A mother's love for her children is endless. Something that fills the corners of her heart and her mind with light. Something that cannot be weighed and cannot be measured. I look into the eyes of my babes and can't imagine a life without either one of them. But a year ago today that was almost a reality. Three was almost the birthday that never happened with my son Gideon. This gluttonous child had a choking episode and stopped breathing. He stopped. His little chest and his little lungs. I couldn't take it. As a mother I had never felt more helpless or more devastated as I stared at him in the trauma center of our local hospital hooked up to a myriad of wires and tubes. He wasn't breathing, a machine was doing it for him. His lungs had stopped and so had my heart. My wild child was motionless on that table. It was like something out of a Lifetime movie, where the mother runs in, collapses to her knees, a mess of tears and wails. Except I was her. That whole day was a blur. That whole week was a mess. This whole year is a miracle.
My son is my heart, he is so sweet, and so loving even through his more feral characteristics. One of his first sentences he uttered was "I love you", he would tell me every morning as he crawled into my bed. He has so much life, and light, and love to give the world. I still cry uncontrollably when I look at these pictures, read these comments and updates I left for family along the way. He made a complete recovery. He may have sounded very strange for a few weeks following the removal of the ventilator, but there was no lasting damage at all. It was completely and one hundred percent a miracle. But as strange as it sounds I don't want to forget this. I think it is important for us to note that life is fleeting, that every moment is worth so much more than we give it. That everyday is a miracle in its own right.
I realized during all of this that this boy has touched so many lives. He is so charismatic that everyone who has met him loves him. People I didn't even know were reaching out to me, to us, to him, in our time of need. This was my village and my village was as much of a miracle as his recovery was.
A year later and this little guy will be starting preschool in the fall. He loves Spiderman and his sister. His favorite activity is making people laugh. He is terribly inconsistent with potty training. And he crawls into my bed every morning and says "I love you"as a smile filled with love and adoration dances on his face.
Comments