Ugly sweater cookie contests and EA/TEF memories. What could they possible have in common? The answer is plenty, thanks to a recent Facebook post by a dear friend named Barb. She posted a picture about the ugly sweater cookie contest she hosted during her family’s 2019 Christmas gathering and asked Facebook friends to vote for the ugliest.*
Of course, I thought, Barb held an ugly sweater cookie contest at Christmas. That sounds just like her.
We met Barb and her young family way back when, when we lived in a remote town of 92 people in the northwest corner of South Dakota. Her 2 oldest daughters were in my country school classroom, and Barb created beautiful birthday cakes for them each year. Word got out, and since our town was at least 60 miles from the nearest bakery, she was soon creating cakes for all sorts of occasions.
She even created a cake for our EA/TEF baby’s first birthday in 1983. The cake featured a baby-with-a-feeding-tube-and-a-string-coming-out-of-his-mouth. Those who are used to 2020 EA/TEF technology may not be familiar with the 1982 version. Our baby’s feeding tube was a honking, huge Foley balloon catheter. The string went into his mouth, down his esophagus (placed there during a very dicey surgery), into his stomach, and out the feeding tube hole. The two ends were tied in a knot that was untied so dilation tubes could be attached to it when his repair scar needed to be stretched. Our baby endured this process, without anesthesia, about 2 dozen times. Thankfully, modern day dilations are less frequent, more effective, and much more humane.
Back to the cake.
My husband and I tucked the cake in the back seat of our car and strapped our baby into his car seat. Then we drove 120 miles to Rapid City Regional Hospital to celebrate our boy’s birthday in the GI lab with his GI doctor and his nurse.
The long trip was not kind to the cake, which looked like it had been in an earthquake by the time we arrived. Even so, our fellow party goers oohed and aahed over it. “Who made that? How did she do it?” they wanted to know.
Barb was amazing then, and she still is.
For me, posts about ugly sweater cookie contests and EA/TEF memories go hand in hand. Both of them show that things we’d rather not have in our lives (ugly sweaters and EA/TEF) can be redeemed in relationships and celebration.
Families decorating ugly sweater cookies at Christmas and asking Facebook friends far and wide to vote.
A friend turning the hard bits of an EA/TEF baby’s first year into cake decoration.
A doctor and nurse taking time from their day to eat cake with the young parents of a baby whose life they saved.
A cozy mystery book series (if, God willing, a publisher offers a contract) to celebrate the long ago place and time where our EA/TEF baby was born.
Thanks to my friend Barb, ugly sweater cookie contests and EA/TEF memories will always belong together. If you have an EA/TEF baby, and even if you don’t, hope you have a friend like Barb in your life, too.
*I forgot to vote, but the cookie I deemed ugliest won, which can only mean that my thoughts are able to influence elections.
