3.

Comic book frames 2/28/07:

1. Baby sucking pacifier in mama’s arms, calm. Nursey says, “Going night night?" Tired nursey’s eyes tell all. End of day sadness contrasts with florescent dinosaur scrub shirt.

2. Baby stops sucking and looks blank beyond nurse at flourescent light.

3. Baby's left pupil dilates but right stays the same.

4. Black frame.

5. Mama hands over Baby to Nursey, Baby blinking.

6. Nursey begins to bind him in white towel blue velcro getup. ENT with circular mirror like tilted French beret (cliché) atop head prepares the scope. Mama says, “He’s going to scream.”

7. ENT says, “We want him to scream, we’ll be able to see his vocal chords. If he doesn’t we’ll poke him.”

8. Mama says, “Oh he’ll scream.”

9. Baby papoosed on ENT exam table inner layer white towel outer layer blue velcroed spandex stretchy thicker harness. Looking burrito & bound, head tilted back eyes back trying to see what we’ll do to you now. Nursey in neon green dinosaur shirt aside right side of table waiting to lend a hand. ENT holding snaky black H.R. Geiger scope with a tiny light on the end of it, cartoon balloon says, “This is the pediatric scope. We’ve only had it six years. Before this we had to use the adult scope on the little ones.”

10. Mama says, “Does it have a camera on the end of it?”

11. ENT says, “No, that one’s in Honduras.”

12. Mama at end of table holding on to Baby’s feet. ENT holding scope up to Baby’s nose.

13. Light trailing down the roof of Baby’s screaming mouth where the scope has gone into the nose and down the pharynx.

14. ENT offers end of scope to Mama. “Have a look,” he says.

15. Close up circular image of two baby pink rubber healthy round vocal chords bouncing up and down in scream superimposed over Baby face. “They’re not paralyzed,” ENT says.

2.

God in conjunction with the rise and fall. God in the warped wood drifting up Chicago river. God with old man walking dog on a Saturday afternoon, early September. God as a nurse pumping air into my child’s lungs, manual, each squeeze of wrist filling up like full balloons at a birthday party or hot air balloons lifting on a cool morning. God blowing my tears down my cheeks one after the other like a drawing of old man wind in a children’s picture book. God calling cell phones of joggers who can’t hear them. God in the breeze off Lake Michigan. God circling out of exhaust pipes on Lake Shore Drive. God’s memory in the skyline. God’s ambition manifest in the heart of architects. God courts the city with heavy heart. God in the white people who never smile at me on the sidewalks. God in the ambulance driver’s eyes as he eyes a college girl, slim in skirt. God with me in the ambulance lending x-ray vision to peer at the real underneath the veneer. He hands me the goggles.

I accept.

God is a two day old infant God is a bronchial tube God is a respirator God is a heartrate declining God is expectations amiss God is freedom from good news God is as He should be God is four pricks in a newborn’s wrist God is the nurse who fumbled the IV God is low glucose levels God is mother’s fear God is forgetting to breathe God is a latex-free glove over a Transfer Team member’s hand God is divided into a triad a triumverate of nurses in the back of the ambulance God is the mother up front with the driver God is siren as background noise God is the leads over the baby’s heart and belly God is the respiratory rate on a screen God is the peaks and valleys of oxygen saturation God is a prenatal yoga instructor’s voice saying Breathe in, breathe out You can think this hurts or you can think I breathe in, I breathe out God is this mantra God is the morning God is happenstance God is everything they said He would be God is climbing through the open window to strain some more tears from her eyes God is the lingering stale smoke on the ambulance driver’s shirt God is a voice over the CB God is a radio dial tuned to 101.1 God is someone else’s fiction God is present God is a pit hollowing out her stomach God is tigers writhing teeth flashing eyes flaring God is the halting of high heels on the sidewalk before hitting the street stepping out of the way of the ambulance of the prepositional phrase of the under beyond between among amidst running mad and florid in expectation of what was but what we’ll never have and what she’s seen and He only knows what’s going on in that baby brain in that intubator in that tiny vein in that blood vessel in that respiratory hand held breathing in and out in time with the steps of the college girls on the pavement summer legs tan in the rhythm of the drums in the next car’s stereo in the wave of the leaves in the breeze and the collapse of a buckle on someone’s leather shoe and the startle of a cat at the bark of the old man’s dog

