The Years in Your Hand

The doctor was the first to take your hand. You were only half in this world with your eyes squeezed tightly against the bright lights when the doctor raised your hand high, cupped your elbow in his grip, and gave your hand a floppy wave. Hi mommy.

The following day, I took your hand in the NICU as a new kind of ragged cry raked your throat and your body quaked beneath the pain of a fractured skull – a birth injury that wreaked havoc on your first few days here on Earth.

I took your hand as you struggled to walk on ankles supported by braces because your feet rolled upside down when you bore weight on them, like flippers made for water. You were so determined, blue eyes wide, knees bending and lifting high between steps as if clearing some unseen hurdle, tongue hanging from the corner of your mouth like a handkerchief. You were three years old.

I took your hand as you stood in front of your favorite Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, and I couldn’t help but smile and laugh while I twirled you around and you bounced and sang as your shadow danced on the wall.

I took your hand to help you wash, write, brush your teeth, scoop food into your mouth when you missed.

I took your hand when it beat in a fisted cadence over your head as a seizure took you away from us for hours, and again when you repeatedly tried to flip out of your hospital bed, and again when you tore at the IV in your arm and at the EEG electrodes on your head.

I took your hand countless times when you were excited/mad/frustrated and bit down on your own flesh hard enough to draw blood.

I took your hand whenever it clutched a fistful of my hair/my clothes/my body.

I took your hand when you limped for unknown reasons and you needed to lean on me.

I took your hand when you would cry and I couldn’t figure out why and there were no words to help us.

I took your hand when you climbed a ladder to slide down a slide, when you sat in a swing, when you jumped in the bounce house and the unbridled joy on your face looked like nothing I’ve ever felt. Amazing.

I took your hand when you said dance with me and we danced.

Nearly twenty years have gone by since the doctor first took your hand and gave it a wave. Twenty years of life and scars and growing and discovering that all of those times I thought I was taking your hand, it was you who were taking mine.

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Triumph

Sometimes I am not enough.

This life, this crazy life, takes a team. It takes the love of people, the power of prayer, the release of tears, and moments wrapped in minuteshoursdays wrapped in hope for the future.

Help. How many times can a heart break and continue to function? Do you know? Have you felt the crack of a beat, the crush of it all? How can I ever put these experiences into words? What they mean when they are all stacked tall across a lifetime, piled high like luggage, like book filled boxes, like rocks that form a wall.

These walls, are they breakable? Here we are, youandI, breathing, moment-living, connected and divided by the same human emotions. In this way I know you and you know me. In this way we are all trying, surviving, stumbling or standing tall.

I don’t want to be a tragic character in the story of my life.

I want to triumph.