For the Rescued

Recently I put a poem up here called “Green Feathers” which keeps coming into my head with respect to these miners. It's about hope, and moss, and the part I love best is when it says: “routinely amazing how moist tufts, half mud, keep supposing almost nothing is hopeless. How the bluest potato grew eyes on faith the light would be there - and it was.”Sometimes all you have is that sure and baseless KNOWING that a thing will turn out, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.In my family I’m the sunny one who expects each least goose to lay a golden egg. My husband, on the other hand, inherited the more wary disposition of his mother. But David had the faith I lacked when I began bleeding in my fifth month of pregnancy. It was Friday afternoon by the time we got to the obstetrician’s office and our real doc was off; we were seen instead by an OB who took out his high-tech stethoscope and pushed it hard against my belly. “I'm sorry but I hear no heartbeat. We'll do an ultrasound," he said.But the ultrasound lab was all done for the week so we had to wait until the following Monday. I remember lying in our bed in that desolate state when you fear the worst but don't dare speak it. “What do you think?” I said to David during one of those dark hours. “What does it mean that he couldn’t get the heartbeat?”“It means there’s something wrong with his hearing” he said back..... And sure enough, when that long weekend was past and we saw my 'real' doctor Monday morning, he donned a stethoscope that wasn’t even the high-tech kind and leaned in to my belly. “Well there it is, plain as day,” he said. Then we went for the ultrasound and there it was for sure.It's true I bled for the whole rest of the pregnancy; couldn’t travel, couldn't exercise, couldn’t even take a bath but one May morning doing a thunderstorm here was our baby Annie, small, but fine - perfect in fact.I’ll never forget that morning: the relief I felt; the surprise. David was relieved too of course but not surprised. Like the miners and their families, he had faith that the light would be there…. and it was.