In early October of the year 2007, I was eleven weeks pregnant. Of my three pregnancies, this was the only one that was planned. Number two. As my husband joked (over and over) at the time, "I guess what happens in Vegas, doesn't stay in Vegas." Good one, babe.
We were living with my parents while we waited for our newly purchased house to close. In the bedroom that was mine as a child, with the same pink walls and frilly window valance, I woke at five-thirty a.m. Deep in my belly, there was a pop that shook me out of a sound sleep. It didn't hurt, but I figured my bladder must have burst because I thought I'd wet the bed.
I was hemorrhaging.
The sight of the blood caused my heart to drop, a broken elevator lurching down. I sat in the same bathroom where my mom had bathed me as an infant, the same one that served as my bedroom for an indeterminate amount of time in my babyhood. As a little girl, this was the toilet I'd run to when I was sick. And just like those long ago days, I waited until I could get up and walk, then went straight to my mother's bedroom door.
"Mom. I'm bleeding."
She sat by my side as I called the doctor's emergency hotline. As he told me an eleven-week pregnancy wasn't a guarantee. As I sat in the doctor's office beside Joe, my mom was still there, holding my hand. The three of us leaned on each other when the sono tech said, "No, no. it's okay. The hemorrhage isn't hurting the baby."
Eight months later, that same baby caused me more trouble in the delivery room. Once again there was blood when there shouldn't have been. Once again there were doctors and nurses rushing around me. This time, they lifted me onto a gurney and raced me down the hall. My heart pounded in my chest as the worst pain I'd ever felt stabbed at the place where my baby rested in wait.
C-section baby. My little emergency.
When they put him in my arms, everything about him was golden and perfect. He was alive! He was beautiful. Gold cheeks, gold hair. A little round angel with a scrunched-up nose and an ear that folded in on itself. I kept pressing it down with my finger, worrying it might stay that way, and then yelling at myself for even thinking it. He was alive. My little boy.
Noah.
There are a million Noah stories on this blog, and sometimes I wonder if they all say the same things. He is too much, but not enough. He makes me crazy. Why is he so loud? This is not regular-child loud, this is cover-your-ears volume that could wake a dead person from their grave. He hates spiders, and the dark, and being alone. His hugs are proof that heaven is real. He fights, but only about things no one can help...like having brothers, or going to school on Mondays.
When you're a parent, there is one thing that continues to challenge you over and over again. It can be so ordinary it's actually mundane, though sometimes it isn't. There are days where it's awful on a level for which you can't find words. Either way, it sucks. Watching your kid struggle.
Is that all? Yes.
For a million reasons, a parent suffers alongside their child through every bump, bruise, and break. Through every tantrum, disappointment, and failure. Sometimes we don't let it show. Sometimes we can't help it. We say things like, "I'm so sorry this is happening to you. Please tell me what I can do." We cry with them. We wait until they go to sleep and then close our doors and cry for them. Our hearts fill up and crack open and leak out pain we never knew existed.
One day awhile back, Noah was being...well, Noah. We'd just finished dinner and the other boys had gone off to do other things while Noah stayed in his seat, head in hand. Complaining. Disgruntled. Feeling all the world was against him and it just wasn't fair.
He was being a shit and I knew it.
But that doesn't change the instinctive need inside me to make things right for him. "What's wrong?" I asked. He gave a list of silly things: His brothers were against him, school is the worst, the dog likes someone more. But each one was delivered with such anguish. What a performer. The world is his theatre; every step he takes, he builds more stage.
"Noah, you have to stop letting these things bring you down." It wasn't the first time I'd said that. And his response wasn't new, either.
"I can't help it!"
"Yes you can," I said that day. "Every day that you wake up, you decide to get out of bed, you begin another chapter. Your life is a story, and you are the main character. You decide every single thing that character does. You don't like the story? Don't blame other people. You have the power to change it yourself."
"That's not true!"
"Okay, well, fine. But you know, one time, when I was a little girl--"
"Yeah, yeah. Your mom put you in the bathroom and nobody wanted you. You've told me this story like a million times, Mom. I've heard ALL your stories a million times."
Oh, Noah.
He really is a performer. Luckily, we've found ways for him to use that part of himself to be successful. He wants a stage? We found him real ones. But none as special as the one on which he stood last night, playing the part of a disgruntled little boy hearing his dad's crazy stories. Last night, costumed in a t-shirt and jeans, he climbed up on the stage, lifted his fist into the air, and into a quiet theatre, his small voice rang out.
The small voice of that baby who lived through the hemorrhage, through the battle of birth, and so many other challenges life has brought: a baby brother ("I'm not the youngest but I'm not the oldest...I don't know what I'm supposed to be!"), never quite fitting at school, the lifelong stomachaches that landed him in the hospital a year ago with a tube down his nose. His little voice, punched with something he has more of in his little finger than most people will have in their lives: heart.
"Let's fight the dragons and then storm the castles 'til we win what needs to be won..."
The story of a father and son--and I don't mean to steal my husband's thunder here--a parent who raises a little boy on stories of giants and witches and battles and victories, to prepare for a great big messy world where he absolutely can, should, be a hero.
Noah, you already are my hero. "Proud" doesn't even begin to cover it.
