"You look familiar," she said. Her head tilted to the side, squinting at us a bit trying to be sure.
We were familiar to her.
She's the nurse who has performed our son's food allergy skin tests 3 of the 4 times he's undergone them since June 6, 2018.
His fourth and most recent test was just a few days ago.
And I've never seen him look so old, so brave, so resigned to the fact that this is his own personal version of "just one of those things."
We were shocked to discover that the skin tests showed a decrease by 1/2 in his peanut allergy as well as a decrease by 2/3 in his dairy allergy since he was last tested in June of this year.
I'm still a bit shocked, really. A bit skeptical. All the while grateful for what we hope will be a new chapter in our family's life--one where we don't have to be quite so fearful when sharing a meal with friends and family that an anaphylactic reaction is just around the corner for our two year old.
They needed to draw blood to see if it showed the same decrease in the allergies as his skin. [If the labs match his skin test results, we will move on to a "baked milk challenge" where we feed him a muffin (or something that contains milk in the ingredients) in the allergist's office...and wait. If he doesn't react, we'll know he is able to tolerate baked milk in foods. If he does react, we stick him with an epipen, go for treatment at the hospital, wait until June of 2020 to see what the skin test results show and go from there.]
It had already been a long morning. Even for the most patient and resilient toddlers like my son proved to be yesterday, it was a lot.
When they came in to draw his blood, they laid him down on the table and I stood over him with my face right next to his--whispering reassurances that everything would be okay and that we'd get to go home soon.
I was an idiot and left my hair down for this part of our morning, so it kept falling in his face and in mine.
But all of the sudden, the nurse who said we looked familiar reached up from where she was holding his little legs down at the end of the table and pulled my hair away from my face so that there would be nothing between me and my son, so that he could plainly see the bravest face I could display for him, so that he could know everything would (eventually) be okay. I looked at her to offer an appreciative smile and noticed she was reflecting that same expression back to me.
This nurse has a son who is a week younger than ours. We've talked about it before and she mentioned it again during our appointment, right before her familiar comment.
I think she sees her son in ours.
I think she sees herself and her partner (if she has one) in me and mine.
Yes, we looked familiar to her because she has physically seen and helped us in previous appointments, but I also think she recognized similarities between her family and ours.
This intimate moment we shared was not one comprised of "us v. them" thinking.
There was only us. There was only the familiar.
And because of that, she was able to offer an empathetic gesture that nearly buckled my knees and brought me to tears once our son was sound asleep in his bed that night. It meant more to me than she will ever know.
She saw us. She joined us in what she could probably feel was an exhausting and anxious time.
Not in pity. Not in a savior complex kind of way.
But in a "You're not alone," kind of way. In a "You look familiar," kind of way.
More than recognizing the familiar in family structures, relationship structures, circumstantial structures...
As people of faith we're called to to recognize the familiar in our intrinsic structures.
In other words, the more we recognize the familiar Image of God residing in all persons (whether or not we have one single solitary thing in common with them), the more we enter into and usher others into the Kin*dom of God. It is there that we are all familiar--to the One who gives us life, grace, and love abundant.
May we be avid seekers of the familiar in one another.
Peace,
PMK
