Reconnecting Santa Fe Style

Outside of the hospital walls, the largest struggle that we had as a consequence of our stay was our relationship with Ezra. That’s not to say that it suffered, it was just significantly changed for a few months where we became the visitors; and his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins became his immediate family.

Now, this must all be underscored with the fact that Ezra is amazing and extraordinarily resilient. Ahna and I had a lot of reservations about how things were going to go with the both of us at the hospital 24/7, and for the most part they have all been proved unnecessary. Since our return home, there really hasn’t been any outward signs that he is having a difficult time adapting back to being with us (he did struggle pretty hard for the first week of sleeping nights – up five or six times each night for extended stretches – but that was due to a sinus infection that has hopefully met it’s foe in some antibiotics). We know that he is at a perfect age (if there is one) to cope with the massive changes that he has been faced with, but we also know that things could have gone a completely different way had we either had a different family support group or had Ezra had a less amicable personality.

That all said, we agreed that we needed a little family reset time. As impossibly hard as it turned out to be to leave town, we ended up picking a visit to a place that we haven’t visited together (Ahna 11 years ago, Oren never) – which turns out to be a hard thing to find in a six hour drive radius. As we drove across the state line yesterday – under perfectly clear skies and empty roads – we also realized that while Ezra has gone to many states and several countries, all of them had been by plane: it was his first time crossing a state line in a car. The drive was simple and fast, the weather is perfect, the city is waiting to be explored today, and the time is precious.

a downtown church, just after dinner