Rubber Band Rings

They’re developing on Sweet Seamus’ wrists as he eats, sleeps, poops, eats again; the cycle of growth. He was born so lanky, so thin, so sturdy—his thigh muscles clearly defined. His long limbs going on for miles but pulled in like a wind up toy you pull out and then it recoils ever so slowly into itself. Now eight weeks later he is really growing in length and in girth with these sweet rings carving into his once dainty wrists, and his thigh muscle definition fading away.

And he is finding his thumb, talk about sweetness! Watching him suck his thumb. How ingenious! He self soothes no paci plugging, or incessant nursing. Well okay, still incessant nursing. But no paci plugging! That has caused me more sleepless nights with my other three boys than I care to count! The thumb is a revelation to me in parenting. Dr. Grady, our pediatric cardiologist who cared for our first born’s heart murmur, assured us that they needed “non-nutirtive sucking,” and therefore that we were not ruining our son with an introduction to the paci. And we didn’t, whew, but at the time it was such a new parent controversy—or so it seemed, sitting there in Dr. Grady’s office waiting for the results of Finn’s heart echo, with the palm trees swaying outside his window.

And can we talk about the sweetness of having a baby fall asleep on you? It’s really an euphoria that I can’t get enough of these days. Him asleep on me, cheek to cheek, snuggled under my chin, laxed arms draped over my shoulder, his feet curved under my forearm against my belly. Really! What amazes and saddens me is one day it just stops—they just won’t sleep on you anymore.  

In this four week small window filled with such major growth, I’ve met mothers, who recall with heart wrenching details their sons, sons that have prematurely died. As they tell their story, stories that are now part of mine, I have the Chinese proverb I once got on a fortune cookie in Santa Fe whisper in my mind: “May your children and your children’s children outlive you.” It’s become my prayer and my plea.

Two mothers, Constance and Princess lost their teenage sons to murder in Minneapolis’ north side. Another mother, Caroline, who lost her twelve year old son, Carter, to a freak accident at the park shared her story with me in the waiting room at urgent care as I clutched my feverish two year old two nights ago. She looked at me holding him, and said, “What I wouldn’t do for those snuggles again.” Her other son battles kidney failure. She wishes they had more kids as she sadly states, “My 16 year old does not want to be an only child.” Then, last night at my doula party, I sat and talked to another doula, Kelly, who shared her story of losing her 19 year old son, Tyler, last winter to carbon monoxide poisoning as he worked to install large booming speakers into his car with the engine running. With each story that I now hold, tears have filled my eyes and theirs.  Who knows what details will stick to memory? Caroline said, “I imagine Carter saying this one is really gonna be a good one as he launched the next rock. I imagine he died laughing. Happy.” Or Kelly who said, her girlfriend said “Tyler visited her and was very near God and said please tell my mom ‘I love her and that I am filled.’”

As I look at my sleeping Seamus and revel in his rubber band wrists grateful for his vitality for each of my boys lives, I accept how fragile and strong life really is, and that just like that it can snap, the band breaks and we are left to walk in those deep crevices like the ones sweetly forming, ever evolving on Seamus’ wrists.