Baby Blue

My mom, my sister, and baby Shoshi

 My mother never cried or screamed or dramatically threw herself on the floor yelling out, “Why G-d?” when I, her youngest child, was born blue and barely breathing. Heart, oxygen, hole. Ventricular septal defect, Tetralogy of Fallot. These terms thrust themselves into my parents’ vocabulary. However, my mother proudly showed off her highly advanced daughter when I sat up at four months. (truthfully, it helped me breath)   A tiny elf, barely sixteen pounds at one, I scooted on my butt instead of crawling.  

Despite not drinking, smoking or taking anti-depressants (unfortunately for everyone), the second opinion doctor or, as my mother refers to him, That Fucking Asswipe, insisted she was somehow at fault for the genetic fluke. She ignored him. At sixteen months, after the first surgery that connected the artery from my right arm to my heart, left a machete-like scar, she insisted I wear it like a badge of honor. After the surgery, when I scooted across the floor, my ability to breath made it harder to find me. Then, to my mother’s delight, out of my blue lips came, not just a first word, but a sentence: “I want that red balloon.” Slow walking followed suit, with the occasional, “Wait, mommy, I gotta sit down.”  

Baby Shoshi not looking Blue

Three years passed between surgeries.  For the second, my parents flew our family across the country, dropping my older sister at summer camp, while we spent June at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. 

“It was like a roach motel,” My mother laughs at the memory. “We had three choices: sit in the room, walk around the sketchy neighborhood, or sleep at your grandparents in the Bronx. Clearly, I slept with you in your room.” When baseball great, Dave Winfield visited my room, I traded my new Dave Winfield baseball card for my roommate Junior’s sparkly Michael Jackson card.  When it came time for surgery, the nurses put an oxygen mask over my teddy bear’s mouth. A week after surgery, I ran down the hall to my heart surgeon. (My mother notes, “I haven’t seen you run since."). My only real complaint was the terrible taste of pure potassium they forced me to drink for weeks after.

As I grew, the cardiology visits were a yearly ritual; my parents and I sat in a dark room listening to the unsteady beating of my heart.   The shwoosh, shwoosh, shwoosh, long pause, shwoosh, shwoosh was magic to my mother’s ears.   And now, despite the blue, despite the labored breathing, the surgeries and the scars, I have babies of my own. And my babies...are pink.

The Great Rabbi, The Queen Mum...my pink babies