ANNOY
Sarah Fehr
I
leaned my cheek against the cold glass,
looking up, observing as if from a separate
world the shower of bright sparks against
the evening sky. A moment later, in the distance, a
muffled boom echoed.
Oh yeah, the Fourth, I whispered to myself.
How strange that anyone out there would
be celebrating…well, celebrating anything.
Stranger still that had things gone differently a
few days ago, I would have been out there with
them. Slapping mosquitoes, oohing and ahhing,
enduring the bone-jarring reverberations in the
twilight.
I turned my gaze back inside to the sparse waiting
room. It was late enough that everyone had either
gone home or claimed a hard vinyl chair next to
their baby as sleeping quarters for the night.
Thankfully, I had family nearby. It was time to
go back to our temporary home, refill the air
mattress for the night, maybe throw in a load of
laundry, and then collapse in exhausted sleep.
We found our car more easily than usual in the
darkened parking garage. Must be the holiday, I
thought as our doors thudded shut.
We pulled out onto the highway with a growing
sense of familiarity not only with the route but also
with each other. Surprisingly, our newborn child’s
birth defect and all it involved had drawn my
husband and me closer together than ever before.
It’s a miracle; I thought — all those prayers. Usually,
stress was the catalyst for heightened emotions,
misunderstandings and the cold distance between us.
As we headed “home,” weary, I contemplated the
sudden change. All the little things that used
to raise my blood pressure seemed about as
crucial as dust. Opening the washer only to find
that SOMEONE had not put it in the dryer like I
had hoped last night. Being treated to whiskers
dotting the sink after an electric shave. Seeing my
attempts at organization deteriorating bit by bit,
day by day.
Now it was all upside down. We weren’t even in
our own home. We were borrowing a washer and
dryer. He didn’t bother with shaving every day in
DOZ Magazine | January 2019
our haste to get to the hospital each morning. Our
small living space crowded with piles of clothes.
One for his shirts, my shirts. His pants, my pants.
His unmentionables, mine. Our dirty laundry. The
piles shifted daily as if some giant were playing
cards with them.
I felt my husband’s hand in the darkness, warm in
mine as we neared our temporary abode. All those
little things, they seemed almost laughable now.
Who cares? I just want our baby to live another
day, I thought. I wanted him to eventually become
free from the tubes, cords, and IVs that seemed
to tether him to his hospital bed. Be able to come
home, to our real home, to be held and snuggled as
babies should. To use the new crib and changing
table set in his room where I hung the little curtain
I was so proud of making on my own.
I heard the crunch of gravel as we pulled in the
driveway, and somewhere I knew in the back of
my mind that the days would come where once
again the annoyances of life would plague us. One
way or another life would return to some form
of normal, with all the banalities that normalcy
brings with it. Everyday life would creep in on us
and swamp us down the road.
But not right now. Not right now.
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