Happy Birthday to My Twins

Twins are special in any case. But my twins are even more so. I gave birth to them eight months after the wedding and people referred to them as the "Cape Cod Kids," (honeymoon). One of each. Six weeks premature and oh, so fragile. Tiny little things that were as big as a small whole chicken roaster. I consider their birth my greatest achievement ever. I could spend hours bragging about them but let's just say that I am crazy about them. AJ and Mia are as different as night and day. They each embody qualities from both their parents, and, as years go by, I can point them out more easily. I was so worried about them coming too soon, and Dr. Elizabeth Coultas told me amniotic fluid was leaking, but I've always had a problem lying down. I was sewing nursery curtains, and crib bumpers, and sheets, and canopies, and sanding down and painting the second crib our orthopedic surgeon friend, Phil Keats had given us. They soon found out they were pregnant again and took back the crib (can you believe it?) but I got it ready for The Birth. And so they came. I thought everything was alright, when it was determined that AJ was very sick, with what they called at the time, Hyaline Membrane Disease, now referred to as Respiratory Distress Syndrome. The slimy substance that coats the lungs and fills the holes, allowing processing of oxygen, was missing due to his prematurity. A special baby ambulance with a neonatology resident came from St. Joseph's Hospital in Patterson, NJ, to get him, and they brought him to me to say goodbye. At that time Morristown Memorial could not intubate a baby. The expansive new neonatal unit was a year or so away. It was touch and go for three days, when he rallied and could come back to the local hospital. They didn't have the methods of saving babies the way they do now, so AJ had to make it on his own. Both twins would turn out to be strong and healthy. They've always been the center of my universe, and still are. The night following their birth, the US Olympic Hockey Team beat the Russians. The Miracle on Ice. I was lying in my hospital bed, so sad that they had taken my baby boy away, and praying for a miracle of my own, alone in that room. I couldn't understand why nobody was coming to see me, and then I found out they had put a note on my door to leave me alone, the worst thing they could have done. Maybe that's why I was able to watch that game uninterrupted from start to finish, when I might otherwise be chatting away with company. It looms so large in my collective memory. The euphoria of achieving the impossible against enormous odds. And here we are thirty years later, with AJ and Mia doing BIG THINGS with their lives. I'm so blessed.