raised that bar of just how much I could handle.
Even though I had fight, times were not easy. Much testing and traveling and trials and interviews resulted in my being put on the lung transplant waiting list. Once entered, I was expected to have to be on oxygen for a year before I had a donor. I spent that year being thankful for being able to watch my baby grow. The procedure came and went with minor complications. Luckily, my body took to the one lung they were able to fit in my chest. Eventually, with the aid of much medicine, many people, and countless oxygen tanks, I was able to make it through recovery.
The help didn’t cease for the rest of my life. My daughter was my love. She truly made me happy and made my reasonably short life complete. I remember the night the last ambulance came. I hadn’t been feeling well, and I knew when I was about to go down. Like always, as requested, the ambulance arrived sans sirens, and my husband ushered the men down the hall to where I was sitting on my bedside. They were efficient and wanted no delays, but I made them stop long enough to ask. She was looking on from the side of the doorway, knowing not to come any further. I couldn’t have that, not that time.
“Come here, sweetheart.” I drew her to me for what I knew might be the last. “How about a smile for Mommy?” I asked, desperate to wipe that equally desperate look off her face.
 I knew she was torn, thinking this was simply protocol, that I would be back in a couple days like normal, but also knowing what’s possible. She delivered a pretty smile, though, and seconds later I was on the stretcher watching the ceiling as I was rushed away. The alcoves really needed dusting.
”You have to take care of her.” I dumbly told my husband over and over again. She was all I could think of.
Now, I wake up from my dreams to stare at the pristinely clean white ceiling of the hospital room. At some point my husband starts talking about how our little girl is turning ten today. She won’t be opening the presents I got her yet, though. Her grandparents are with her, so I know she’s in good hands. I don’t want her seeing me like this. I want her memories of me to be free of what I am now. Someone holds my hand as I fall asleep. I wake sporadically with fits of coughing, but only long enough to absorb a few minutes of pain until the darkness takes over again.
I made it, though. I lasted ten years longer than anyone thought I would. I overcame my disease and I pushed forward for my daughter. I am a survivor. I have been strong, and I hope some of that rubs off on her. She, and my love for her, enabled me to accomplish the impossible. I have not been conscious for at least a few days, but I know I lasted long enough. I am grateful, and my last breath is filled with triumphant thoughts, hope, and love for the one who taught me how to survive.
“If God were not entirely fair, how would he be qualified to judge the world?”
Romans 3:6

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
Romans 8:28

Friday, August 5, 2011

F3 - Cycle 42 - I'm Late

Letting  Go and Letting God

Amazed by what she lost, Hannah Sharpe stares at the girl sitting across from her. Maya, oblivious to her acquaintance’s anguish, chats casually about anything that comes to mind. As she works to sufficiently contribute to the conversation, Hannah’s caught between enjoying the moment and dreading the future because she knows the moment won’t last.
                “So, what’s your major now that you’re transferring?” Maya asks.
                “English.” Hannah responds. “I always kind of had it in the back of my mind but wasn’t confident enough to declare it.” She smiles. “Do you know what you want to do?”
                “Nope.” Maya sighs. “No idea.”
                “It’ll come to you.”
                “I sure hope so.”
                Hannah wishes she knew what to say next, but then Maya simply moves on to another subject and keeps going. After a while, the room starts to fill up with others arriving at the party, and Maya soon gets lost in the throngs of people, her many friends surrounding her. Hannah, sort of out of her element and bummed out, searches the crowd for some of her own friends, if she can even call them that, and checks her phone incessantly. Eventually, they show up, and Hannah tries to have a good time, but whenever she sees Maya, her heart sinks a little.
                Hannah has never had a really close friend and she knows that Maya could have been it. Angry at herself, she tells her friends she’s heading out and makes her way, slowly, to the door. Weaving through the masses proved harder than she thought it would be. Halfway there, Maya spots her and looks at her expectantly, probably wondering where she is going.
                “I’m taking off.” Hannah yells over the music. “It was cool seeing you again!”     
                “Oh, you too, totally!” Maya yells back.
                Hannah wants nothing more than to just blurt out everything, all of her regrets, how much she wishes she could just go back in time and make things right, but the blaring music and common sense quickly dissuade her.
                “Good luck with school!” She says, making to walk away, and then inwardly kicking herself for doing so.
                “Thanks! You, too!” Maya laughs and starts dancing again. “We should meet up if we’re ever both in town again.”
                “Yeah, that would be cool.” Hannah hides any trace of excitement.
                “Alright, then, I’ll see you around!”
                “See you around!” Hannah turns and heads for the door, knowing that they will never both be in town again at the same time. Going to different colleges a country apart usually keeps people at a pretty good distance.
                Hannah she knew she was too late, that Maya was no longer the young girl who wanted Hannah’s friendship more than anything else, all those years ago. Why did it have to take so long for it to hit her that she was making such a massive mistake? The regret that plagued her now, it was futile. She couldn’t do anything about it now. She was too late. The opportunity was long gone, any potential for a friendship she ruined for herself when she denied Maya access into her life. What had her problem been?
                Hannah drove home slowly, unable to recall why she never took the last step between her and Maya. It could have been because she was shy, that Maya was sort of intimidating, but that didn’t seem right. Thinking the whole way home, Hannah gave up. She could think of no justifiable reason as to why she now had to live with this huge regret. There must have just been a wall. Thinking back, Hannah had been sort of numb to everything going on around her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be friends with Maya, it was that she didn’t particularly care to be friends…with anybody. Oh, and now, oh how she wants to go back and scream at herself to wake up. She could have had it all.
Hannah wonders where she had been all these years. She always knew she should do something about Maya, try again, but the desire was never like this. She wishes it had been when there was still a chance, because then she would have done everything possible to make up for her failure. She almost would have rather never come to this realization than come to it too late.
                Getting out of her car and quietly making her way into her parent’s house and up into her bedroom, Hannah wishes the summer were over so she could go back to school and not think about her mistakes. Lying in bed, she cries, and prays. She prays a lot, desperate, not sure why she is feeling this way all of the sudden.
                She prays to get rid of the regret, giving her burdens to God, and she prays for a friend like the one she lost for herself. She wants God’s will for her life, and eventually she starts to realize that maybe her regret over Maya is a part of it. Through her suffering, Hannah learned to lean on God, and she figured that if God could manifest this odd love in her for a friend she never had, then He could certainly help her love her actual family better than she already does. She decided to take it all as a lesson, and trusted that God has a plan for her that surpasses anything she could ever imagine, and that maybe, just maybe, Maya had already done her part.