Bread & Wine by Shauna Niequist

Author:Shauna Niequist [Niequist, Shauna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310598879
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2013-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

part three

God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

C. S. LEWIS, Mere Christianity

hail mary

Right from the beginning, Mac was a dream—a snuggler, an easy sleeper, a good eater. We had almost twenty visitors at the hospital that first day, and ten the next. Our parents were there most of the day, and then Aaron’s sister brought Henry and his cousin. The Cooking Club came, and they filled the room with baby blankets and outfits, homemade cookies and honeycrisp apples. They wanted to hear every detail while they crowded around the bed. My brother drove out from the city at the end of the day with a fancy bottle of champagne. After the noise and chaos of so many guests had faded, he held Mac for a long time in our silent room, late into the night.

After we came home from the hospital, my mother-in-law and my mom were over all the time, and my dad’s car seemed to drive itself over to our house every day after work. The weather was still warm, the afternoon sun golden and sparkling through the trees, and we went for lots of walks as the shadows extended across the sidewalk.

Our friends and family kept our house full of apples and soup, salad and enchiladas and pumpkin bread. They brought Mac sleepers and blankets, and dropped off gallons of cider and cookies. The Cooking Club filled our freezer with shepherd’s pie and beef bourguignon and spicy tomatillo chicken chili.

The days were a sweet blur of feedings and visits and naps in my arms, folding baby clothes and slicing honeycrisps for Henry. And then when he was ten days old, Mac seemed a little fussy. He wasn’t sleeping as well, and he wanted to be held. He was ten days old, though, and I barely knew him, it seemed, or what was normal for him.

By evening, I was a little more concerned, and every time I took his temperature, it was completely different—over 101 one time, then 97 the next. I thought about swaddling and rocking him and putting him down in the crib. I’d be right there if he needed me since I was still sleeping in the nursery.

I called my neighbor Pam, and she told me to call the doctor. She told me I’d worry all night if I didn’t, and she was right. I hung up the phone and called the doctor. I was fairly certain she’d tell me to give him a little Tylenol maybe, or take him to the office in the morning. But she told me to take him straight to the ER, and to expect blood and urine tests and a lumbar puncture—what used to be called a spinal tap.

She said she was telling me this on the phone so I didn’t freak out when I got to the ER.

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