God is the corner store clerk God is Ecuadorian bananas God is import-export God is global warming God is meteorites God is loving your neighbors & forgetting their names & God is the shrunken belly of a two day no longer pregnant now woman God is the swelling milk ducts God is a baby who won’t drink God is adrenaline that keeps us all running on empty God is an ambulance speeding up the runway ramp of Children’s Memorial with mother and baby in tow God is the midwife who fumbled the birth waiting at the door atop the ramp God is the Holy Three nurses speeding the intubator up the ramp and into the elevator all of us in tow God is all of us unsung and dumb running speechless among his terrible mercy

1.

A small, round face. A little white shell, the kind they imitate for soap dishes. A pale moon, just a thumbnail in the distance. Two black blinking eyes, wide open and waiting. Face like a little glow worm. Or a messenger.

My son was barely 24 hours old when I began thinking of him as The Holy Man. The little visionary’s mouth contorted in half open revelation, grotesque almost, twisted into a grimace with eyes wide enough to catch a comet or a command from The Highest. He fasted. He seized. He saw great visions unknown to us. He built himself out of mythmakers and fell headfirst into his name.

Canal. I looked up this word as if the etymology would shine a little more magic onto the universe. It did not. I am not brave enough to look up the word fall, not yet.

Holding you was awkward – your tiny bones, my exhaustion radiating, your tense body contorted and on constant startle, us a duo live wired and unfamiliar with each other. I shifted you into my right arm. You grimaced up at me. I tried to hold you against my chest. You were the antithesis of cuddle. I tried to swaddle you. Your arms fought their way out like tin soldiers. My cousin Shannon wanted to hold you. He took you in his arms, bundled, stood and rocked you in that slow acquired sway that all mothers learn to do even when they are alone waiting in line at the grocery store. You immediately relaxed. How did you do that? I asked. He’s a daddy, Mom answered. I stared at you then off into the wall.

Other women have said that they recognized their babies when they first saw their face but you were a complete mystery, beautiful and purple and unknown. Is he okay? I remember asking because I felt as if I should but it was like I knew that everything was fine and really wasn’t very worried at all only that I knew I should be but I was so full of adrenaline and energy I’d just pushed you out after all that time and I really truly thought that everything was going to be fine. You were absolutely beautiful and I had full faith that you would have no troubles. I spoke more to fulfill a role than to truly make certain.

If only my intuition had been clearer. If only I’d known more about the role.

That’s how the first few months went. Hi Finn, I’ll play your mother in tonight’s performance. I could not comprehend the actuality of having a son. Why do people say my baby? I wondered before having you. It’s its own baby, not anyone else’s. I was wrong. You are my baby, I am the one to care for you. You are not yet fully your own person. I am the one to make sure that you have the best possible chance with what you were given (and if I was certain there is a Giver I’d be a happier woman). I am the one to make you cry when you need your nose unstuffed or your tube changed. I became a mother sometime after my breakdown in December. I had felt more like a nurse until that point. My family would chide me when I told them that. A mother is a nurse, Mom’d say and leave it at that. You don’t understand, I’d say.

I say that a lot.

But I remember your little face in the bassinette, one day old, 2 in the morning. You never slept. Your little newborn eyes, lids stretched around pupils, completely black, no whites. Wide awake listening to the trains go by. Blinking black eyes in a tiny round pale face. Blinking in your bassinette at the side of my bed in the first of September, my baby, beginning.

Obligatory Finn Update

Lessons Learned From The Supermarket

From juicebox: Separation is natural..
From "Nilla wafers" box: The yellow/black color scheme is a trademark for DEWALT® Power Tools and Accessories.®