The Po Show

Gifts

You know how there are terrifying moments when you, for absolutely no reason, are suddenly gripped with the fear that something terrible has happened to your sleeping baby? I did this all the time with Matthew when he was an infant, once practically sticking my fingers up his nose to make sure he was breathing (part of this came from the fact that he slept so little, so when he did sleep for an appreciable amount of time, I was wracked by fear that he'd died of SIDS).

This is another recent February Break story. There was one morning during the vacation week that Tessa slept in really late, like till almost 10:00. My children do not sleep late. Matthew is up around 6:00AM almost every morning, and it's rare for him to sleep past 7:00. Tessa sleeps later, but very rarely past 8:30. But for whatever reason, she slept late that morning. I bustled about as usual; Matthew and I both had breakfast and I cleaned the kitchen and did other random stuff. And as it got later and later, I was suddenly struck by the fear that she was not going to wake up, that she was dead.

Of course I knew that that was silly and improbable. But I flashed on the scene in "Mask" in which Cher's character goes into her son's bedroom to wake him up in the morning and the moment she walks in, she knows, she knows, that he's died in his sleep. Her eyes fill with tears, but she still goes through the motions of telling him to get up and opening the window shades. But then she touches him, and it's confirmed, and she gathers him in her arms and rocks him and tells him that now he'll have no more pain.

So I went into Tessa's bedroom and looked at her, asleep under her covers, with her porcelain skin and her raven hair and the beautiful long lashes of her closed eyes. She was still. I waited. And then I saw the rise and fall of her breathing under her Hello Kitty comforter. I walked out feeling sort of stupid, but strangely reprieved.

You see, from the time she was born, I always said that somehow I couldn't believe that she was given to us, that she was ours and that we got to keep her. She seemed too good to be true. It's inexplicable to me, since with all that it took for Matthew to be born, I should have felt that way about him. Yet while Matthew struck me as a miracle, Tessa felt like a gift. Something you hope for and dream of, but are somehow surprised that you actually receive.

That morning, I felt like I'd been given the gift of Tessa all over again, if only in my own mind.