A New Day Has Come

There is a reason why I never speak about Lizzy and Cecilia’s father.  For most of Lizzy’s life I was trapped in a broken marriage with someone who never wanted to be a husband or a father. As a result, I was a single mother to Lizzy while I was still married and a divorced single mother to Cecilia for the first three years of her life. I have only ever known parenting from the perspective of a mother who needs to do it all alone . . . all the time. 

Until this past year.

The man that I am now married to is named Peter, and he is my true husband. I find that I honor, appreciate, love, and need him more with every day that passes. Our relationship grew out of a strong foundation of friendship and a mutual desire to prioritize parenting above all else.

Blending families over the past year has alternated between being a dream come true and a living nightmare. I have taken Peter’s seven-year-old son as my son; he has taken Cecilia as his daughter. The nuances involved in parenting a child that is not yours by birth are extremely complex and fraught with difficulty, especially given that these children both come from broken marriages and traumatic histories.

And then there is Gabriella, half sister to both her brother and her sisters–this beautiful, flawless little human who is born into a family struggling day by day to make itself whole.

I still have regular nightmares and wake in terror and sweat to find that my life is no longer defined by fear, guilt, and loneliness. My brain engages my waking mind, then defaults immediately into abject gratitude for Peter and the hope and light he has brought back into my life. For giving Cecilia a father and a brother. For Gabriella.

In the past year, Cecilia has transformed from being my only reason to live to becoming her own little person. I’ve been so busy and overwhelmed by all the changes of the past year that it gave Cecilia the space and time to develop relationships with a father, big brother, baby sister, and service dog. Through these relationships, she is starting to learn who she is, what she wants out of her life, and where she belongs in the family structure that is bigger than all of us.

Her world has expanded and opened rapidly in the past year. There were times that so much change so fast overwhelmed and eclipsed her ability to cope with it. But the obvious growth that followed close behind was nothing short of amazing to witness. I have focused so long and so hard on all of Cecilia’s limitations that I struggled immensely in accepting Peter’s attitude that he didn’t want to treat her any differently.

Before Peter, Cecilia would sit immobile in the shallows of the bay, crying for me to come back and hold her. Now, she takes Peter’s hand and plunges both of them into deeper water so that she can “jump jump jump jump!” Once, the boundaries of outdoors were too overwhelming and enormous for her to do anything but sit passively in a stroller or bike seat and listen to her surroundings. Now, she will run squealing through the grass and trek long stretches of hikes through the woods on our way out to the beach.

Peter has a father’s intuition with her; he knows how to balance encouragement while pushing her both farther and harder towards her own autonomy than I ever would. He is much better at taking a back seat and letting her explore, experiment, fall down and make mistakes, figure things out for herself–all the while ready to swoop in if she encountered true danger. Because of him, Cecilia can climb and descend flights of stairs by herself; she will now throw herself face down on the trampoline, laughing in glee, when once she would only cling to his hands, whining in apprehension. Because of him, she can sit calmly amidst a flock of ducklings and goslings and talk cheerfully about the “cheep cheeps” surrounding her.

I have watched her grow more and more vocal over the past year and a half, and now I look forward each day to her telling me about her world. As time passed, she began to talk less and less about how the doctors “squeeze her little arm” and make her “feel sad” and more and more about splashing at the beach, tractor rides, and rocking chairs.

A few weeks ago, Peter sent me the picture of Cece below. She had climbed by herself onto the arts and crafts table in our homeschooling classroom and was methodically exploring the contents of the drawers I had designed specifically to be out of the reach of little hands. He later recounted the conversation he had with her upon discovering her location. It went something like this:

Cece: (hearing him enter the room) “Hey, Dad.”

Peter: “How are you”?

Cece: “I’m doing good. I can stay up here.”

Peter: “Stay on top of the table?”

Cece: “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you.”

Peter went on to tell me how he had watched as she repeatedly and systematically moved from the middle to the very edge of the table over and over again, measuring and evaluating her weight and balance to determine exactly where the table ended.

I remember Cece’s visual therapist telling me about the sensory development of children with visual impairment. One of the first stories she told me was about a blind little boy who would sprint down the hallway of a school only to skid to a stop mere inches before he ran into the wall. When she asked him how he knew when to stop, he responded, “What do you mean? Can’t you hear the birds? Can’t you feel the sun?”

Cece used to sit in one location for hours, flipping through and narrating her books. Now, she trots back and forth across the house, book in hand, presenting an animated and gregarious oration of her reading material. She climbs all the way beneath her bed and calmly informs me that she’s going to take a nap there. She perches on top of her little desk and gets her foot stuck trying to stand on her activity center.

