a temporal pitstop at the hospital

big milestones for the family. plus, babies are pretty rad???

I’m sitting in a room cramped with luggage, empty food containers, medical equipment, my mom, my sister, and her newborn baby. At regular thirty-minute intervals, a nurse knocks on the door. They’re here to check on the baby/my sister or bring food (usually weak chicken broth or a cherry Italian ice that my sister vehemently hates).

Mother and Child in Bed Sleeping by Joaquin Sorolla

Hospitals comfort me in a strange way. Despite their sterility, something about the orderliness—nurses putting around, patients rolling around in their wheelchairs, and visitors wandering lost in the myriad corridors —holds the space in stasis. Here, I float in suspension, drifting further and further from the heart of downtown LA.

This was not the case during the pandemic. As afternoon bled out into eventide, I would idle in the kitchen, waiting for my mom to come back from work. Headlights soon pierced the darkness of the foyer, and she emerged through the door in rumpled scrubs. Gardenias tickled my nose as I rushed forward to kiss her on the cheek, my lips meeting a thin bar impressed upon her skin. A matching bar spanned her forehead. They were marks from the N95 mask and face shield she donned every morning in the parking lot before heading into the hospital, gearing up to face whatever catastrophe churned behind those walls.

I look to my left. My mom stands guard next to the slumbering baby. Did she regret having to spend so many hours at the hospital while leaving the childrearing of her daughters to my aunt? Did my mom want a grandchild so badly so she could recoup the lost time she never got to experience with me and my sister?

Those sorts of stories crop up all the time. Parents wake up from their workaholic fugue to realize that their babies babbled their way into full-fledged adulthood, replete with personalities, hobbies, crushes, and dreams. All that time had been crunched and compressed down into a blink of an eye, a tinfoil ball. Usually with regret, the parents can’t help but wonder, “Where did all that time go?”

But my mom chooses not to live with regret. She prides herself on doing high-quality work as a nurse, serving her staff and patients at the same hospital (the one I was born in!) for over thirty years. Whenever my mom operates in the domain of her expertise, her eyes light up and her voice grows more measured, asserting that she’s damn good at her job and enjoys it too.

Who would deny anyone the confidence of mastery whenever they express such pleasure in their vocation? So while I wish my mom had more time to relax as we were all growing up, I don’t begrudge her dedication to her work. In fact, I admire it. In an age of ever-dizzying speeds, job-hopping, and career pivots, my mom stuck to one thing and perfected it. She makes me consider what is required to manifest such diligence, empathy, and care and how to extend it to my own craft.

Last Friday was my mom’s official last day as a nurse. This week, she starts as a grandmother, and she couldn’t be more over the moon now that the baby has come. With any luck, she’ll be doting on her grandchild for another thirty-something years.

Because I see it in my mother as she coos to the bassinet, my sister as she feeds her baby, and myself, holding this small soul in my arms. We want to nurture. We want to take care of something and see it grow.

“Can you believe he was –” my sister pinches her fingers together “– that small in my belly?’

“I can’t,” I say in awe. His fingernails are tiny. Each one is hardly bigger than those seeds you find on a stalk of grass, seeds he’ll scrape off with his own fingers when he’s bored and looking at the sky one day. “He didn’t feel real to me before. But he’s here now. He’s so real.”

Hospitals are strange places we must visit, thresholds where souls cross into this world only to depart. Visitors dig their heels into the carpet of the waiting rooms, their eyes darting to anything of interest, anything to keep their minds off the reason why they’re here: the donated Picasso pitcher, vending machines spitting out chips and hot coffee, the amoebic sculptures melting like Dalí across the streets down below. The linoleum floors are scrubbed with a studied, almost fanatical, efficiency, but the walls feel ancient. Whether it’s because the building is finally showing its age or because countless lives have passed through the halls, time stretches out into an unfathomable desert, a forest primeval crowded with monitors, IV stands, and uncomfortable chairs that make our butts ache when we sit in them for too long.

“How is it already 6?” my sister groans, leaning back against her throne of pillows. “Where does the time go?”

I blink. Since I entered this room at noon, I’ve had enough time to play several rounds of Hearthstone, watch the baby’s face scrunch in his sleep and wonder whether he’s dreaming, gossip with my sister, write this essay, and contemplate.

This girl I grew up knowing my entire life, the girl I chased around in the backyard and hunted for seedpods with, watching them burst like fireworks between our fingertips in giddy delight, the girl who showed me my first drinking game and held my hair back as I yacked into the toilet, the girl who taught me how to dance with abandon at my first music festival, the girl with whom I shared countless meals, laughs, and miseries, is now a mother, and I know she will be marvelous.

When my sister leaves this place, her child in tow, she will leave a different person. The rest of her life will begin. So will my mother’s. Mine too.

“Time flies when you’re having fun,” I finally respond.