AS YOU FOUGHT

Dear Spike:

No one expected you to come so early, let alone so rapidly. Within three hours of our arrival at the hospital, early yesterday morning, your mother was bearing down with all of her strength trying to push you free.

Your little heart — it’s given us such trouble over the past nine months — beat faster, slower, faster, slower and then, for a time, not at all. A army of anxious doctors and nurses charged into the delivery room. With grunts and tugs and many sharp tools, they fought their way into your mother’s body to rescue you, pulling you out and — without time even to present you to your mom — they carried you away.

I followed. Scared and proud and confused and helpless. I stood silently to the side, watching like a ghost over his own mortal remains as two doctors worked to recover your heartbeat, then to warm your tiny body. I didn’t understand the words they exchanged. But I knew their faces. I’ve seen those faces before.

Too many times.

No one had expected you to be so small. Four pounds, 8.6 ounces. God, we’ve bought bigger chickens for dinner. The nurses here say they rarely receive babies as small as you are who do not need some time in the newborn intensive care unit.

And so that’s where you spent your first hours on this earth, surrounded by other tiny babies, all hidden under a web of tubes and wires, beneath lamps and warmers, under ever-watchful eyes. You shivered. You tried to cry. You gasped your first breaths.

And as you fought, your mother — like a ravaged ragdoll — began her recovery, stitch by stitch by stitch. The doctors say the cuts and tears she received, as they fought to extract you, were as bad as any they’ve seen. She’ll be in pain for months to come, but her spirit has been buoyed by your remarkable come about (by afternoontime, you’d left the the cold machinery of the intensive care unit for the warm embrace of your mother’s arms.)

There’s still much work for each of you. And though you cannot realize it now, your challenges are vast. Your tiny body must grow warmer and bigger. Your tiny heart must beat harder. Your tiny cries must grow stronger.

Nature gave you my ears and my lips. She gave you your mother’s eyes and her chin. Perhaps you’ll take from us a few other traits.

But I’ve long believed that we are more than crude models of our ancestors. We are more than our genetic code. Our personalities, our bodies and even our souls are inextricably shaped by our experiences.

Your mother and I certainly will be shaped by this experience.

And so I wonder: What of you? Is it possible that these brutal early moments might shape your life? Will you be a fighter? A survivor? With you carry the seen or unseen scars of a life begun under such duress? Will you cower before a challenge? Will you meet adversity without fear?

Ours is a vicious world. It can be violent. It can be brutish. It can challenge you to the heights of your moral, spiritual and physical fiber.

Somehow, I think you’ll know that better than most.

Somehow, I think you are being prepared.

Love,
dad