Twelve writers share the messages they mined from months gone by
When my son was three months old, I took him and his older sister for professional pictures. “I need to take these pictures,” I confided in an older neighbor, “while I still can. I don’t know if I’ll always have these two children.”
Looking back, I cringe. The pictures came out beautiful, but I wish I would’ve dropped the melodrama. In my defense, I was young, and open-heart surgery is a big deal in anyone’s book.
When the nurse came to take him down for an echocardiogram a day after birth to follow up with his heart murmur, I asked if I had to come along. She looked at me strangely and said I didn’t have to, but most parents accompanied their babies for echoes.
I went down with him, not even feeling particularly nervous. I was that unprepared. When the cardiologist we consulted with after discharge confirmed the hospital doctor’s diagnosis that my son had a heart defect that required surgery, I was hit hard.
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