MER Mixed-Genre Literary Folio
Guest Editor Sarah Dalton
Being a mother or parent of a disabled child and/or a child with complex medical needs is one of the most rewarding experiences. It is also one of the most challenging. When your parenting journey includes a significant presence of hospitals, doctors, specialists, medications, tests and more tests, surgeries, ongoing medical treatments, a variety of therapies, etc. your conception of parenting expands.
Ideas like tenderness and care modify to include tasks like daily medication administering and post-surgical pain management.
Typical markers of child development like growth charts or milestones become meaningless as you learn to navigate the infinite ways that humans grow, move, communicate, and show love.
You become familiar with the layout of hospitals and learn the differences between various pediatric interventions and therapies. Sometimes life feels like a constant cycle of returning to the hospital, going home, follow-up visits, and calls to insurance providers. Then, suddenly, you are stunned by witnessing your child do something you had never imagined and you are reminded of the transformative power of love and the beauty of human variety.
Uncertainty is a constant companion in medical motherhood. Will this medicine work? Will my child need surgery again? How much pain will my child experience? Will this doctor treat me as an equal? Will the tests reveal something significant?
Throughout the folio, writers are intent to embrace uncertainty and paradox. They are also honest about how they struggle to do it. They have made peace with the presence of the medical community in their lives and parenting, but will integrate that presence on their own terms
Rather than arrange the folio by genre, I’ve ordered it into a loose chronological age structure to represent the developmental stages of children and young adults in our care. The works cycle between home and hospital. Many hold terror and tenderness at the same time.
Reading through the submissions, I was struck at how often writers who identify as Medical Moms/Parents wrote a piece as if to their former self—the one lost in a new diagnosis and unfamiliar medical terminology; the one returning to the hospital for another surgery or ER visit; the one still learning her voice is as important as the medical professional’s; the one still shrouded in mystery of “how do I mother this child so they can live, so they can thrive?”
And so, to close the folio, I’ve selected 3 pieces that work as encouragement or blessings for Medical Parents finding themselves (again) in one of those recurring moments of despair and panic, facing the unknown of will my child be ok this time? –Sarah Dalton
Medical Motherhood
Kathryn Satterfield, “Rare” – Creative Nonfiction
Robin McGee Burns, “Alternate Names for Heart Mom” – Poetry
Julia B. Levine, “Septic Shock” – Poetry
Arlene Naganawa, “At the Children’s Hospital” – Poetry
Carly Butler, “Resting Heart Rate” – Creative Nonfiction, Poetry
Suzanne Edison, “Mother’s Day at Lake Washington” – Poetry
Shasta Kearns Moore, “What I Know and What I Don’t” – Creative Nonfiction, Poetry
Dayna Patterson, “Meeting With Prosthetics Unit” – Poetry
Kara Melissa, “Cerebral Palsy Took All the Words from My Son” – Creative Nonfiction
Megan Merchant, “To have a child born in a natural disaster” – Poetry
Krista Lee Hanson, “Snuggling My Son to Sleep Haibun” – Creative Nonfiction
Adrie Rose, “Dear (it’s a bad week)” – Poetry
Ree Pashley, “Our Weapon is a Needle” – Creative Nonfiction
Christine Stewart-Nunez, “Advice to My Former Self” – Poetry
Nancy Huggett, “Intercession: ER Waiting Room” – Poetry
Guest Editor Sarah Dalton is a Latina writer, editor, and teacher. She is an alumna of VONA, Macondo, AWP’s Writer to Writer Mentorship, and the MFA program at San José State. Her nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, [pank], MUTHA Magazine, Reed, and River Teeth’s “Beautiful Things.” Originally from the San Francisco East Bay, she’s finding roots in the Pacific Northwest where she teaches at Hugo House.