Peter has taught her how to use napkins and start eating with utensils. He’s taught her how to walk while holding the handle on her service dog’s harness. He’s taught her how to open Christmas presents. He’s taught her how to ride on her play car and jump on her mini trampoline. He’s taught her how to bite a slice of watermelon and hold a baby quail. He’s taught her how to dance, spin, run, and give butterfly kisses.

But by far, the hardest learning curve for Cece has been potty-training. We started last summer, then stopped, unable to maintain consistency while moving to a new house, the third trimester of my pregnancy, and the advent of Cece’s service dog. Her visual therapist had warned me that potty-training was likely to be delayed because of Cece’s vision. Separately, her nephrologist informed us that most kids with kidney disease potty-trained late: between ages 4-6 for little girls and ages 5-7 for little boys.

From October 2022 to January 2023, Cece went to urgent care facilities and emergency rooms four times for high fever due to recurrent urinary tract infection. Long and exhausting email exchanges with her nephrologist resulted in little other than an affirmation that my “theory” that Cece’s repeat UTIs were due to the fact that she struggled with constipation and resisted potty training seemed “plausible.” No ER doctor, urgent care doctor, or nephrologist seemed willing to help me troubleshoot the “why” behind Cece’s UTIs despite the fact that the infections were undoubtedly reaching her already compromised kidneys.

It was Peter who offered real help. He bathed Cece from head to foot four times in three days after she had smeared fecal matter over her hands, hair, and bed, desperate to relieve her intense constipation. He did load after load of her bed linens, bought her zip-up footie pajamas so she could no longer stick her hands down her diapers, drove to the pharmacy to pick up her antibiotics, and began placing her on the potty after every meal.

It was Peter who took her to Urgent Care followed by the ER on a cold January night when Cecilia was burning from a 104-degree fever. He cradled her listless and exhausted little body as she faded in and out of miserable sleep, then talked her through blood draws, temperature checks, an IV, and a catheter. He absorbed her terrified and furious screams of refusal, her whimpering and frightened acceptance, and her quiet and and desperate attempts to burrow into his chest when they were done. He put me on the phone again and again with the ER doctors, nurses, and the pediatric resident on call, then talked me through my terror and my helplessness as I laid in bed nursing a newborn Gabriella. He brought Cece home at 3 am, gave her a soothing shower, and tucked her into bed–then held Gabriella as I cuddled and said goodnight to Cecilia.

Then he slept for three hours and went to work.

Together, we determined to do everything we could to avoid Cecilia having to go through another night like that. I put her on magnesium and a natural, child-safe laxative, as well as pure cranberry juice, D-mannose, and a high-dose urinary-tract-strain probiotic. We put her on the potty after every meal and gave her a sink bath before bed every night. It’s been three months now without another UTI.

But the challenges of having a child with medical issues never really end, and the gritty realities of parenting are topics most people would rather avoid. Cecilia’s anxiety surrounding her constipation is improving; she used to wait five or six days between poops. As a result, her movements were so large they were very painful for her to pass and very dense and dry from sitting in her colon for so long. A few weeks ago, I noticed that the toilet we use to potty-train her was not flushing properly and applied to Peter for help.

He ripped the toilet off of the bathroom floor, convinced that Cecilia had flushed something down the potty that couldn’t be flushed. He took the toilet outside and found that the S-bend was clogged with weeks worth of Cece’s fibrous, overlarge bowel movements. So he removed the fecal matter clogging the toilet, flushed it out with a hose, purchased a new wax seal and replaced the toilet. It now flushes perfectly.

I spent hours cleaning and sterilizing the house with alcohol spray after this unsanitary episode. Cecilia didn’t know why Dad didn’t give her hugs before bed that Friday night or why he smelled like a porta-potty. All she heard was his normal, beloved voice saying, “Good night, big girl. Daddy loves you.”

Peter didn’t know what it was like to have a daughter before Cecilia. He didn’t know what it was like to have a child with a serious medical condition before Cecilia. His first visit with us to Children’s National in D.C. for a routine nephrology appointment left him in tears for hours. He’s still haunted by the memory of Cecilia screaming hysterically in rejection of a kidney ultrasound, unable to breathe and stumbling back and forth between me and Peter, hiccupping with broken, sobbing pleas, “Mommy hold you . . . Daddy get you up-up . . .” and yet too distraught to allow either of us to hold or comfort her.

