Free Holding Silvan by Monica Wesolowska Page A

tube in place for almost a week. Dr. A begins to pull the long tube out. It’s unbearably long. I cannot look. But at last, he is free and there he is, my little Silvan. Just like that, he closes his mouth. He lifts his little hands up towards his face. One hand settles under his chin, the other cups his tape-reddened cheek. He breathes.
    He breathes and seems to smile.
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    NOW EVERYONE POURS in to see him. In our private room, there seems no limit to the number of visitors; we are bending
all the rules. We photograph him free of his breathing tube, we photograph him in the arms of grandparents, uncles, aunts, friends.
    Free of the tube, he is also free to lie on his stomach. Noticing his backside is red, I try to put him down on his stomach for the night. When a nurse comes in and says she isn’t comfortable with that, I ask, “Why not? Are you afraid he’ll stop breathing?” but I return him to his back.
    Desperate for him to stop breathing, I am in love with every breath he takes.
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    NINE DAYS FROM birth we say that we are ready. The anticipation is awful. That morning, I can barely leave the house. In the same way that I was both inside and outside myself when I heard of his brain damage, my grief is both overwhelming and melodramatic. I’m on all fours in the living room heaving, gasping for breath at the thought of becoming a mother who is not feeding her child. David holds me from behind, trying to get me to stop; then I am no longer crying from the depths, I’m coming back up to the surface where I am sure of what we have to do.
    Back at the hospital, I’m stunned by how much more exquisite he is in the flesh than in any image I can hold in my mind. His skin calls to me to stroke it. His head must be sniffed. When he pees, I marvel. I can’t help being proud. Of his long bones. Of his long eyelashes. We say that we are ready.
    Hours later, I notice a bag of fluid still hanging from his IV pole.
    I call a nurse in and ask, “ Why is he still getting food?”
    She looks upset. She says, “I’m just letting that last bag run out.”
    â€œOkay,” I say to her. Okay , I say to myself.
    Let him die easily, I think at each step; and then again, not yet.

We Climb
    WHATEVER LUCIDITY, WHATEVER STRENGTH I HAVE IS partly biological. My body is healing apace: my stitches are healing, my womb shrinking, my milk drying up. Not only that, crisis releases hormones that make our brains and bodies work faster, more efficiently, our senses sharpen, we become less sensitive to pain, our memories work better. As if this is normal, as if we have lived a lifetime together like this – David, Silvan, and me – we adjust to crisis.
    Sleep, spend day at hospital, sleep.
    Each day stretches long as a year.
    A lifetime is packed into a week.
    One night, I notice the chill of almost-summer fog coming in from the ocean, on another I register that the month is now May, but none of this means time is really passing. Not the way it used to. Things are happening in the world, bad things, other children suffering in the headlines without medical care in war-torn countries while my son dies surrounded by equipment; I know this is unfair, but there is hardly room for other people yet. I’m still waiting for the end of his first day. But with his healthy heart and lungs, his great reserves of fat, no one knows how long he will go on. If anything feels miraculous to us, it is this ability to go on. Sometimes I can’t believe he’s not still inside of me. “I have a son,” I record in my diary as if to make it true.
    In addition to starting a diary, I let myself sleep in. I wake from tortured dreams. No longer pregnant, I dream about
having been pregnant and giving birth to a baby who’s not okay. I wake from the dream relieved, until I realize it’s true. I fall asleep and have another dream. Silvan is saying, “Linda, Linda,” which is the name of