Confusion led to horror as my eight-year-old eyes traced their way up her newly swollen body in a coma.
When Lulu pressed into my dominant right palm, I pictured all the nerves under my skin sparking and connecting, where my mom’s cells were a sea of darkness, lost within the swollen flesh of her curled, limp hand.Īnother time, Lulu’s thumb to my foot set my mind adrift to layers of white fabric-first the medical curtain separating my mom from the rest of the ICU, then the hospital blanket over her body-that gave way to her ballooned foot. It was her left hand that was paralyzed-the one that had supported the melody on the piano and written spontaneous observations of single motherhood on napkins. “What does it feel like to lose sensation in the hand you used the most?” I would nag my mom as a teenager.
