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him.
Mom is wearing a red, strapless, flower-patterned sundress. Her damp hair curls
around her face. She’s not wearing makeup or jewelry. Really, she looks like an alternateuniverse
version of the mom sitting next to me now. She seems to belong on that beach
with those people more than she belongs stuck here in this room with me. She’s holding
me in her arms, and she’s the only one not staring into the camera. Instead, she’s
laughing at me. I’m grinning that silly, gummy smile that only babies can smile.
I’ve never seen a photo of myself Outside before. I didn’t know such a thing existed.
“Where’s this?” I ask.
“Hawaii. Maui was your dad’s favorite place.”
Her voice is almost a whisper now. “You were just four months old, before we knew
why you were always sick. A month before the accident.”
I clutch the photo to my chest. My mom’s eyes fill with tears that don’t fall.
“I love you,” she says. “More than you know.”
But I do know. I’ve always felt her heart reaching out to protect mine. I hear lullabies in
her voice. I can still feel arms rocking me to sleep and her kisses on my cheeks in the
morning. And I love her right back. I can’t imagine the world she’s given up for me.
I don’t know what to say, so I tell her I love her, too. It’s not enough, but it’ll have to do.
After she leaves I stand in front of the mirror holding the photograph next to my face. I
look from the me in the photo to the me in the mirror and back again.
A photograph is a kind of time machine. My room fades away, and I’m on that beach
surrounded by love and salt air and the fading warmth and lengthening shadows of
sunset.
I fill my tiny lungs with as much air as they can take and I hold my breath. I’ve been
holding it ever since.