Page 40 - WTP Vol. V #1

should she be bothered by her scars and choose to pursue those options. The doctor said that over time, the topography of her scar tissue will change, that it will grow with her. From my own history of scarring, I know that when he says it will grow with her, he means it will grow larger. His best advice was to lotion her up daily, that time would tell, and that there may be treatments available to her in fifteen or twenty years—ones we can’t yet imagine.
need to hear such words from the mouth of an- other to believe that she is worthy, but if she does need them, I hope that the words hang in the air for her, just waiting to be heard.
During the intervening two-and-a-half years, we have waited and watched. We have had the luxury of what our favorite NICU doc called “the tinc- ture of time.” Month by month, we’d have to drag around the house the 50-foot tube attached to her enormous stationary oxygen canister; her monitors; her leg braces; her bottles of thickened formula, have come and gone, leaving her teth- ered to nothing except the skin that holds her in its care.
These days, Isabel is, as her grandfather Omo says so fondly, “normal as pie.” A toddler who runs everywhere, chats about the most curiously obvious facts, and from time to time throws fits so grand that they make us laugh as extremely as they consume her. The PDA ligation that saved her life left her with a paralyzed left vocal fold. Although her first year was spent in silence—no cries, no screams—at around twelve months
The now-large squares of skin where the leads were removed are thinner than the rest of her skin. Through that thin tissue, I imagine I am looking at the very map of her survival: the veins that carried donor blood transfused a dozen times, strengthening her organs cell by cell, build- ing up the layers of her skin. Each night, after
we heard her first glorious chirps, and now she sometimes screams with no mercy in the grocery store where others stare and I knowingly chuck- le. She has difficulty swallowing, requiring twice weekly feeding therapy, and restricting her to liquids as thick as milkshakes. This aside, if you didn’t know her story, you wouldn’t imagine any of this for her. You would not fathom what she has lived through.
her bath, we rub her chest gently with cream
as the dermatologist had suggested, choosing a face cream rather than a body cream, hoping she will benefit from that extra richness. This nightly ritual has become a celebration of our love for this mighty child, for the massive feats she has already achieved in her short life.
And yet, pull back her shirt, put her in a tank top, watch her run through the backyard sprinkler
or splash in the bath, and you will see that she wears her story on her skin. She seems to know the skin on her chest is different. Sometimes when she’s only in a diaper, she grasps this thin skin between her thumbs and forefingers, pulling it toward her father and me, as if she is hold-
As much as I would love to boast that the confi- dence that led me to accept my own scars came from within, the truth (as much as we ever have one) is that it hangs on the words of a college boyfriend—a six-foot-five-inch-285-pound foot- ball player who grew up on the streets, in a gang. When he saw my abdomen, and told me my scars were cool, I believed him. I believed him and for me, everything in my life pivoted that belief; the shadows and the shame diminished, and I be- came able to look people in the eyes and feel that I was worthy. I hope that our daughter doesn’t
ing out a t-shirt whose message she wants us
to read. And, although our instincts now are to stop her so that she doesn’t cause further injury, I wish for her that this could be how she always feels. When she stands before a mirror some day, taking a closer look, I hope she regards the reflection of how her body worked, moment by moment, cell by cell, to repair the nearly mortal danger of her precarious circumstances. I hope that beneath the surface of her skin, she can feel her heart pounding with a mighty strength, the strength of two babies, both for herself who lives on and for her lost twin brother whose heart beats in hers.
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Our scars will continue to articulate, reticulate. Our skin will be filled up with all kinds of stories,