We had just moved to the wilds of Shropshire, with a two-week old baby and two pre-schoolers, and everything was new. My husband was beginning to concentrate on his music full-time, and the two eldest children had just started in a new preschool. There was time for the dust to settle. But I still had a nagging feeling that something was wrong. I felt vulnerable, because I had left my home, my safe space, and arrived at this new place that was wonderful but big and full of unfamiliar curtains and smells. I was craving somewhere to hibernate with my new-born and I didn’t feel safe yet but we had to hit the ground running. Looking back, it felt like we were waiting for something.
And then just four weeks after we moved, our daughter Ivy was diagnosed with Type I diabetes. We didn’t understand how our confident, beautiful, articulate two year old daughter who had never even been to the doctor suddenly had this thing in her that was broken and that would never go back to normal. They told us she would have to have four injections and multiple blood tests every day for the rest of her life.
And straight away, that first night when she had to go to hospital with her Daddy and I was sat in the house in the dark, with the boys in their beds, I prayed for her because I was her mother and I was utterly helpless to look after her. But also, because there was nothing else I could do. So I slept (or mostly not slept) in the bed by myself, an uncertain four year old Sam coming to join me in the night, because he was unused to sleeping in the bedroom without his sister.
And it was like learning to walk again. I remember walking out of the children’s ward in the October sunshine thinking that I felt more scared than when we walked out of hospital with our first-born son. We felt that we didn’t know how to look after her any more. But we learnt again. And we felt a deeper love for her, a new realisation of how precious and fragile life is.
Type I
Walking out of hospital
on a cold but bright day,
clutching armfuls of her silly things;
Mr Carrot and Mr Strawberry,
her walking ahead of us
all jolly and bright,
singing even
in the October dusk,
and us following behind,
tearful and uncertain.
The bag of drugs they give us
to take home is almost as big as she is
and I feel more afraid than I did
when our first-born came home,
swaddled with blankets and worry,
as the silver Sharan carried him.
Because really we do not know what is coming, none of us know what is around the corner, but as a Christian, I believe that a special grace comes from God for when we cannot cope, and those that are the smallest among us often have brave and unknown ways of dealing with hard things. Ivy is a fearless girl, she takes it all in her stride; she astounds me daily.
And it brings to mind that May morning a year or two ago, wandering around RHS Wisley near where we used to live. The blossoms were out and in the Wild Garden, the paths wove around and opened out into secret little places where there would be the most lavish and beautiful blooms, deep pink and white and purple and yellow. It was extravagantly beautiful; breath-taking. And I felt that it was an illustration of life, in a way. It is not a straight path, and we don’t know what is around the next corner. And there are good things, all the time there are good things, and there are hard things too. But some things are even more beautiful because they were unexpected, because we did not see them coming, and this is the surprise of joy. Those moments that you forgot to notice, the hysterics around the dinner table, the stolen kiss on her cheek as you check her blood sugars for the third time that night, the walk on the hill in the bracing wind. So we keep walking, all the time fighting this invisible fight, being thankful for the little moments as we go.
Trembling Heart
I held you to me on the bed and smelt your hair, felt your lightness,
as your father bustled in the darkness for your favourite things.
We had been to the doctors that afternoon and he rang as we were driving home
to the clear light, where the town stopped and the hills began.
I saw the phone number flash up on the screen and I knew it was serious.
Something far down in me had sensed that it wasn’t going to go away,
but I wasn’t prepared to listen to that, wasn’t ready to have you here like this,
breathing against me like a baby bird.
Your father had brought you home from the hospital.
It was late at night and he had to take you back again.
His face was white, and he wasn’t thinking straight.
and I held you on the bed thinking this is the last time;
the last time that you are mine,
that you do not have diabetes,
that everything is ok.
I kissed you goodbye and sent you off
to that white unforgiving hospital
while I stayed home for the baby,
but I remember holding you on that bed,
The drum of my heart was loud,
and I was so small in your arms
and all I had left was this helplessness.
These poems are available in my book There You Are, a collection of 34 hand lettered and illustrated poems about motherhood. You can find it here.
elisabeth pike 