The back seat of my car is actually pretty comfortable. I have my shoes off, my glasses off, even my mask, and I have located a few towels and picnic blanket to use as a pillow. My cell phone I clutch to my chest as I drift in and out of consciousness in the wee hours, waiting on a text or call from Ellie. She is on the inside, where I brought her three hours ago, and I am on the out, curled up in a ball in the back seat of my vehicle in the parking lot of the ER. “Increased unexplained abdominal pain,” I told the front desk lady from eight feet away, both of us only eyes at each other. If I sound medical, will they take her sooner? “Four days, no fever, loss of appetite, distended abdomen, lower right quadrant.” Ellie is standing by my side. Trying to look grown up. Trying to look polite and not in pain. Wanting relief and a diagnosis, but probably not so keen on the process it’s going to take to get that. She and I have both been on WebMed for days and our brains are full of bad news. I’m with you daughter, let’s go home and sleep it off. Front desk lady wants my credit card and insurance information and that-will-be-all-have-a-good-night. We are both staring at her racoon-faced. So that’s that, then. Ellie squeezes my hand. “S’okay Mumma. You can go home.”

It’s 1:47 a.m. and I am going to walk out this ER lobby, surprisingly peopled and well-lit, and go home? The thought is absurd. For a while I stand on the sidewalk outside the large bay windows looking in, while my girl, in pain, sits stiffly in the waiting area for the first hour. Then I move from the sidewalk closer to the building and stand in the mulch and boxwoods at the base of the window. Watching her gaze until it meets mine. She looks at me with sad eyes and a smallish smile behind her mask. I am trying not to lose it right here in the bark mulch. Made worse when I realize she is not waving back, with that little hand motion she is shooing me away. “S’okay Mumma. S’okay. Go home.” I always dawn slowly. But I want to honor my girl, so I put my head down, hands in pockets and move away. Two masked nurses at a little card table out front, eyeing me funny standing in their shrubbery. With their gun-shaped forehead thermometers and foaming hand sanitizer, looking like they’re out there at 2 am to hand you an “I voted today!” sticker as you depart. Saying with their eyes, don’t go there. I want to rip the little cardboard “STOP” sign off their table and wave it like a flag for the world to stop. Stop this disease. Stop the madness. Stop the pain and give me back my kid.

I climb back into the car and just sit for a while. Awaiting word, which is what you’re supposed to do at a hospital. Normally in stiff lobby chairs or at the patient’s bedside, but you wait on a word. On news. From her college world I am well versed on all the information I cannot get here, all the decisions I cannot make, all the ways my daughter’s health and body are her own. Came out o’ my body and been cutting that cord ever since. For some reason, here at the hospital it’s easier. Once you do get past the voter registration gals, the ER personnel are speaking humanity and common sense: “Mom, we tells you whatever she tells us we can tell you.” I am nodding and trying not to tear up eyes that are suddenly so, so tired. That’s a relief. Good policy. Still, it will be her and her alone reading disclaimers and legal papers alone. It will be her alone signing all those pre-op forms that spell out the rare complications of paralysis or death. It will be girl alone getting herself into a little gown for all the tests and evaluations, her alone who waits all these hours on a doc to come through with a diagnosis, and Ellie, my girl, they will put on a gurney bed and wheel to pre-op, all alone. I wait, a valet in want of more relevant employ, dozing in the back seat of my car.

Luckily I briefed her on this reality on the way to the ER. Crash course in (what little I know) on being an adult in a hospital. Crash course in (little I know) on being an in-patient. Extra lesson on changes to procedure in the time of Covid, which is like nothing any of us know. Like, Ellie, you will probably go this one alone. They probably aren’t going to let me in there. “It’s ok, Mumma,” she says, riding with her head back, eyes closed, both hands clamping her tummy that has been hurting for days. “I got my mask.” She holds up the container of Chlorox wipes she grabbed on the way out the door and gives me a weak smile,” I’ll be fine.” I am so sorry that the second time this child has left the house in ten weeks it is accompanied by germ killer and pain. What is this? I did not pack those. Did you pack those? Of all the Phase I outings I have been imagining and fun things we can do now, this was not on the list. Not at all. I sink down helpless and exhausted in the front seat of my car. Who does that? Who drops off their kid at the emergency room and goes home? Honestly! My mind goes to snacks and a book to read. Things I should have thought of to bring for her to do/have while waiting. I think about popping home to pack her a little tote with her favorite items and coming back. I think about those days way long ago, when I dropped her at nursery school and picked her up three hours later. Hi honey! How was your day at school?

