“After Marisa’s first seizure, when the two of us were in the hospital, the nurse told me I was doing a great job, and that I was a wonderful mother.” I read the opening of Betsy MacWhinney’s essay and immediately worried about her daughter. However, as I read further through the essay, my feelings of admiration rather than of worry dominated. The purpose of this essay is to show the many ways in which Marisa is a star, with her mom in a supporting role. It is Marisa who is able to keep her calm, her confidence, and her lively thoughts despite encountering her physical problem. By not talking about future seizures, but only letting us know with the word “first” that there have been more, and by concentrating on spotlighting Marisa’s maturity and spirit during this first episode, Betsy implies that her daughter’s buoyancy will have lasting effects on those around her, especially her mother. Therefore, as a reader, I also admire the author for her ability to learn from and appreciate her daughter.

I remain thoroughly engaged in this narrative essay from start to finish as it brings me along on a frightening late-night journey to the hospital and evokes worry about a child’s physical condition while making that experience secondary in importance to the realization that this child has not lost her sense of self, even under the pressure of a difficult physical emergency.

As you read the essay, note the ways in which Betsy keeps you involved in her situation:

1. She includes dialog that shows you her daughter’s intelligence and nature.
2. She raises a question at the opening — how could that nurse have decided the author was a wonderful mother? Why would she have been so complimentary? This question allows Betsy to reveal what she is good at, even if it isn’t the entire role of mothering.
3. Having started at the moment of arrival at the hospital, Betsy then backtracks to fill the reader in on how the mother and daughter got there — what the night was like, what the situation was. She includes her associational and “magical thinking.”
4. After she gets the doctors’ news, she comments on her daughter’s roommate in the ER and offers her ideas on how to deal with patients from the perspective of one who is surrounded by them. Her thoughts are rendered in a way that makes the reader experience the rush of adrenaline she is experiencing at the moment.
5. At its end, the essay comes full circle to its opening. When you read the ending, you feel the shape of Betsy’s experience with Marisa.

It is a pleasure to present Betsy’s successful personal essay, with its clear sense of time and place, the right amount of information about who is involved in the event, and its well-chosen details for helping the reader feel as if she is in the situation along with the author, no holds barred.

The Perfect Rock
by Betsy MacWhinney

After Marisa’s first seizure, when the two of us were at the hospital, the nurse told me I was doing a great job, and that I was a wonderful mother. I was unexpectedly pleased by the compliment. Later, I realized that she had almost nothing to go on at all.

 My daughter and I had arrived at the hospital in an ambulance, in the middle of a stormy, windy night – a night without electricity, and tree limbs flying around. Marisa dragged her raggedy flannel and patchwork quilt with her, and politely asked the nurse for something to throw up in. When the nurse handed her a shallow plastic kidney-shaped bowl, she looked bewildered, and then promptly vomited into it. After she was through, she told the nurse, in her gentle, quiet little voice, “You ought to take a look at the throw-up bags the ambulance has. They’re perfect. Actually, they’re the best I’ve ever used.” My daughter, the connoisseur of vomit bags, so earnest and sincere in wanting to share her knowledge. Was this why the nurse was so complimentary?

I am really good with a vomiting child. I know to quickly open a bag or grab a bowl when someone gets that certain look, stick my fist down the bag to be sure it’s fully expanded, give the bag to the child to hold, use one hand to pull the child’s hair back, and put my other hand on the forehead, supporting the weight of the retching child with a cool palm. And I know what to do next Get a cool washcloth, and a Dixie cup with a half-inch of water. “Just rinse your mouth out and spit into here. Don’t swallow!” Wipe the sweat from the whole face with the washcloth, beginning with the forehead.

I distracted myself from Marisa’s seizure and all that it could mean by imagining myself as some vomit bag queen, getting a special award for my technique, and for my daughter’s educated attention to the bag’s design.

The ambulance crew had appeared in the middle of the night in our candle-lit bedroom. My husband and I had been asleep until our son ran in to join us because of the power blackout and howling winds. Then, a few minutes later, our daughter appeared, explaining about her dream.

“I had a bad dream. I dreamt that Dad’s car was here, but when I came inside, he wasn’t home. It seemed awful, but maybe its about how when I grow up, I won’t really need Dad every day like I do know, but he’ll still be here. So maybe it isn’t a scary dream at all, but a growing-up dream. Do you think so, Mom?”

I wished I weren’t so sleepy, because there’s nothing more delicious than a child who wants to talk about growing up, but all I could do was mutter something, kiss her gently on the head, and drift back off to the half-sleep of parents.

