Episode 6: New Growth

When Emma was a child—four or five years old—Sunday and I used to wake up some mornings and wonder that she just might have grown overnight.  Like we could see her getting taller, her arms growing past her chubby waist, her smile getting bigger.  It’s the part of parenting that, really, I’d never heard about.  The overnight growth.  We could see it happening.

That kind of thing slowed down once she got into elementary school, and even when she seemed to grow fastest in middle school, we didn’t seem to notice the overnight growth like when she was four.

Of course, we stopped noticing at all, ever since she took off her brace and never wore them for the first day of school.  The brace came off because she wasn’t due to grow any more.  No growth meant her spine was as crooked as it was going to get.  No growth meant no brace.  No growth meant no more secrets.

And with scoliosis like Emma has, well, checkups are part of the plan.  She can’t just go without doctor visits—her spine holds her together.

And so, Sunday and Emma went.  X-rays and measurements and conversations and insurance and doctors and nurses and the padded floors that doctors’ offices have nowadays. None of it comforting and all of it strange.  Even the lights in those places make it seem like I’m on a movie set or something.  

For most of parental life, I celebrated the growth of my children.  Academically. Socially. Physically.

But this time, a mere inch of growth meant, well, I’m not sure what it meant. 

For a back with scoliosis, growth doesn’t come straight like a banana tree or a cornstalk.  It’s more like a tomato vine or kudzu.  More curls and dips than straight line trunks.

And so, after years of secrets and special clothes, Emma just couldn’t help herself.  She kept on growing, to the point where her back was worse than it was when we first discovered that her sassy posture was more than just attitude.

I just wanted to puke.

I came home, and with my arms around her, I asked how she was feeling.

“Devastated,” she said.

Good for her, though, I was already there.