I loved the days of planning and caring for them at home. So much of our wee ones’ world was of our own creation. Nasty ol’ world kept at bay. Each day orchestrated and what I didn’t plan, didn’t happen. Then they grow, gradually disabusing you of the notion that you have any control or say in the matter. Then the teenage years when exactly everything I planned did not happen. That was good weaning from my delusions as a parent. Although…now that the world is ponying up its plans for the day, acute appendicitis with an under-threat of Corona, I have to say mine are better. Let’s go home, Ellie, and back to bed so we can go strawberry picking tomorrow.

From my outpost I watch the night. It’s a soft spring evening and the air is mild. Ambient lighting from the planters and industrial landscaping glows warmly from below, could almost be deck lighting to a luxury hotel. The place is surprisingly alive for two am. Cars come in and leave again, or slowly drive through the parking lot, driver peering up at the wall of windows of the hospital, some lit, some dark. From where I sit the front of the building looks a little like a Zoom gallery view. Nameless tiles on a grid–some on, some off. There are three ambulances in the bay, stationary with lights flashing. Are there patients inside them, waiting for a bed? Is Ellie still waiting? I peer through the layers of glass (windshield-doorway-waiting room lobby) to the last place I saw her, but the chair is empty. Oh please, oh please turn on video.

As the sounds settle and I grow accustomed, I realize many of the cars around me are occupied by one or maybe two just like me. Maybe not worried mamas, but probably the people their patient put down as “next of kin.” We are all waiting, vigil-like in our cars in this virtual waiting room. From time to time I can hear talking, low voices, sips of a cell phone conversation. I can hear rustling and an occasional cough. As it grows quieter still, I can hear other people breathing. It is a soothing sound. That’s when I decide to stay, slip off my shoes and climb into the back seat for my little bed. Waiting rooms are supposed to be a little uncomfortable, yes? I stretch out as much as a Rav 4 will allow and think, this one is actually pretty comfortable. As I drift off to sleep a text comes through from Ellie. She is being seen. Twenty minutes later, she is waiting on lab results. Forty minutes later. They’re prepping her for a CT scan. Neither of us will sleep this night. Now the results are in and they’re waiting for an attending physician to attend. I’ll do it! I’ll attend. Better than you, buddy. I’m on this one like glue. Another hour I get this text: “Okay so it’s appendicitis. They’re keeping me overnight and I’m having surgery in the morning. You can head home.” Huh. How about that. See those paramedics moving round the ambulances over there? I suppose I can also clock one of them over the head, steal a uniform like they do in the movies and sneak into the ER, but neither option is very appealing. In the end, I decide to go with Ellie’s request and drive home.

This is not my girl’s first solo trip. Ironically, I just detailed a couple of those in a previous post. They may get good at going alone, but a parent never gets better at taking leave. For this “trip” as well, Ellie is connected to me by her cell phone, a six-year-old Samsung $159 phone. Mine is not much better. Tonight it is our lifeline. I have learned the hard way that even it can fail. Sidebar: Things you do not text your mom while crossing DC on your first solo metro trip to meet your family, involving multiple line and station changes on a busy Friday evening: “I’ll have to turn my phone off now. I only have 15% battery left.” Whaaaat?! Bill hadn’t even pulled the car over three lanes of city traffic before I am leaped out into a sea of people and headlights of Farragut North because I saw that one fuzzy head in the crowd. Technology is a crutch. I’ve drawn them both paper maps, written out instructions, directions, hammered them orally as if I am programming their innards to know and function without fail, should circumstances arise and technology go down. For the past nine weeks I’ve been thinking it was high time for the Ellis Island lesson, or at least a refresher, and I’m sorry I didn’t give it to her before loading her into the car tonight. It is this: Child of mine, you are deeply-prepared and well-launched. You carry with you my every pride, every hope, every prayer. The years, the moments leading up to this one, they are in you, and this is your time to draw on them. Trust the God who made you and loves you, and GO. Your life seems huge to me, Ellie, I wrote at her graduation two years ago. Like every smitten mother on the planet, mine is the best. She is. You are well-launched, daughter. Here is my blessing: Go on without me. Go on. I’ll be along.

