Happy Birthday Sweet Boy

     A few hours after Jesse was born, nineteen years ago this week, we found out that he had pulmonary stenosis and his heart valve was stuck closed.  When he was five days old, five doctors at Children's Memorial Hospital spent six hours fixing it.
     My husband and I had to wear gowns and masks in the Infant ICU to protect Jesse from our germs.  We put booties over our shoes, and shower caps on our heads.  A hospital volunteer took a set of Polaroid pictures to remind us.  Jesse was still connected to a breathing tube--not exactly the baby picture that makes the family album.  I remember telling the volunteer that I really didn't want a photo to remember.   She insisted, and my husband agreed, and I only learned later that she'd mentioned to him that when babies don't survive, parents are grateful for the only pictures they have of their child.
     Going to the hospital every day to visit your baby in intensive care is perhaps one of the most depleting experiences for the human spirit.  Those days were hands down the worst I've ever had, and yet, in hindsight I see that I was the luckiest woman in the ward.  My baby had something that had been fixed.
     We spent our days and nights, week after week, in the large open intensive care ward with the same families and came to know their stories, although we did not ask each other many questions.  We were each breaking from the weight of our own worries, and I think the nurses knew from experience that we could not have endured any more.  They lied to us about the babies who had vanished in the night, telling us they had been transferred to hospitals closer to the family's home.  Hospital volunteers came in every day to hold a child who, we learned later, had been abandoned.
     We kept vigil with our beautiful son every day, waiting for the breathing tube to come out, waiting to see if he could breath on this own, waiting to see if his other systems were working, waiting to see if he gained weight.  It seemed that it would go on like that forever, and then one day the doctor came by and told us we could go home.
     My mother and I were at the hospital together, and although thrilled, I was startled by the news.  I didn't have Jesse's brand new car seat with me, only Robby's old seat that was sticky with apple juice and Cheerios. I wanted to get the special outfit I'd bought to bring Jesse home from the hospital, and I wanted to find out what time my husband could meet us.  I hadn't given up the idea that somehow we'd have a perfect homecoming, with my husband and I driving up to the house with our new son wearing a powder blue sleeper with a bunny rabbit on the tummy.
     My mother is usually the one who likes everything just so. But nineteen year ago, she was just about the age that I am now.  She looked me in the eye and said, "Sheryl, wrap the baby in a blanket and let's get the hell out of here."
     We left the hospital that day with the good wishes of the parents we'd come to know.  And although we promised to come visit, and to call and get together, we never saw any of them again.
     I think about the other families every year at the end of May, and I wonder how many of them ever celebrated even one birthday.  I wonder if anyone else--even one other child---is celebrating nineteen.