Tales of a Four Time Mommy: The Final Chapter (for now)

Thirteen years ago right this instant, I was in an extremely large room on the maternity wing of Misericordia Hospital alone save fora tiny occupant held lovingly within a small bassinet.The only thought I had running through my head was, "A boy. How am I supposed to raise a boy? How do you teach him to be a  man when you only have a vagina? What about girls? And police? How do you teach a boy to be a man in Philadelphia?"

Raising

I have a beautiful life. My heart is overfull with these four precious children whom I was given the honor of raising. That's a word isn't it? Raising. You can plant a seed and watch it grow with little help from you. You can have a dog and let him go. But who can have a child? I don't mean the process of birth or possession, I mean, can you have a child and let him be? Can you look at him every day and not do anything? That brings me to the term, "Raise".

My Country?

America…what does it mean?  In the home I grew up in it meant putting a flag out every Memorial Day and of course every eighth of November.  America meant celebrating the vote and the right to decide on the life in your womb.  It meant knowing the greatest inventors shared the same genetic amount of melanin to form the absolute perfect skin tone and that ‘we’ were just genetically built better than ‘them’.

Adventures of a Four Time Mommy

Two years ago this very minute, I lay in the tiniest room U Penn could possibly give someone, holding a gently sleeping bundle across my chest, afraid to put him in the bassinet.  Afraid to let him out of my arms for fear of missing a single second of his first hours.  This was my last child, a boy born from love, strong and little and perfect.  His tiny hand amazed me as he curled it so trustingly around my finger, his toes, so small and perfect, reflexively clenched and unclenched into little balls as he lay, warm and secure against my bare chest gently breathing new air.  Across the room, tucked against a tiny wall were two of those pink upholstered chairs that U Penn kept in it's waiting and visiting rooms and stretched across both was my husband's six foot four inch frame. His arms crossed over his stomach as he attempted something he'd never done for the three other young ones at home.  Sleeping comfortably in a tiny hospital room with his newborn.

Poor and Me

It was summer of my 16^th year when Poor first started hangin’ round. I didn’t know him as one would an enemy or even casual acquaintance, just, one day he appeared, standing on my street corner in a black tuxedo, eating an apple and staring at me with blank and shining eyes.