After adenoids are removed, the back of the throat is white with scabs. These scabs smell like a rotten egg rolled in mothballs lying in a morgue. Art and I had to turn our faces to the side and gag each time H needed a hug after her surgery. The doctor estimated that the scabs would fall off in a week or so and assured us that this side effect was just part of the healing process. On day seven or eight, H was back at school—I’d sent her with a tin of Altoids and casually suggested that she chew them all day long. When I picked her up in the afternoon, she announced that the scabs were gone.
“I swallowed them,” she said, her face contorted into disgust. “I didn’t want to do that.”
It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder how they would fall off, but then I couldn’t imagine another way it could have gone.
“Will they hurt me?” she asked.
“No,” I guessed confidently. “Your body made them to help you heal, and now they’re done. I guess they’re where they belong. Totally fine.”
And just like that, the face-melting odor was gone.
The prior week at the oath ceremony, Art had met a gentleman from Afghanistan who had been a translator for the US in the Iraq War. This very chatty man took a picture of my husband once they were both official citizens. In the photo, Art is standing next to an American flag that’s taller than he is, in front of a poster that says “Celebrate Citizens, Celebrate America.” The Statue of Liberty photo on the poster is positioned at an angle that makes it look like she’s asking Art to smell her armpit. My husband’s hands are clasped in front of him in a way he rarely poses. He is smiling in the picture, even if begrudgingly. Maybe that’s because he’s got one extra layer around his life in Pittsburgh with his family. He did what he had to do. Maybe he feels like he belongs more now. Or maybe he has just a little more room to breathe.
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