Sandor

The delivery room has a large, east-facing picture window, but the sky is still dark when we arrive at 6:02 am. Reflected in the window is a hospital scene from a soap opera – a mask on the mother to get oxygen to her son who is in distress with a dangerously low heartbeat. A short, wiry nurse yells into her face that if she doesn’t push, she’s going to hurt her baby; a tall, too-handsome-for-real-life obstetrician stares the nurse down, while encouraging the young woman to push.

A tentative dawn peeks over the horizon, peering through the reflected scene as the would-be mother pushes in anguish against the pain. She asks the doctor repeatedly if he’s worried; he says that if he were, he would have forceps out. It’s not five minutes before they are out, and the cut has been made to expedite delivery. NICU stands by like a wake of vultures awaiting the outcome of a gruesome terrestrial fray. It becomes increasingly difficult to see the reflection of what’s happening, as the curious sun reaches toward the horizon for a better look.

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My second son was suctioned before his body was born; limp and blue, he finally took his first, barely perceptible breath as the melodrama in the window evaporated into the first full light of a summer morning. He was whisked immediately away to the next room, and I asked repeatedly if he would be going to intensive care. Wails lifted from his wee barrel of a chest as the doctor asked, “Does that sound like a baby who’s going to intensive care?”

No. No – it did not.

My Sunshine was born with a perspective that permits him to see beyond the obstacle of an illusory horizon to what is so: a round earth, a steady pace toward multiple along-the-way goals, every finish a new beginning, always grasping a point beyond the next visible limit and knowing better than the rest of us that the obstacle is not real. Without a conventional competitive streak, he has often repeated the tension of his birth date – confirming to us only at the last minute that everything is going to be ok.

But I’ve known to believe in him, after that one morning of doubt.

I’ve protected him as I could from those unable to see with him beyond the shadowed image in the window, or the limiting illusions that cut across some lives: a grade two teacher who, faced with a field trip report 11 times longer than any other submitted, would have given him a “C” for lateness and messy writing. By the end of that week, we had transferred our son to a private school where he played outside, observed the natural world, knitted hats, hand-sewed stuffed toys, and sang songs with no marks before Grade 6.

Of course, Grade 2 was not to be the last time my boy noted copious details at a celestial pace while the rest of us raced up against horizon after horizon; his ability to see beyond that obstacle is ever a source of baited breath and has required some tenacity of vision on my part. Today, he is a doctoral candidate working in cancer research – something that first Grade 2 teacher had decided he could not be.

My centre son is a man of tenacity, resilience, and untold imagination who brings what you need when your skies are grey. To be loved by him is to bask in unrivaled warmth and clarity of purpose on a preternaturally lighted way.

Has he ever failed? Of course; we all have.

Might he ever give up?

Absolutely: as sure as the sun might not rise tomorrow.

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Sunshine in Winter – 2015. Photo: Sony RX10, GU 2015.

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Doing the work at 4 years old – GU 1997.

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Farm vacation 1997.

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Bringing some warmth to a snowstorm – Photo: Gossamer Universe 2016.

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At my PhD grad celebration. – 1997.

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Brief stint as a model to help pay for school.  Photo: Gossamer Universe 2015.

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Head shot for modelling website. Gossamer Universe 2016.

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Waldorf School Homework: Knitting in a Hat He Knitted circa 2001.

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Candid Portrait. Gossamer Universe 2018. My Sunshine. 

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All photos: Gossamer Universe. All Rights Reserved. 🙂

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