The topic: 3 pages on a photograph that has significance in the student's life
The photo I chose: the 1st sonogram of my son
The rough draft of my first English 101 essay was due 2 weeks ago. We got them back last Friday with the teacher's comments and edit marks. I am very proud to say that the only thing he took out was a comma and a word that was just a typo. Not only that, but his main comment was, "You end with the word simple twice, but let me say that your story is anything but simple. This is a wonderful tale that is filled with genuine and heartfelt sentiment. This is as close to a flawless draft as any I have ever read. Excellent job". When I read this I was floored! I like to think I am a good writer, but this was one of the best compliments ever. Would you like to see why he said this? Well, the paper is below. I won't be posting everything I ever turn in, but this is about my son's first photograph, and I'd like to share it. Hope it touches you in some way...
Perhaps the single most important photograph taken in my, then 21 years of life, this simple black and white image represents a lifelong intuitive dream come true. With each glance at the picture, a rush of pure love flows through me. That certain, unmistakable piercing in my heart, takes me back to that life altering moment. In observing the 4x6 still, my mind travels to the day that brought physical evidence to the drastic change I was in the midst of. Measure marks and statistics line the right side. “MILLER, TARA,” date and time and more technical markings run along the top. What is memorable, however, is the blurry triangle of life nestled in a dark abyss.
Surrounded by a thin black metal frame, the first photograph of my son stands atop my desk. Within the frame, perfectly suited for this picture, a border of white compliments the black square that surrounds the focal point of this memory. It is a faint image that most people can’t make out. One that I wasn’t sure I was seeing correctly, laying there in the doctor’s office over three years ago. Deep within the grain of grey lays a little boy’s head and body. The shape is so clear to me now; a defined facial structure and a round belly with two appendages that almost look like arms. Wide black circles where eyes would eventually shine and a smile, I was sure, that could light up a room. This is the personification of every intense emotion I’d felt the four months prior to my ultrasound.
Among a sea of family memories, the barely noticeable face of a four month old fetus shines though. Pictures of the beach and holiday get-togethers bring fond memories; however they don’t hold the same utterly consuming sense of purpose as the first sonogram image of my child. This small symbol of infinite opportunity is a constant reminder of how fragile my son is; how fragile we all are. It is in place on my desk to keep that knowledge constantly visible. Though the love never hides behind errands and rules, it is all too easy to let the overflowing emotion of being a mother fade out during everyday routines. Being able to see his face, before it was recognizable, before there were dos and don’ts floating around in his mind, keeps me grounded. It allows me take a step back and realize that there is a bigger picture; to see that whatever roadblock life has thrown on my path, it too shall pass. In the cloudy view of a new life, I see a vessel of pure possibility, my biggest responsibility.
As I lay in the reclining doctor’s office chair on January 23, 2006, I thought about the last several years of my life that had led up to this moment. It did not happen how I had expected, but incredible life changes rarely do. I had always known deep in my heart that I would be a mother. Although the moment came unexpectedly and during the worst time of my life, it was here and there was no going back to what things were before. Waiting for the technician to come into the room, my mother and sister sat with me and we talked a bit about what lay ahead. What was said exactly escapes my mind, but the thoughts going through my head ring as clear today as they did then. I was looking at these two woman who’d been there for me my whole life and who were now standing by my side, when I needed them most, but they weren’t who should have been there. Fighting back tears I wished my child’s father could be with me that day, however much an impossibility it was. Not willing to let the hardships that led me here override the connection I felt to my supporters, I giggled at the tears rolling down my mother’s checks and let my eyes swallow the one’s trying to travel down mine.
With a cold jelly-like substance smeared across my stomach and one arm beneath my head, I breathed in deeply and slowing. This was it; the moment that would make this all real. Two months earlier, the nurse’s words “You’re pregnant” had changed my life drastically. I’d given it all up, every last bad habit, with the sound of those three syllables, but on this day the preparations and changes would be brought to life on the small grey screen in front of me. The tall woman in scrubs smelled like faint roses and had a gentile touch as she rolled the transducer over the small swell of my abdomen. A heartbeat, a head, a body, legs, arms and… “Do you want to know the sex of the baby?” she asked. With my answer, a penis was pointed out and a sigh of complete relief washed over the small room. Having dreamt about girls for months, I was sure the ultrasound would reveal a different outcome, but I was hoping for a boy and was filled with delight to be given that answer.
Several pictures were recorded and different body parts were discussed as I held in the tears and my mother let them go without any restraint. Though my face was void of salty evidence, I was overwhelmed at the sight of my baby boy on that screen. My entire being was flowing with wildly thriving emotions that I’d never felt; emotions for this tiny person who was ultimately saving my life. Being given the gift that is parenthood had changed me in just a few short months, and I knew it was only the beginning. Leaving behind the person I was before my pregnancy wasn’t hard. I’d left so many pieces of myself behind for a lot less in the past. This time, however, it was for the sake of something beyond the physical world as we know it. It was, and still is, for the sake of creating a life and the road taken after his birth is what would present the biggest challenge.
Able to feel him inside of me in a different way after the ultrasound, I had realized that I was not just carrying a fragile person, but something so much more. Cradled inside my body was a new soul; a new living, breathing soul capable of anything. It would be my main purpose in life to guide this being through his time on Earth. All my past experiences, successes and failures, all my predisposed judgment and all the things I was blind to, would come out in my parenting. With that realization, fear suddenly became ever present in the package of emotions I was now carrying around. This person, untainted then, will grow, think, feel, love, hate, live and, eventually, die. He, like every other human, was born with no inhabitations or judgment, no idea of how his new world would work. Every time I look at the picture sitting in a simple frame, on my simple desk, I take a step outside myself to remember that this life is anything but simple and I allow myself, and my son, to make mistakes and to learn great lessons from them all.
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