Day 79: Asthma

My husband was a sort of forgotten child.  Just a few months old, they would forget him at home.  And it is rumored that he cried so softly (on account of poor lungs) that noone would know he was awake, or hungry or anything at all.

When he was a kid, Rich spent weeks in the hospital.  He was the last child and his mother just didn't have it in her to give up smoking for a third time.  It was 1977; things were different.  And so my husband was born with lungs that couldn't breath the air without wheezing like a deflating air mattress.  They would keep him in the hospital, zipped up in a clear bag of breathable air.  He says he liked the bag, that it was quiet and safe.  I say this is where his loner ways began.  Rich's severe asthma eventually weakened until a constant inhaler was enough.  And today he ran four miles in clear cold air.  Who could know that a boy in a bag in a hospital would one day forget he ever had an inhaler? Who would guess that he would hike a dozen mountains, that his wife would tell him to just calm down a little with the outdoor activities.   

I think that growing, like loving, is constant tension between who you are and who you want to be. 

This afternoon I searched the genetic disorder the doctor's claim has made my husband infertile.  They say it's caused by smoking mothers.  A rare side effect for the unborn baby, but present for one in ten thousand.  I wonder, do any of us really know how deeply one decision can affect the generations? There are damages that cannot be undone.  And there are miracles.  The miracle here is that she kept him.  She chose life.  A welfare family who couldn't feed the kids and stepkids that they already had.  She kept him. 

Somewhere out there, another mother will choose to keep a baby that she cannot raise.  And we will be here with all this love that is just storing up in our hearts.  It feels right.  It feels like justice.