Peter had no way of comprehending the manifold vulnerabilities and indignities associated with developmental, cognitive, and physical delays in children. Instead, he was thrown in a world of ultrasounds, blood draws, service dogs, and catastrophic meltdowns. He had to endure Cecilia rejecting him and preferring me over and over again. He had to hold her as she tried to hit, claw, and bite him, all the while screaming as loud as she could into his face. He had to grow to understand that Cecilia has been forcibly restrained and required to accept procedures and tests being done to her body–against her will–since she was four months old. Over time, he has learned that this has made her viciously obsessed with rejecting everything that is offered to her or asked of her, then initiating interaction in her own time and on her own terms.

It has made her extraordinarily difficult to parent. Daily activities of feeding and cleaning her depend on her obedience, and obedience is often the last thing she wants to offer. And yet, this is coupled with an intense and overwhelming desire in her to please both me and Peter. As parents, it leaves us stranded between feeling heartbroken, helpless, and willing to do anything to make her life just a little bit better.

Cecilia has pushed Peter to his limitations as a father again and again. She has forced him to learn patience when patience feels utterly impossible for him to access. She has caused him to drown in guilt when he loses his temper and then melted him to the core when she sobbingly toddles toward him, repeating in a broken little voice, “Okay, Dad, yes, sir! I’m sorry; Daddy forgives you. Let’s have a hug.”

I can no longer envision the kind of person Cecilia would be right now if not for Peter. If I had continued to pour all of my energy, resources, and time into her, she would likely be far more dependent today and far less confident, engaging, and obedient. Last week, I picked her up and took her to her room three times because she said “no” each time I asked her to get into her chair for breakfast. Halfway up the stairs each time, she would start to screech, “Okay, Mom, yes ma’am; I’ll get into my chair.” The fourth time I asked her to get into her chair was met with, “Okay, Mom, yes I can; I’ll get into my chair.”

The experiences of the past eighteen months have helped me gain the confidence to protect my own limitations and define boundaries with all of my children. It is these boundaries that help children to feel safe–to feel like their parents are in control and have the world figured out. And it is our role as parents to help our children believe in this fantasy for as long as possible . . . and only reveal to them piece by piece exactly how much of the world we can never comprehend.

So we step forward into each new day and teach our children to feel the sand and twigs beneath bare feet or to stop on the side of the road and rescue a turtle after a rainstorm, guiding little hands to place it gently back by the shore of the pond. We sit stranded in fields of strawberries and allow ourselves and our little ones to focus on nothing more or less profound than the taste of sun-ripened fruit.

In these moments, when we are touching the most elemental things–when we are listening to the very heartbeat of the earth–we begin to answer some of the unanswerable questions our children ask us.

Each night, I watch as Peter takes Cece from her high chair after dinner and spins her around on his head as fast as both of them can stand. I listen to her laugh in delight as she then spins by her gangly little self, squealing, “Chicken legs! Chicken legs!” I hear the smile in Peter’s voice as he encourages her to climb onto her potty like a big girl. Later, after her bath, I listen to him rock her in his arms and sing “Rock-a-bye-baby” to her. He lays her down and tucks her in, whispering in sweet succession, “Butterfly kisses . . . nose kisses . . . ear kisses . . . eye kisses.”

And then he holds Gabriella and lays down quietly next to us while I cuddle Cece and say prayers to Saint Elizabeth of the Springtime. Each night, we ask Lizzy to pray for our little family to grow in patience, compassion, endurance, and kindness towards ourselves and one another. And then Peter holds Gabriella while her big brother and big sister give her goodnight kisses.

After the big kids are asleep, I rock Gabriella and nurse her in the same chair where I nursed her big sisters. This chair sits in a corner beneath two shelves that hold Lizzy’s belongings: her backpack, her toothbrush, her Christmas stocking, her yellow rainboots, her baptism candle, her favorite books, her Easter shoes and hat, and her Winnie-the-Pooh nightgown. Peter made sure that Lizzy’s name letters, the cross made of dried flowers from her funeral, and the shelves containing her things were mounted on the wall for me the day before Gabriella was born. He knew how important it was for me to go into labor with Lizzy having a concrete place in our new home and our new family.

On Lizzy’s birthday, on the anniversary of her death, on All Saints Day, and on those days that I need to visit Lizzy’s grave or simply write to her or about her, Peter takes the older kids and makes sure I have the time and space I need. He takes care of meals, bathing, discipline, chores, fun, story time, and bedtime on these days. He takes off work and takes me to the cemetery or the beach or the forest or sits with me in perfect silence on our front porch. He lets me walk long hours without speaking and without interruption, barefoot in our backyard. And because he is the man that he is and the father that he is, I take the immense gift of time he gives me knowing that my living children are safe and loved and secure in the world we have created for them.

