1000 words or so

Katie's recuperation meant needing to be here. Which meant plenty of unoccupied-but-can't-go-anywhere time for her Mama. (Okay, I took the little one to the dentist, and I skipped out for forty-five minutes to have coffee with a friend during that time. Katie's Daddy rocks.) To fill those hours, one would expect there to have been reams written. Nope. And the house is not noticeably cleaner either. Those many hours went into learning to use the scanner. And then unearthing and scanning an assortment of old photos that predated our digital cameras.

For the most part the task was one that involved quite a bit of laughing. Except for a single dusty cardboard box buried in the back of the cabinet that doubles as Mama's desk. Having suspected the box contained photos, this seemed a likely time to rummage around in said box. When compiling a reasonable photographic overview of all three children's lives, it just would not do to miss a major stage or precious moment. Inside that box were in fact the photos taken over our youngest daughter's first Christmas.

Pictures that caused my eyes to well, and my heart to climb into my throat. Pictures of our very small daughter hooked up to an assortment of very large machines. Her first, and only, picture with Santa was taken as he stood beside the incubator at Children's Hospital carefully touching nothing to avoid the contagion of our month-old infant's RSV. Her tiny, perfect head is covered with tape securing an I.V. that eventually left her with a mullet after the tape pulled out her fine, sweet baby hair. Her first Christmas and New Year's were celebrated in a series of hallmarks from weaning her off the ventilator to determining whether or not she still had an undisturbed sucking reflex after relying on the feeding tube.

Those days that taught me about a different sort of sleepless night with a newborn have not lost their poignancy over the eight years since we brought our baby home again. The simplest joy of touching our child was denied in those days, and we could only gather her close in every detail through blood-shot eyes. Except at 3:00 a.m., when the night shift nurse would break every protocol to salvage my heart by allowing an exhausted mother to bathe the child so recently tied to her in every way. The slight resistance of lifting the little one's decreasing weight as our chubby 12-pound girl swiftly wasted to a slight eight pounds was reassuring because it meant she was real despite the frighteningly still, doll-like appearance in her sedation.
Today, touch remains somewhat elusive as this bright, capering person dances close only to duck away. Those photographs fail to tell the tale that would require far more than a thousand words to capture. And that which remains to be written as that slight infant continues to blossom into our clowning, curious, youngest child.