In My Arms

“Mom!” Polly yells out in her sleep. Her body thrashes to and fro on our Queen sized bed. Her legs kick the covers off. Sweat glistens her forehead.

Her father and two older sisters went out for the night. Her little sister, having been all tuckered out from school and therapy had been asleep for an hour. I bedded Polly in next to me, thinking that my husband would move her when he gets home, and that her slight of breath, up and down, methodical, musical, may inspire me as I grab a few last minutes in the day to write in the quiet house with our fuzzy white dog at my feet.

“Honey, what’s wrong. Tell Mama what’s wrong.”

She doesn’t respond but continues to fuss and squirm on the bed.

“Shh, there there,” I attempt to settle her back into whatever part of her dream cycle she momentarily eludes. This part isn’t new to me, a seasoned mother of four. There have been countless nights in the last twelve years where I’ve brushed wet hair off a forehead, hummed a melody, and lulled a child back to sleep.

But my coaxing doesn’t work.

“What’s wrong, Polly? Does something hurt?”

My daughter nods her head yes, and a shot of electricity zaps through my extremities.

When she was born at 37 weeks, Polly wasn’t breathing. The doctors resuscitated her, and she spent the next three weeks, the first three weeks of her life, in an incubator fighting to breathe and battling a blood infection.

It was weeks before I got to hold her for the first time. By the time I finally felt the weight of her tiny, five-pound being in my arms, her father and I had already been informed of her diagnosis of Down syndrome.

We were robbed.

Her too weak to leave her plastic dome and me, too weak to fathom the curve ball of Down syndrome in my well thought out life. I’ve had moments through the years where my arms ache to hold Polly the baby. What I wouldn’t give to go back and scoop her up, to hell with my fear of the unknown, to hell with sickness, because if I could go back in time, I’d probably have the power to make her well with a slight touch to her forehead.

“Show me where it hurts.”

Polly gestures towards her head.

“Your head? Your head hurts?”

She nods yes again. I pull her up onto my chest. It’s not as easy as it sounds. She’s in first grade. We are planning her seventh birthday party in a few short weeks.

But I pull her to me, because we don’t screw around with headaches in this family.

Three years ago, Polly had a catastrophic stroke which later resulted in the diagnosis of Moyamoya, a disease that thins the arteries in the brain to the point of strokes and seizures. Apparently, she had not been born with one diagnosis (Down syndrome) but two (Moyamoya), and unbeknownst to us, this disastrous disease had been causing mild strokes in her brain throughout her short little life.

Polly underwent two brain surgeries that diminished the chances of recurrent strokes and seizures from 67% to 7%. She rocked the surgeries, actually running circles around me after the second one, just days after her neurosurgeon cut through skin, skull, and brain to create new paths of blood flow for our girl.

“Here, honey, let me see.” I force Polly’s face towards mine and examine her for signs of stroke or seizure. There’s no twitching, or any other signs I know to look for, so the fear of the moment releases into the air around us. I hold her to my heart, like I longed to do after her birth so many times. She settles in my arms and sinks into me. My body is quicksand. I engulf her.

In her short life we’ve danced around death more than I ever expected.

But I don’t take for granted that she is here, tonight, in my arms. I know too many mothers whose arms are empty today. And that knowledge stays with me. My heart is with those mothers. But she’s here. It is a privilege to feel her weight on me, and to know that she is happy, she loves her life, and at least today, is well enough to fill up on her joy, splashing those around her, and continually plugging up my heart, so that I can be filled too.

Polly sighs and falls deeper into sleep.

And I hold here. Here. Like this well into the night.

Because I can.