Everything Will Get Be Okay

At the moment Jaime was born, I asked, “Does she have everything?” to which her father laughed and said, “Everything but a ——.”
 Girls were rare in our families, so we certainly expected a boy, whom we would name Peter.

Perhaps because she arrived late, her face was perfect: no redness, no baby flaky skin, no sunken cheeks. 


Her birth was difficult; after, I clearly remember my nurse cuddling her, stroking her exquisite little face and whispering so only I could hear, “I want my baby to look just like this.”

My mom spent a night at our apartment to help, waiting for Jaime to wake and fuss, but she did not.

In fact, she was so fast asleep that my mom woke her to feed her.

But within a few days, she suffered from colic and cried and cried her first three months, her little stomach so distended that an adult couldn’t resist the urge to press a soft firm hand over it to comfort her.

My parents babysat only once during the crying times and, when we returned, my Dad was a mess, running shaky fingers through his hair, saying, “Boy, I see what you mean about that cryin’.”

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In those days before the next child arrived, I often worked in the garden or sewed, always tailed by my little miss who was cheerfully interested in every aspect of my activities. She was chatty, referring to her father as Dan and me as "Kass."

In the yard, she did not see the dandelions as weeds, but was impressed with their yellow cheerfulness. 


If I sewed, she sat at my feet playing with her dolls, talking to her imaginary friend named Chreble Hulk (her version of the cartoon character the Incredible Hulk...those imaginary conversations, as I recall, grew more intense after her sister arrived.)

When I was younger, I was often emotional, a state to which I occasionally return in my later years.

We lived in an old house in South Toledo (a house that fell into disrepair and has since been demolished); one day I was both sad and angry over some issue, sitting on the bed weeping.

Little Jaime—who was probably around 2 or 3 at the time—crept near me, stroking my (adult) hand with her tiny one, saying softly over and over, “Don’t worry, Mama. Everything will get be okay. Don’t be wupset.”

It will get be okay.

Don’t be wupset.

She did not know the details of my grief, but that was just like her.

At school, even her (meanest) first grade teacher noted that she had the ability to move in and out of various cliques, never swallowed by any of them.

She loved people for who they were, chatting happily to even those who disregarded her.

Oh, she definitely wasn’t perfect.

The teenage years were difficult.

(Sadly for both of us, her high school locker was next to my classroom; we saw each other often.)


At times, it seemed the quarrels were endless.

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We were driving to school one morning--she was about 16. She was yelling at me about some thing while—in the background a Beatles song played on the radio:

She’s leaving home.


In that short distance, I cried while she screamed because I realized this was her way of leaving: fighting, angry, shrill, forcing her self to separate from her loyalty to us.


It was time to move out into the world.

Later when we drove her to college states away, I was relieved.

So many arguments, so little time, but she looked so frightened in the back seat, covered with her stuff.

Frankly I was glad to get rid of her at that point. 


(Months later I found the stinky rotting remains of her last high school lunch stuffed into her Wonder Woman trash can in her bedroom closet.)

But 10 days of isolation in the wilderness of a Pennsylvania forest, of backpacking and being on her own prior to college proved to be the foundation for the person Jaime was to become, a woman more interested in the spiritual, more interested in activity than rest, more creative physically than artistically. Someone who believed in fighting for causes in which she believed, and someone who learned to rest in the Father and support those around her who struggled.

Over the years, something wondrously beautiful happened to the curly headed little girl who sat at my feet talking to her imaginary friend, who comforted her flawed sentimental mother with the simplest of words, a child who saw beauty in weeds and who eventually faced down the tumultuous teenage years by refusing to give in to bitterness. 


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At a church meeting many decades later, friends gathered around our table and asked this, “What Christian friend has influenced you the most?”

I thought for a moment because my mind naturally went to people near my age but then it hit me that the sweetest Christian friend who has influenced me the most is my beautiful daughter Jaime.

She is a great comfort, someone who can pray (with me and others) in so many different ways, “Don’t worry. Everything will get be okay.”

I can see that same strain of compassion and love in her circle of friends where she lives now, so far away from me.

So when you hear her words of comfort, just imagine a child of two stroking her (wupset) twenty something mother’s hand, saying those words that God gave her before she was born: “Everything will get be okay.”

He breathed life and spirit and TRUTH into that (formerly colicky) child who has become a woman of substance, a loyal friend who does not desert (whether in spirit or face) those who love her.

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For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. – Jeremiah 29:11


************** And everything will get be okay.