I don’t know why this sentiment is so strong in me. Melodrama of the parking lot mood lighting? Mostly tonight I just want to be in that hospital room with all its weird smells and strange equipment. I want to be by my daughter’s side. She wouldn’t ask me anything, and she would tell me less, but I could be there. When Sophie went through a blood transfusion in the middle of the night at the pediatric ER at MCV, I all but climbed into the bed with Chester the therapy dog. I couldn’t angle myself close enough to cradle my child once again and she was all limbs and long bones in the bed. But I tried. In sickness sometimes they let down their guard and give up on de-momming you. I don’t like to miss those moments, as they are so rare and few. Later when I text with Ellie not long after her surgery, they have brought her broth and ice cream, catering to the two patients in the bed: the young woman and the 6-year-old.

The Ellis Island story (and its attendant moral) is this: Once upon a time a mom and three children met grandma in the city, the BIG city, NYC for a field trip on the way to New England for a spring break. It was a cold rainy April, and we had our raincoats on the whole ride out on the Staten Island ferry. Windy and cold. The views of the Manhattan skyline pricked the fog as we approached the Statue of Liberty. We toured the island. Lots of crowds and milling people. We went inside the immigration building and made our way through the human stream, headed for the informational video as our start place. Big, boisterous four year old needs a potty, doesn’t want another second of sitting in the dark hearing about the potato famine and has blown through his lollypop hold-over. I go out with him, leaving grandma and girls in the theater. Of course we will meet them when the movie is over. Of course they will come out, my three, and we will continue the visit through the various galleries and exhibits laid out in the large hall teeming with people.

But they don’t come out. The minutes tick. The throng swells. No Mamie, no girls. Theater has long emptied. The building we’re in is three floors tall, with several levels that hold galleries at each end. Think gigantic train station with exhibit bays. No walls, just a vast open space. You can see almost everywhere over the heads of the crowd, unless they’ve started through the galleries. Or unless they’re under four feet tall. Thousands of people, including three I am quite fond of. Where are they? I decide to go it alone, with boy. We will start through the exhibits and either catch up with them, or they will catch up with us. We’ll keep our eyes out (so out it will be as though they are detachable from our heads), knowing they will keep an eye out for us, and we will each of us, in our party, make our way through and rejoin at the end. Such was my thinking. I trusted their resilience, I trusted them to handle the sitch like mini pragmatists, concerned about mom but also carried away by all the cool information and stuff to learn. I knew that my school-teacher mother would have no problem guiding them through, educating solo and probably happier to do so. I knew they wouldn’t separate from her. Would they?? 

The quick end: Eventually I spy Ellie across the entire building, high up on the second or third tier, holding Mamie’s hand and preparing to go down the metal stairs. She is so far away! Will is too heavy to lift and carry and so I shout across the throng. She sees me and waves! I see her! I see them! “Mamma!” And then in flash, she breaks free of my mother’s hand and is bounding down the stairs–alone! Three flights of stairs into a sea of people. Once she reaches the ground level she is gone from view again, the crowd swallows her up. Frantically I descend with William the stairs on our side and weave-push-excuse-me my way through the lobby to the other side. When I reach it, breathless, I push into mom and Sophie, but now, no Ellie. My nine-year-old has disappeared. This time I don’t try for calm. I let the panic and anger and desperation, big as the Hudson Bay, wash over me. Mom undone. Until I catch sight of the back of her and spin a her around for a fierce lecture. But I cannot take a swing–I can’t get leverage for she is clinging to me too tight.

The trauma that day became a lesson for me, and I hope for my girls. I call it the “Ellis Island lesson.” It is this: Stay the course, even if the variables change. You were fine. You were safe. I had wanted them to go it alone with their grandma. I had expected they would. To dig deeper into the disaster and find a way through. To put aside the unchosen reality and persevere, even manage to thrive (Hell-o, quarantine!), still look at the exhibits, still learn, still engage, and finish the purpose for which we came. To go on ahead without me and be well. To know that I would be along. It is every parents’ desire.

Back in the day we used to sharpie their bellies. Their name, my name and a phone number. Trusting the world not to take them, but to keep them for us till we got back. Like an indelible luggage tag right their under their T-shirts. Disney dream vacation tip #57. Sophie was mortified when I proposed the same during our trip to France two summers ago, but by then she was 17! She also didn’t speak or understand a word of French and wanted to go it alone on the ramparts and through the narrow streets of St Michel. Really? Must we? What is it about the go-solo years? Sure ‘nough, when our touring group of six gets to the end of the tour and realizes Sophie has straggled (or has she run ahead?) and is gone. Oh great, I think, the human traffickers have finally won the day. Read page 104 of the manual, girls. Daughters should daughter. Not flaunt their “me free” in your face. I was so scared my beautiful blond American would be the victim of my ghastly thoughts that I had her carry a little piece of paper. Je m’appele Sophie. Je suis perdue. Si’il vous plait, aidez-moi. With Camille, little French wildman who could have easily come loose in Kings’ Dominion or on the streets of Washington DC, I wrote out the same little paper for him in English. (Don’t tell him but in his case I put the wrong phone number!) Hello, adult I’ve known from birth. Know this: I will love you to the ends of the earth, and I will never leave you.

