Leta was home from school this weekend. And Saturday night, it was just the two of us alone. My two other girls had sleepovers and birthday parties to go to, so we began our evening ritual of bath and bed with few distractions. People ask how I cope some days with Leta, and I just say that I buy really good red wine. So with my cabernet glass in hand, I turned on the bath and began singing Leta’s favorite bath time song, “Rubber Ducky.” which is only sung well, which is to say, if it is only sung poorly and really out of key. The higher pitched my voice, the more Leta laughs. “Rubber Ducky, you’re the one, you make bath time so much fun…Rubber Ducky I am awfully fond of you…Rubber Duck, Rubber Duck.” Everyone knows it. Leta loves it.

And it was then that I found an envelope on the sink inscribed, MOM. I opened it with excitement. Lucy and Ava had left hurriedly for their parties, but had somehow sneaked back upstairs and left me this beautiful mother’s day card. Just when I was feeling invisible, another night of thankless mom duty with Leta, I was given this gift.

“Our hearts are only as beautiful as the love we put in them,
And your heart MOM, is one of the most beautiful there is.” Love Lucy & Ava

A small gesture that meant everything to me at that moment.

The next day, Leta was up at her usual hour of 6am. We usually try to kill time until Highpoint Cafe opens at 7am. We are always the first one’s there, cheating the arrival time by 10-15 minutes. But it is the best coffee in Philadelphia, has the nicest baristas in any town, and they love Leta. We get the usual, me a triple latte, Leta the everything bagel with butter. Sometimes we sit and other times we take it to go. But this morning, Leta veered from either routine. She got up from her seat and stood at the counter, hands on her hips, and made her sign for coffee. She shakes her head from side to side really fast and makes the noise, “ Errrrrh”…..It’s hysterical. I can only assume, she learned this as the sign for coffee by watching me wake up in the morning and make this very same expression. She knows that until I get my Highpoint Coffee that this is what I look and sound like. (a grumpy pirate) So there she stood. My warm and wonderful namesake barista, Layney, asked me if I wanted another cup, and I responded “No”, but Leta would not take no for an answer. Hands on hips, she was not budging…..”Errhhh” she intoned again. So Layney, handed Leta a small cup of hot coffee. Leta was delighted and with both hands she carefully walked it over to our table and handed it to me. And then she gave me a big Leta bear hug and sloppy wet Leta kiss. She may not have actually said “Happy Mother’s Day,” but her intent was clear.

The rest of the day, we spent weeding in our yard , making a trip to the flower store for some perennials to brighten up the new house, and then we planted. Ava and Lucy planted their own vegetable gardens, Lucy wanting to include tomatoes, peppers and a cotton plant. Ava picked out lettuce and one tiny watermelon plant, and Leta chose one small geranium. We also bought some hostas, a red azalea bush, some purple salvia, and a few ferns.

In reflection ,gardening with my girls yesterday was a perfect metaphor for being a mother. Symbolic of the nurturing I try to give them. As I try to plant the seeds of kindness, love, and hope, as I gently water my plants each and every day with small gestures; cutting the crust off their lunch sandwich, listening to their latest problem at school or singing them their special tuck in song each night, and then very patiently standing back, with trepidation and pride, to watch them grow into themselves. Leta always growing a bit slower, but still growing every day. It was a perfect Mother’s Day.

When Jack was 6 and Leta 4, Jack clearly loved his sister, but he was still struggling with the fact that she was so sick, so often and required so much medical care.  He hated the long periods of time that I was away with Leta at the hospital, he hated the sound of the oxygen machine whirring all night.  He said it kept him from sleeping and was a scary sound outside his door.  And he hated watching us have to wrestle Leta to the ground nightly in an attempt to attach her oxygen to her nose.  Leta refused to keep her nasal canula on, but without it she would turn blue, so our only alternative, short of  having her on a tracheal ventilator, was to strap her arms down with “No-No’s,” a euphemism as far as she was concerned, for straight jacket.  The “No-No’s” prevented Leta from bending her arms and therefore, she was unable to pull out the oxygen tubes from her nose.   We hated putting Leta through this misery, but the end justified the means.  Without “No-No’s” Leta would not get enough oxygen to breathe.

One evening, while I was holding Leta down on the floor and unwinding the surgical tape to wrap her in the “NO-NO’s”,  Jack walked by and insensitively asked: “Why does she have to scream so much every time you put that on her?” ” Why is she such a cry baby about it? It’s just oxygen.”  And for some reason, in a moment of sleep deprivation, grief and bad parenting, I did the unthinkable.

I grabbed my son, held him down and strapped both the “No-No’s” on his arms and placed the nasual canula in his nose, turning up the O2 strong enough to let him feel the rush of air through his nostrils.  He flailed, he wailed, just like Leta.  As I write this, I am horrified that in  some strange quest to teach him empathy and compassion, I  put Jack through this.  We never talked about it again.  Occasionally, I would wonder what his therapy bills might look like down the road, but I buried the memory in our collective past.

And then it came up again, last year;  Ten years later, as I sat with Jack at a college essay writing seminar at The University of Virginia, my alma mater.  The professor was emphasizing to the kids that college essays need to be about a defining moment in your life that exemplifies who you are as a person and the writer needs to convey his own voice through the story.  Jack seemed interested, put his head down and began writing.  I read over his shoulder:

“ The oxygen was pulsating through my nose,  my mom had strapped me down, I couldn’t believe what was happening to me, but I knew at that moment how much I  loved my baby sister Leta.”

Jack turned to me and asked, “Do you think this is what he has in mind?”

I was so choked up, all I could manage to say was that you should go ask the teacher……..

Jack’s memory of that moment was not anger but pride that he had been able to experience Leta’s struggle.   And it seemed that in his memory, at age 6, he had a cathartic realization about how important Leta was to him.   What a relief for me that I wasn’t going to be painted as “Mommy Dearest” in all his college essays.  But more importantly, what a relief that my “tough love” worked.  Jack is a deeply caring and empathetic young man because of Leta.  All of my kids are.

They are wonderful, resilient and fun loving, with an endless capacity for empathy for their sister and  for the world around them.  I  do not take any credit for that part of them.  They learned it all from Leta.