The fight for Life

Being raised in central Florida, at an early age we became accustomed to mornings with the sweat producing heat of the rising sun as it majestically penetrated even the smallest and darkest recesses of an unlit room. Arising to morning temperatures of seventy degrees, often caused one to contemplate the day; but that was about to change for me. To me it seemed that year brought mornings and evenings that were enshrouded with a fog so thick that I could see each particle of water as it joined with millions more to produce a covering to masquerade the very essence of that which was seen as normal. A thick white fluffy moist blanket that could be felt brushing against the most innocent of faces as the wind carried it to its place of rest. During one of those mornings, I realized that alone each droplet was insignificant and so easily overlooked as it fell to its destiny but when combined with others, this mist had the potential to alter the lives of those it encountered. So much like the life issues that cloud and cover the essential character of the person we are if allowed. Oh, but when the clouds lift and the promising reality that had been buried deep in those hidden places can be seen just as it really is and whether we like it or not we can say, “This is who I am.”

To better understand how I came to be the person I am today, I had to journey back to where it all began with my life. In a small town by the name of Bartow, in central Florida during the late 1950s there was romance that was not supposed to be. A very skinny (as she was called) trombone playing ninth grade girl met one of the good looking twelfth grade and better than average football players nicknamed Red (because of his hair and complexion). Mae had a best friend who gave her a note to give to that football player and of course Mae had other ideas in mind and the note was never delivered. From this meeting the two began dating. This couple was always talked about because none of the other young ladies could figure out why the best looking guy on the team was dating the skinniest, ugliest girl at the school. But despite all of the talk and criticism the two remained loyal and in love with each other.

Tragedy struck when the young man found himself alone after his parents were killed in the same automobile accident. It is said Red’s parents went to pass a 18 wheeled phosphate carrier and met the same type truck and the two were killed. To complicate this tragedy even more, the young man found out that he had never been legally adopted by the only parents he had ever known and was forced to move out of the family home by his mother’s relatives. Having no other relatives around and no where to go, his girlfriend’s grandparents took him into their home so that he could finish school. Even under the watchful eye of her grandparents, a baby was conceived out of wedlock, which was taboo for that day and time.

Feeling the pressure of fatherhood Red was not ready to bear and the fear of losing a potential career in sports, the young man moved away to begin a life in New Jersey. For reasons that have never been fully clarified, he later came back to Florida and married the girl he left behind when she was six months along in the pregnancy. Shortly after Mae’s seventeenth birthday, in early March, the young girl went into labor. She said it was a cool Friday morning when she arrived at the colored section of the hospital. Because the hospital was so full, the young wife was placed on a stretcher in the hallway as she endured the humility of being a public display to all passersby while she struggled to bring a new life into the world. Finally, she was taken to the delivery area. Then when she thought that things could get no worse, they did. As the young girl lay in pain that she described as the worst thing she ever experienced, the babe was born in a frightful silence. The only sound heard was that of the unyielding echoes of the continuous slaps on the baby’s bottom in the repeated failed attempts to get a life response. What the young girl saw, she termed as the ugliest thing she had ever seen in her life. Mae said that it did not look like a baby, but was black and blue and even had purple colored spots over the body and worse, it never moved. The next thing she remembered was the doctor frantically calling for help then inserting a long tube down the baby’s throat. Mae trembled as she heard the machine making the wailing noise as it pulled the life preventing fluid from the lungs of the apparent stillborn. After minutes, which felt like eternity, there came the cry of life and Mae asked to hold her infant daughter for the first time. Remarkably, as the baby took each breath, the darkness faded unlike the memories that were forever etched in the young mother’s heart.

As Mae and her newborn lay on the same stretcher back in the same hallway of the hospital, so was death as it awaited another chance to steal the life of her baby. While the young mother was breastfeeding her baby, the infant began to gasp violently for breath. As Mae and her newborn lay on the same stretcher back in the same hallway of the hospital, so was death as it awaited another chance to steal the life of her baby. While the young mother was breastfeeding her baby, the infant began to gasp violently for breath. As Mae laid stunned and helpless, she watched her baby’s body convulse in an attempt to secure the breath it needed to survive, the mother began to scream for help. A nurse named Mrs. Mildred hearing the horrific plea rushed to the aid of the new mother only to see the baby’s unsuccessful fight for life. The nurse without thought, snatched up the baby, turned her upside down and with one hand firmly around the heels of the baby and the other gripping the back of the baby’s neck as if it were a puppy. Then with great force Mrs. Mildred shook the baby in a downward sweep, dislodging a ball of mucus which had clogged the baby’s air passage. Where was the father of the baby during all of this you ask? He was out in an orange grove picking fruit because he could not get a better job at the time. He had left earlier that morning to stand on the corner in the cool, foggy, spring morning to catch a bus to carry him and the rest of the crew away to make their living for the day and had no idea of the fight for life going on in the hospital.

Thanks Daddy and Mommy