We’ve been here at the children’s hospital since about 7:00 am, and it’s now 6:00 pm. We’ve gotten good news from her surgeons—not just good news, but brilliant, incredible, long-awaited news, so it’s all very much worth it. We’ve waited for news like this since she was born seven years ago. As we wait a few minutes more (and what’s a few minutes compared to seven years?) while she is in the recovery room, I wonder what I could do to occupy my mind until the nurses call us back to see our girl.

What could I do? What are my hobbies? And I laugh to myself. Do I even have hobbies? Music? Nah…. As much as I love music, it’s also work to me, and I’ve already started my music lesson planning for the fall. Knitting? Needlepoint? I wish I knew how to play chess…. But just as I am about to Google, “learn to play chess,” I remember that I like to write.

This blog of “Love, Light and Little Details” was started by a friend and in honor of a friend. Today, I start a new page on it.

Just like our little girl is starting a new page in the adventure story of her amazing life. She was born with a closed right ear canal. As the doctor handed over her tiny newborn self to my husband and me, we all noticed an ear that was . . . different. Fascinating. Beautiful in its own way. Her right ear looked like a little sea shell, soft, pink, swirled in the middle. A neighbor friend once said that it looked like a flower bud that hadn’t opened all the way. It became a special part of her and of our family’s story.

Not long after, she was wearing a hearing aid on a stretchy headband on that right side. We found headbands of cute colors—aqua, pink, and gold. We decorated her hearing aid with colorful covers and stickers. And that headband, which we called “the hearing headband,” became a part of her, too.

And then her hair grew. A lot. She went from a peach fuzzy bald baby, to a toddler with some swirly tufts of golden hair (this phase seemed to last forever), to Shirley Temple (loved that phase!), to now…. She has a mass of curly, golden, honey brown hair that fades to a light wheat color on the ends and extends all the way down her back and swirls and bounces every which way in our southern humidity. Her hair is her signature, and it’s most certainly a part of her. Because of her fabulous hair and the fact that hearing loss has not affected her speech at all, most people say, “Wow, I never even knew she had problems with her ear!”

So today was finally, finally the day to get it fixed. To make it new. Or as she would say, “Make my ears match.”

An interesting thing about this procedure is that the surgeons needed to take a skin graft from her upper leg in order to build a new ear canal. It feels poignant to me that she would in essence need to be damaged (the surgeon asked me to Google “skin grafts”, and, trust me, I looked), in order to be made more whole . . . To heal, often, we must allow ourselves to be broken first.

And now we’re rolling home, with our fast food sandwiches, recovery instructions, a gold and pleasantly plump stuffed bear for her to snuggle, and a very groggy but brave girl with bandages on her right leg and right ear. Tonight, we hope for healing rest, and tomorrow begins a fresh page.