For My Mom

Dear Mom:

I wouldn’t have made it without you.

When they pulled me out during the emergency C-section I was already gone, and you were hanging on by a thread. Only a miracle could bring me back. Thankfully, one did.

You.

You held on for me, and I held on for you.

Somehow they got me breathing again, and my tiny little chest rose and fell with each desperate gasp. But I wasn’t ready to go. I wanted to live.

They placed my three pound body into an incubator and hooked me up to the oxygen and feeding tubes that kept me alive for the next two months. I was isolated and alone except for the doctors and nurses that constantly tended to my needs and changed the preemie diapers that came all the way up to my frail shoulders. I wasn’t a pretty baby. I looked more like a skinned rat than an infant, but you loved me anyway. Despite all the medical staff that came and went from my incubator, it was your presence I felt the most. It was your touch that I responded to when you reached through the portal in the side of my plastic cocoon and stroked a latex-covered finger over my fragile limbs.
Even though you never got to hold me during those early weeks, I sensed your unwavering love and the frantic prayers tumbling through your mind. When I was finally strong enough to open my eyes, yours was the first face I saw. I saw your tear-filled brown eyes and wobbly smile. If I could have spoken to you then, I would have told you not to worry, that it wasn’t your fault. I would have told you I was a fighter, and that I would make it. That I loved you too.

Instead, I tried to tell you those things each time I turned my head at the sound of your voice, or stretched out my little hands to reach for your fingers. I felt your unwavering love for me even then.

And I still do.

I love you mom.