I saw a man, whom I assumed was a father, standing beside a young girl as they looked out of a window from the fourteenth floor down to the street below. It’s 6:44pm and New Haven is very much alive down there, yet time in here feels very much…stalled. Fourteenth floor is women’s oncology, so I’m assuming the child’s mom, this man’s loved one, is in a room like Sister’s as they stare at the world moving on down below.
My first thought was my niece, a mere child who’s already seen too much. Sister was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer less than two months before her amazing gestational carrier birthed our little petunia flower (Patoonie, as I call her). Her situation was different than average, as her disease was discovered while she was actively under anesthesia for an unrelated procedure. At the end of her ten-plus-hour surgery, her husband was met by an oncologist who had been called in mid-procedure to confirm what was discovered: cancer, which was “everywhere.”
I remember the phone call when he told me. It was right after I read his text, which I’m grateful he sent as a buffer before the call. I had a one-month-old baby at home, as Child had just been born himself, so imagine the guilt. This wasn’t a casual or passive guilty thought that floated in and out of consciousness; it was a palpable feeling of guilt, as if I had just won the last of a lottery jackpot and left her standing in line, still waiting to buy her ticket. Almost as if I had snatched her dream up from right in front of her and she was finally catching on.
I wonder if he cried today, for the woman in his life who is in treatment, for his daughter, or for himself. I cried outside of the fourth-floor exit as I literally stepped aside to write these thoughts before my words escaped me. I hate to do that, to publicly cry, especially at a hospital. Maybe it’s because I have a deceivingly kind face, and people always stop and ask if they can help; but I hate crying in public. I cry at home and in therapy, because I am still learning that emotional dysregulation isn’t a weakness, as our culture has drilled into our brains. Last week was the last time I told myself I’d cry in this hospital, right outside of Smilow Cancer Center’s children’s ward. Jesus Christ, children.
8:24am —
I have to wake up in time to catch my son before he flutters out for the day, which he literally does. He’s non-verbal, so I consider my time with him as magic. We communicate without words, so the entire experience is deliberate, mindful, and has to be executed in a way that connects us rather than causes him to become dysregulated. It’s a very delicate dance, which I’m slowly learning the steps to.
I recently had to have a talk with him, where I got down onto my knees and explained, repeatedly, why “Mommy lost her cool and it is not okay to make you do anything by force.” It was the real lifes that did me in. That’s what I refer to legit tears as: “real-life tears” aka “real-lifes.” I’ve felt connected with Child since before he was an embryo, before the Gonal-F and Menopur, probably before this lifetime, so I can feel his tears internally. Real-lifes are something I still haven’t fully wrapped my brain around. What exactly am I supposed to do here? Like, stop please.
His tears represent so much to me. From the minute he was wheeled into our room and I picked him up, the very first words I said to him were, “I love you.” I just loved this little being so much. Until this point, my plants were the only other helpless beings fully dependent on me for survival. I love animals, probably more than I love people, but am perfectly okay dodging any commitments required to keep a pet, so my plants got all the love. It’s no surprise that Child is named after a plant, a simple four-letter name, word, color, and energy. When he was placed in my arms, suddenly I wasn’t the babied youngest of three siblings and seven first cousins. I wasn’t the wife to a man who magically handled just about anything that he felt would cause me stress, to his own detriment at that. I wasn’t the unheard and unparented kid that my parents and mother-in-law judged me so harshly for being. I was just depended on wholly by this perfect sparkle. He truly came out looking like this: ✨.
Two and a half months later, in a small hotel room in Dallas, I met the second such sparkle of my life when my brother-in-law handed me the tiniest bundle, all wrapped up in a white blanket and pink bow. She was perfect and so alert, with eyes wide open, instantly reminding me of a glow worm toy I had and loved as a child. I remember her being incredibly lightweight, almost like a leaf. “Oh my God, oh my God, I love you!” I squeezed her so close to my heart, trying to convince the universe to let Sister feel this energy, this love, from back home in Connecticut. I wanted her to feel what I was feeling, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Why wasn’t she able to be there? And why was I handed her jackpot again?
When her husband and MIL arrived at JFK, they were met by Mom and Sister, who sat on each side of Isla’s car seat in the back as they carefully drove back into Connecticut. Mom’s recollection is understandably foggy these days, so I was thrilled to rediscover notes I had taken over the years, snippets of experiences that others had described for me. Smaller details seemed to have faded, but the images Mom clearly recalls are of struggle, dressed gracefully. Sister’s hairless, perfectly-shaped head is what Mom remembered most, followed by the heartbreaking fact that a tiny newborn baby couldn’t be placed on her mother’s stomach due to an ostomy bag. Instead, Mom would place Isla’s bassinet beside her so they could see one another’s faces, which seemed to aggressively fuel Sister’s optimism. The baby instantly connected with her and slowly became her ride-or-die.
Nearly five years.
I wonder if this is a horribly cruel twist of her fate, or a hard lesson for the rest of us, at her expense?
