Saint Barbara Sutton

Thirty-five years ago a woman died to bring me into the world.

The way I'm told it, the doctor, very deadpan, very bedside mannered, said to my father,
"It's a boy. You're wife is dead."

And the story goes that my father crumbled. Fell. Passed out on the floor in the waiting room of a hospital in Virginia at the end of March. His body had shut down, and rightfully so, in the face of such news.

It's a boy.
Your wife is dead.
Too much.

It was half-past three in the morning.

I often wonder what the exact scene was.
I imagine cigars spilling out of his pocket and onto a colorless but shining linoleum floor. I imagine people rushing to catch him, too late, and the drawn out thud of dead weight collapsing. A sound that doesn't echo and somehow doesn't go away.

I've never been able to imagine the scene in the hospital room. I've always centered my imagination of the collapse of my father. (My mother tells a side of what happened to her while this was all going on. Maybe someday I'll tell it, if I happen to talk about seeing the first Star Wars movie.)

The only time my attention turns to the hospital room is when the story takes it's next turn.

I'm told there was a young doctor. He was new to the business of medicine, unfriendly to the idea of death. Full of hope, and unwilling to give up, he kept pushing, kept doing what doctors do.

However long it took,
no matter what,

and brought her back.

The story goes that by the time my father came to, my mother was back in the world.

Today is Mother's Day.
I'm telling this story to say thanks.
Thanks Mom.

And not just for that one thing, for all the things along the way. All the grocery trips and the stretched dollars. All the calm in all those storms. All the wisdom and all the fun. Thanks for bringing me in.

And thanks for coming back.

I love you.