A few minutes later, I heard her gasp, “Mom!” and felt the bed shaking. I tried to wake her, to sooth her, but it wasn’t a normal nightmare. I yelled at her dad that I couldn’t stop her from shaking — she was having a terrible dream that she couldn’t get out of. Call 911. She’s having a seizure. Even in the pitch dark, with the howling wind all around us, I could sense that her eyes were rolling back; she was vacant.

“Stop shaking. Please stop shaking. Marisa, pull yourself out of this. You’ve got to stop.”

“Time the seizure,” they said on the phone.

“It’s dark. We can’t see. The clock doesn’t work. It’s really dark.”

“Hang on. We’re sending an ambulance.”

After more than a lifetime had elapsed, the seizure finally ended. I scrambled to get dressed in the dark, lighting one tiny, flickery votive candle. With the small candle dancing on my bedside table, I could see Marisa, staring into space, eyes wide open, and watched the candle begin to oscillate wildly as the wind picked up again. “Just close your eyes, honey.” I didn’t want the flickering light to precipitate another seizure.

“My eyes are closed, Mom. It’s so dark.” My heart sank, and I realized my baby would never be the same. She was blind. What was Annie Sullivan doing now, I wondered? Would she come and help us? But by the time the burly volunteer fireman arrived twenty long minutes later, she could see. She could see.

They asked her questions: “What’s your name?” She smiled, and answered, “Marisa.”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Well, is it after midnight, or before? Because if it’s after midnight, it’s the 23rd, but if not, it’s still the 22nd. But the clock doesn’t seem to be working, so I’m not sure.

“She seems fine. Perfectly fine. She’s only eight? My word!”

“By the way, Mom? If I have another seizure, don’t yell at me and tell me to stop. That was really distracting and I didn’t like it.”

Later, at the hospital, when they wheeled Marisa down the hall to do a CT scan, I knew that this was not actually happening. They weren’t looking for a tumor in my little Marisa’s head; they were just going through the motions, just to be thorough. We all knew that nothing could ever be wrong with my baby, or I couldn’t go on. They slid her on a big bed down the shiny, slippery hall under fluorescent lights as I raced along behind, carrying the cup of peppermint tea that she had requested. They strapped her down to the table and slid her into a tube, and I knew that this was not really happening.

My own mother knew it wasn’t really happening. After I told her on the phone about Marisa’s seizure, she asked if we had eaten anything unusual lately. Actually, yes, I replied. I made roasted chestnuts for the kids. She called back later and told me that one of her horticulture encyclopedias mentioned that one of the chemicals used on chestnuts in Italy could cause seizures if consumed. Of course, that was it. All we had to do was stay away from Italian chestnuts, and we’d be fine. That wouldn’t be too hard, because I think it was only the second time in my life that I’d ever even had a chestnut. It wouldn’t be like a deadly allergy to peanuts or dust mites, things that are everywhere.

The doctor read the CT scan, and told me it was normal. No tumors, nothing terrible growing in her head to cause the seizure. I knew that. I knew that all along. We all knew that. Nothing was wrong. My heart sank for the women who would receive different news about their children. I felt a terrible heaviness and connection to those women. And at the same time, I wanted to jump for joy. There was no tumor.

“Make an appointment with this neurologist,” the doctor said, and gave me the name of a doctor named after a cocktail. Tom Collins. I thought, now this doesn’t seem quite right, who would name their little baby neurologist after a mixed drink, but then again, what would be a good name for a neurologist?

“And get an EEG. But you can go home now”

I was relieved to go home. The guy in the bed next to my daughter was moaning in pain; he had dropped a giant piece of window glass on his knee and had a hideous wound; he couldn’t stop describing the pain. I felt sorry for him for about a minute, and then I just wanted to give him a painkiller myself so he would stop. They ought to have volunteers in the hospital who just go around and give out the painkillers first, while the doctors and nurses did whatever they were doing that kept them from giving the painkillers right off the bat. When you arrive at the emergency room, there should be a friendly volunteer at the door with the painkillers.

I called my husband, and he and my son came to gather us; everything was normal again. We were just a family out doing things on a cold, windy fall day. We started home, the boys in front, girls in the back, and Marisa got that special look that I know all about.

“Pull over NOW.” Marisa and I stood by the side of the road. I held her hair back and supported her head with my cool palm. When she was through, she stayed crouched down and shifted her gaze ever so slightly from the pile of vomit to the gravel that lined the road shoulder, picked up a rock, and said, “Mom, look at this one. It’s beautiful.”

I heard her, and then I didn’t. I couldn’t even think straight. Here we were: my shirt inside out, teeth fuzzy, sleep-deprived, worried, hungry, and once again, assisting with a vomit on the side of a road thick with traffic. And there was Marisa, finding the perfect little rock, reminding me that world is a grand place, if you only bother to look.