Six Weeks

Wed 3/10

I drove back to SLC last night. I already missed Jon and Nora before I’d buckled.

Six weeks of baby boy Breen growing onto earth, into air, unto us. Six weeks of NICU life. Of healing C-section incision. Of pumping, talking, listening, and leaning on the prayer net. Of nurses, medical people, oxygen alarms, stomach aches, adrenaline, anguish, joy, and exhaustion. Six weeks of miracles.

The dye test went well and they’re starting re-feeding stool tonight.

Little Breen has a new bed space and four new roommates; he has graduated from the “keep an awful close eye on this guy” room.

I’m 1.7 miles from the hospital, but I swear I can still hear everyone’s monitors ringing.

Too tired to type tonight, but here are the parts of a Mary Oliver poem I’ve been frequently returning to since my initial December hospitalization. ( I put “…” where I left out some lines.) From her book Dream Work:

The Turtle

…you think
of her patience, her fortitude,
her determination to complete
what she was born to do —
and then you realize a greater thing —
she doesn’t consider
what she was born to do.
She’s only filled
with an old blind wish.
It isn’t even hers but came to her
in the rain or the soft wind,
which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.

She can’t see
herself apart from the rest of the world
or the world from what she must do…
she doesn’t dream,
she knows

she is a part of the pond she lives in,
the tall trees are her children,
the birds that swim above her
are tied to her by an unbreakable string.