Lizzy’s pictures hang on our walls. Gabriella sleeps on Lizzy’s baby blanket, and Cece plays at the same desk where Lizzy once colored. Her little sisters wear her clothes and read her books and play with her toys. She is the second oldest of our four children. And even from heaven, she teaches her little sisters how to share.

Without much thought, Peter took Lizzy as his daughter. He is the type of man that is driven by instinct and intuition, which, for him, are both grounded in his beautiful heart and strong moral compass. He doesn’t need to talk much about Lizzy to be her father; he simply listens when I need to speak about her and makes space for her in our home, our prayers, our rituals, and our bedroom. He laughs and cries with me when I show him her pictures. He sees her in the faces of Cecilia and Gabriella.

Gabriella, who is so like her big sister, Lizzy, and so like her father, Peter, has only ever known a mother and a father who both desired her existence. Peter was the first one to hold her as she entered this world and has loved her helplessly ever since. She is now four months old, and her little face lights up whenever she sees him. He nicknamed her “The Princess of Cheese” after one too many times of her spitting up on his face. They cuddle and laugh and install light fixtures together. He helps her practice standing (her favorite thing to do) and encourages tummy time and rolling from back to front. The most common thing that he says to her is, “I can’t get enough of you.”

The father that Peter is has made the mother within me bloom, mature, and ripen. I can no longer understand myself as mother or Cecilia as daughter without him. Each day, I watch him with our son and Gabriella and feel a love that seems to constantly shatter and rebuild my heart. We move now in rhythm, passing on and off the baton of feeding and bathing Gabriella and Cecilia and the education and discipline of our son. Our lives are now defined by the endless work of childrearing and food preparation. We have never been so busy, but we have also never known such happiness.

Two days ago was Easter Sunday, and Peter and I woke up at 6 am to hide eggs and baskets before getting the kids ready for 8 am mass. We alternated holding Gabriella and Cece, and I stroked our son’s hair while morning sun streamed through the stained glass windows. And as we listened to his homily, the priest began to quote The Lord of the Rings:

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness, and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer.

Samwise Gamgee, The Two Towers

The darkness of Lizzy’s death can never full leave me. The shadow of Cecilia’s diagnosis will continue to follow us. But never in the midst of all that darkness and of so many shadows did I dream of the deep and abiding joy that now colors my world.

Cecilia tripped and scraped her nose, lips, and knees on the concrete of the parking lot while leaving church Easter morning. Her little white stockings were gray with gravel dust and spotted with blood. When we got home, I cleaned her and held her and read her stories about the very first Easter. We sat as a family in the morning light streaming through our dining room windows and ate Easter brunch with bunny-shaped carrot cakes for dessert.

Cecilia’s fall didn’t stop her from taking Peter’s hand and giggling as he helped her find Easter eggs in our backyard and eat the vitamin-C gummies I had made for the kids hidden within. It didn’t stop her from curiously exploring the contents of her basket and smiling in delight as she pressed each button in turn to listen to her new Backyard Birds sound book.

There are sixteen grandchildren in Peter’s family. In the early Easter evening, Cecilia sat with her new cousins listening intently to the instructions about the big Easter egg hunt. Then her father and her new grandparents walked with her to nine little red flags placed carefully about the grass, each one concealing a brightly colored egg nested at its base. Peter helped Cecilia feel the flag and find each egg. Her smiles outshone the sunlight.

Each day, I wake to find myself living a life I never dreamed I would have. I wake to a world in which Lizzy no longer breathes, but in which Gabriella nurses at my breast and Cecilia runs squealing through the house chasing her new big brother. There are still times when self-hatred and self-doubt cripple my ability to be a wife and a mother, but the loneliness–that piercing and hollow loneliness–is gone.

I do not know how to speak about my gratitude for the man that Peter is or for the choice he has made to give me his life. These things feel too dear and too sacred to reveal. I only know that I will live and breathe for him and the family we have created together until I have no life and no breath left in me.

Tonight, we stood together in the soft twilight of Cecilia’s woodland-themed bedroom. I swayed slowly with Gabriella as Peter tucked Cecilia in with her stuffed animals, saying “Good night, daughter. Daddy loves you so much.” I couldn’t help laughing at Cece’s response: “Good night, flamingo; good night, polar bear, good night, father!”

There is a reason why I have never spoken about the father of my daughters. It is because they have never had a father . . . until now.