5.11.2012

jerry

Jerry doesn’t know everything—no one really does, except if they’ve lived it—but she knows a lot. She was there when we announced our pregnancy, then she and her husband, Ta, followed soon thereafter announcing theirs. She was there when Calvin was born six weeks early. She and Ta brought some yummy “outside” food into the hospital, but sadly couldn’t visit Calvin in the NICU since they weren’t family. Besides my brother-in-law who drove up from Connecticut (who also couldn’t see Calvin) they were the only ones to visit us at the hospital in the first few days after Calvin’s birth.

Jerry was there with Ta and their son Oscar and Joe and his twins at Nigel and Kellie’s when Calvin seized, when we called 911, when the children were ushered outside while the paramedics checked on our little blue boy then whisked him away in the ambulance. Calvin lay listlessly on my lap as I reclined on the gurney, Michael following behind in our car. I could see the others disappear around the bend as we drove away. Jerry was just down the road when, later, Calvin had a forty-five minute seizure as we sat at his emergency room bedside crying and kissing him goodbye.

Another time, she was there boasting a brown paper bag full of sushi after Calvin had landed in the pediatric intensive care unit again due to another scary incident of status epilepticus—repeated prolonged seizures. She was there with her hugs and her kisses and her offerings to do anything we needed—anything.

Jerry was there, holding me as I sobbed in her upstairs bedroom with my crying boy while the three March toddlers (Calvin was meant to be born in March) and their friends and parents were celebrating birthdays downstairs. She’s been there to see me struggle to give Calvin his seizure meds, struggle to feed him his food, struggle to get him to sit up, to walk, to stop crying, to stop poking his eye, to stop pulling my hair.

Yesterday, Jerry showed up in my backyard with a beautiful bouquet of lilies that she’d bought for herself but then decided, after reading yesterday’s blog post, that maybe I could use them instead.

No, Jerry doesn’t know everything about what it is like to raise a boy like Calvin, but she sure knows how to be a true friend (and Ta's not too bad either.)

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Give to cure epilepsy: http://www.calvinscure.com

Jerry with her son Nico

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