Three

Three years ago right now I stood in the kitchen of a downtown loft apartment, teary-eyed and craving the comfort of a cup of coffee.

The locket I normally wore around my neck was pooled inside my nervous palm, a necklace given to my mother by my father on the occasion of her 21st birthday. Inside the brass oval are two images: me, as an infant, and my very young father, sporting a white dinner jacket and an absurd mustache.

My mother gave me the necklace when it became apparent that my father’s illness was dire. I wore it every day for the three months he received risky treatments at the Mayo Clinic. I wore it the day they told us he had less than a year to live. I wore it when I – along with my siblings – delivered his eulogy before 500 mourners at his funeral Mass.

This day three years ago, I had to take it off.

The baby inside my belly was breech. The rules of surgery dictated that I leave all my jewelry at home.

We watched the clock, my husband and I, waiting for the numbers to tick by. The paper I received from my doctor the day before stated that my presence was required on the maternity ward at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. Chicken sat on the stairs to the living room, shoes on and coat in hand. We looked at each other with wide eyes. In less than nine hours, we would be parents.

I crossed the room and sat next to him, so he could tie my shoes. I grabbed him around his neck and buried my face, fearing both the knife and the child.

Was I capable?

I’d borne so much that year. I found a strength inside me I didn’t know existed.

And yet.

This challenge, this lifelong chain that would bind me to another forever.

My mother and father-in-law would meet us at the hospital, but someone dear would not.

I wanted my daddy with a longing most fierce. I looked at the locket in my hand, and raised my eyes to meet equally frightened blue ones.

“I want to ask you something,” I began, the tears falling now. “Please. Will you keep this in your pocket for me in the operating room?”

I handed him the necklace. He took it and gently folded inside his jeans pocket. “Yes,” he said. “Of course I will.”

We waited hours, delayed by two sets of twins and a woman whose belly was stabbed during a domestic dispute, her eight-month baby hanging on by sheer life force. All, of course, patients of my doctor.

Finally the moment came, and as I have found so many times in the mothering years that came after, I was alone. No one was allowed with me as I entered the operating room for my epidural.

I sat, vulnerable and cold, in a room full of machines. Thoughts of other surgeries endured by someone close to me invaded my head.

Finally my husband appeared, pale and covered in surgical clothing.

I remember his eyes over the mask. I remember the feeling of cold coursing in my veins. I remember her cry, and the swoosh of doctors who rushed to check her breathing when she had a rasp in her lungs.

I remember a small face, a hat and an impossibly tiny diaper.

My baby. My daughter. Our child.

The pain in my heart, that which seemed lodged there forever, broke loose that day.

They placed her in my arms at last, and for the first time in a very long time, I was able to breathe.

My darling Poo, I am so honored to know you.

Happy third birthday.