I think back, remember when the doctors at Children’s Hospital finally turned the corner with Titus.
The pediatric gastroenterologist determines that his stomach has shrunk and his esophagus is lined with eosinophils, which, as best as I understand, are white blood cells that attack his esophageal tissue. His stomach will not hold sufficient calories to keep him going much longer, they say, but suggest that it might be possible to stretch his capacity by continuous drip feedings. They institute a feeding regimen—drip, drip, drip—and slowly but surely, Titus takes in more food without vomiting.
After a week of stretching the capacity of his stomach, the doctors are hopeful that Titus can now be fed enough to stop his steady weight loss. Gains will not come immediately, they say, but we will be discharged and instructed on home care. Providing us with enough formula to continue the feeding regimen at home, the doctors direct us to a medical-equipment rental facility in Fayetteville so we can obtain a food pump. Before we are excused from the hospital, a nurse teaches us how to change the tube, to remove the old, and to snake the new up his nose and down into his empty belly. He suffers this about as one would suspect, writhing and crying, reaching to yank it from his nasal passages. I don’t suppose I’d suffer well the running of a wiry worm up my nose and down to my belly. Some things are just unnatural.
In early August, we are released from Children’s Hospital and given a follow-up appointment the next week. Titus looks like a bionic baby, the boy with the tube snaking from a mechanical pump that runs up his nose, down his esophagus, and into his belly. The pump is equal parts spoon, masticator, and deglutition.
In the months following our discharge, we endure round-the-clock feedings with Titus. He is still stick thin and his immune system is weak. He is prone to catch every passing cold or illness. Our community of friends and the elders of the church come to pray. They lay hands on my son, call him things like strong and blessed and full of life. They pray a man-sized hunger on him, and one sneaks in a word about having him come to visit her, because, of course, she knows how to put weight on a baby. They pray for growth, ask with fresher faith than I’ve been able to gather in some time.
These prayers and supplications tire me. After all, it is an insane person who engages in the same behavior in the hope of achieving a different outcome. I don’t suppose myself insane, so instead of these spiritual gyrations, I find a way to kill any expectations.
Unlike these prayer gatherings, there is nothing awkward or stilted about gin. It brings the memories of the honey sky over the Shire River, colors of an entirely new dimension. I remember the hippos too—majestic creatures, if not territorial guardians. There was an eagle perched on a branch overhanging the river banks, and under him was the glint of a teal kingfisher. The two dove for fish as synchronized air-swimmers. They were masters of their own waters, the eagle hunting in the deep, the kingfisher in the shallower. Upon snagging their quarry, each returned to their nests, to their constituent hatchlings, before going back for seconds. They ducked and dodged, turned on a dime to avoid the crocs and hippos that regarded them, I am sure, as we might view an energetic gnat.
These animals—they were one with the Shire.
I was an outsider on the Shire, just as I am in the prayer circle, but there is something to the far shore, something to the convergence of color on the horizon. Saul said of the far shore, “That’s where the elephants are. They’ll come closer to the river when the dry season sets in.”
My grandfather once asked me about the Shire River. I told him of the eagle and the kingfisher, of the hippos and the crocs. I told him of the lilac and honey sky. We were on the dock overlooking Bayou Desiard, and the wood ducks were lighting on the water, making their way to their box houses among the cypress groves. “I’d like to see that before I die,” he said, “but I suppose I won’t.” Taking a deep swig of his gin and tonic, he said, “I hope you’ll visit the far side of the river one day.” His baritone laughter bounced from the bayou as still as black glass.
If I close my eyes, if I hold my head and my nose just so, I can smell the botanicals in the gin and I am transported back to the Shire, back to the bayou dock with my grandfather. I imagine natural beauty, the summing up of all things in the fiery clarity of an African sunset. I think of my grandfather, how he rocked me as a boy, how he promised I could slay every dragon.
There is a place of complete oneness, a whole place. There is a home place too. I know these things. For now, though, I know that this home place is not found in nostalgic notions. Romanticizing gin is an act of escapism, a chasing of shadows. The African river, my grandfather’s best bottle—these are not honest places of complete peace.
In the days following Titus’s release from the hospital, I used liquid solace, memories, and any other escape hatch I could find to avoid the pain of an unhealthy son and a God that seemed absent.
We all seek solace in some place.
Don’t we?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Visit me in my affliction; give me a sense of oneness in you, a home in you. Do not let me escape.