Page 24 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

“They told me your mother won’t make it through the night,” he said to his daughter.
A little while later, as he was leaving for the hospital to be with his wife, he told her, “Go to school tomorrow. I’ll call you if there’s any change.”
She understood the implication: I will call you if your mother dies.
Maryanne spent the night crying alone in her room while her younger siblings remained asleep in their beds, unaware of the calamity. She went to school the next day full of dread. Dr. James Dixon, the headmaster of Kew- Forest, a private school she had begun attending when her father joined the board of directors, came to get her from study hall. “There’s a phone call for you in my office.”
Maryanne was convinced that her mother was dead. The walk to the principal’s office was like a walk to the scaffold. All the twelve-year-old could think was that she was going to be the acting mother of four children.
When she picked up the phone, her father simply said, “She’s going to make it.”
Mary would undergo two more surgeries over the next week, but she did indeed make it. Fred’s pull at the hospital, which ensured that his wife got the very best doctors and care, had probably saved her life. But it would be a long road back to recovery.
For the next six months, Mary was into and out of the hospital. The long- term implications for her health were serious. She eventually developed severe osteoporosis from the sudden loss of estrogen that went with having her ovaries removed along with her uterus, a common but often unnecessary medical procedure performed at the time. As a result, she was often in excruciating pain from spontaneous fractures to her ever-thinning bones.
If we’re lucky, we have, as infants and toddlers, at least one emotionally available parent who consistently fulfills our needs and responds to our desires for attention. Being held and comforted, having our feelings acknowledged and our upsets soothed are all critical for the healthy development of young children. This kind of attention creates a sense of safety and security that ultimately allows us to explore the world around us without excessive fear or unmanageable anxiety because we know we can count on the bedrock support of at least one caregiver.