I believe that 10 years and some since that trip Ellie has learned the lesson. There are signs. She text-fusses at me to go home. “It’s late Mumma, go home and get some sleep.” She is being shuttled around the bays of the ER, blood tests, urinalysis, finally a CT scan, hours between these and then some more for the results, and what is she worried about? Her old mother out there in the parking lot. I so wanted to be the friend or relative–or parent, for goodness sake–by her side taking notes and making sure to record everything the doctor said. Ellie’s quickly donned that hat as well, and her texts are filled with medical terms and results. “I didn’t know what he meant by that so I looked it up.” You go, Ellie my one. Of course you did. A+ on your Ellis Island project. I am nothing but a spot warmer in the parking lot digging for my keys to drive home.

Later that day I get a video call from the patient in Room 2110. She is watching crime shows and eating chipped ice for her on-fire throat. It is very sore from the anesthesia tube. In a raspy “Hey you! bring me a martini” voice she tells me about her nurses, what their names are, what they are like, when they came on and when they go off, what they have done so far, what she remembers about pre-op and about when she woke up. Mainly, she is fretting about an oral presentation which is her final grade in French on Monday. Both of us such pragmatists, we briefly (briefly!) considered running back up the stairs for her notes and study materials to take to the hospital. It was clear that night she wasn’t running anywhere, and clear now from the pain meds that French will be en retard. “Mom, can you pick me up at nine tomorrow?” Can you come right at nine or earlier, so I can maybe come home and take that test? If I don’t log in by 10:15 I’m late.” Oh, my dear sweet daughter who’s just passed a life test on how to be an adult in the ER, you have much studied. Much covered. Tomorrow’s lesson on “Ins and Outs of Discharge” will have to wait. On video chat she shows me all the tubes and wires still connected to her, saline drip, the pain meds and the milligrams and what they gave her last night and this morning when, shortly after I got out of a shower and crawled into bed around 4 am, she woke up across town in sudden unmistakeable pain that consented to and confirmed the impending surgery. In that crucible she turned from anxious to decided, from denial to determined: Bring it on. Like life, what pain did then: it opened the door to the unknown and without looking back she stepped through it.

Once home, I first text my daughter, who demanded it (“so I know you’re safe”). I make sure my ridiculous cell phone is charging; I set my alarm so I ‘ll be awake when my daughter goes under the knife across town. Will I get to talk to her? Will a doctor call and will I ever meet her? Or him? Will they wheel her out 24 hours later and park her on the sidewalk, fully discharged, a light rain just beginning, to wait for mom’s camp-n-ride shuttle to pull up out front? The answer to all of these questions is Yes, but I do not know that yet. For this night, I, too, fall open to the unknown. Mom undone. Is it significant that my last heroic action that night was to burst from my car, rip the battery charger from my phone and carry it like a live organ into the ER (same bouncer nurses giving me the ol’ Covid shuffle at 3 am!) and approach a new lady at the desk? “Can I see her?” Negative. “Well, can you give her this?” Lady goes in the back to flush out Ellie’s nurse. Trey. Got his 20 oz Coke and a set of jangly car keys in hand and an “I’m almost off” stance. Here is the nurse who’s tended Ellie for the past three hours, who has been where I could not go. I resist the urge to hug him, grab his arm, break down, wipe his nose, bake him a cake. Mom reflex firing in random overdrive. “Oh, that’s good, mom,” he says. What?? Do I have the word stamped on my forehead? “Sure, I can take her that. She’s good. She’s a little emotional right now. If you been texting her, that’s good. Keep doing that.” I look at him like he slipped a knife in my gut with this talk of my daughter suffering. Cue the music, roll camera and make sure you get a close up of “mom” hurdling the desk and storming the inner chambers of the ER.

But then I remember, the Ellis Island Lesson has two parts, not just one. The child must go on, trust the world to be good to her. Must have the courage and the confidence not to miss anything by looking back. But the parent has a job, too. To trust the process. To come along. And to let go.