“Prom?”

I’ve walked into harder times, and I’ve walked out the other side

It seems like you end up getting what you need

Yeah, looking down from 30,000 feet, life’s been good to me

—Lyrics from the song “30,000 Feet” by Ben Rector

I glide down concrete steps. He reaches for my hand. I take it and we continue down together. I glance up at the sky, my eyes jump from the top of one perfectly curated and positioned palm tree to the next, until they stop— at the entrance of the hospital — Children’s Hospital. The entrance where, just yesterday, or perhaps the day before, or what could have been a vivid dream, or even a nightmare in deluded watercolor — a nurse took my seizing baby from my arms and stretched her out under bright lights, on a bed intended for a person four times her size, as a medical team quickly encircled her and removed her clothes: clothes I can’t find. Clothes that disappeared between the ER and the PICU, clothes that, for whatever reason, matter. Probably because moms, or at least good moms, or at least my mom, can always keep track of little details like belongings, and important things like a 3-month- old sized, ruffled cap – and ruffled baby onesie. Even in the chaos. Especially in chaos.

Wind gently lifts strands of loose hair across my face, my braid is coming undone. I let go of his hand and pause at the bottom of the concrete steps to undo it. My hair falls to my shoulders and I run my fingers through it as a cluster of tangled hair catches around my fingers. My hair is falling out in clusters — it still surprises me to see the strands in my hand, or falling out in clumps in the shower. No one told me I might lose my hair by the handfuls when my baby turned three months old, or that I might bleed for months after having a baby, or that women wear sticky cotton pads in their bras to catch leaking breastmilk. No one told me babies sometimes have seizures, or that the words, “I feel like something is wrong with my baby,” ultimately, mean nothing in the world of modern medicine.

I hear his voice, “Are you alright?” I stare at his face, and wonder how long he’s been watching my face, waiting for me to keep moving forward. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out. Another couple slowly approaches the bottom of the stairs, and attempts to move around us, but I don’t move. He greets them with “Good morning,” and gently leads me to the side, and asks me again, “Are you okay?” I stare at his face, and whisper, “No,” before I erupt into tears. I quickly make my hands into tight fists and kneed my knuckles deep into my eyes, but no matter how hard I press, I can’t stop the sobs. He pulls me close to his chest, I bury my head in his shoulder, and wrap my arms around him before I say, through gasps and sobs, “This is my fault….I should have pushed harder, earlier, to get her help…..I can’t even find her clothes…. I’m so bad at this.” I say before I let out a fresh wave of sobs.

Suddenly and without warning, he grabs my shoulders and pushes me away from his chest with a quick jerk to say, “Look at me.” I stop crying. Stunned, and stare at him. He quickly brings his index finger inches from my face as he says, “I don’t ever, EVER, want to hear you say any of this is your fault again. Do you understand?”

I feel myself nod, eyes wide, as he continues to talk, “We are in this together, and we are going to figure this out for our daughter, and we are going to get her everything she needs. You are a great mom. You are the one who brought her here, and right here is exactly where we all need to be.”

I continue to nod with wide eyes, and whisper, “Okay,” before I begin to sob again. He again pulls me tight as I bury my face in his chest and say, into his shirt, “I just need a minute.”

“You can have as many minutes as you need.”

I continue to sob, knowing the clothes don’t matter, knowing nothing really matters. Not my hair falling out in clusters, not the wind or the sky, just him and the way he takes my hand, and her — my baby — the way she chews her pacifier as she sleeps against my chest, and the way she smiles when I sing. This, the miracle of him and her — is everything. And, it’s all I ever wanted.

A note to Him:

Last week, as we scrubbed and dried dishes over the kitchen counter, you shared your new favorite song, “30,000 Feet,” and you told me you felt the song lyrics, “Life’s been good to me,” describe how you feel about your own life. It was my first time hearing the song, and as I listened to the chorus, the above scene from our life popped into my head. I can’t explain why, especially because it feels like the antithesis of “Life’s been good to me.” As I listened to the music, I began to wonder if the phrase “Life’s been good to me” could be compared with the terms “fortune,” “luck,” or “lucky,” and in contrast, “unlucky.”

I’m struck now that, on a day when my dreams, around family and motherhood, dissolved around me, I found myself wrapped up in the arms of my first dream: you. Since I was sixteen years old, I have never been able to formulate, or articulate, a hope or dream for my future that did not include you. Call it what you will that we started dating after a high school prom, and never fell out of love: fortune, or luck, or even a miracle. But you should know, whatever you, or anyone else call it, I consider myself quite lucky— then, today, and always. What I’m trying to say is this: “Yeah, life’s been good to me too.”

I love you.

Jesse

Photo Credit: Jessica Rice Photography