She sleeps with me watching, a sedated sleep. The technician clicks picture after picture of her heart. She squirms now and then at the cold gel pressing on her chest then settles back into a deep sleep, a chemical sleep. I keep watch, a little worried.
This is an incredible machine, the ultrasound. Although, I have known it before ... even met her before her time with it. Another small miracle in grainy black and white. The machine sees each heartbeat of hers, records it, measures its strength, calculates sizes.
I stop watching her for a moment to watch that small heart throb on the screen and I wonder how I've missed this before. There it is always beating now and always beating for her whole life but I had not really noticed it. This tiny cluster of cells pulsing in unison, compelled to keep going and going. The very basics of life so complicated that it escapes this chemist's foggy knowledge of biology. I don't understand it but it makes it all the more marvelous. My little girl's tiny heart that beats like it does so rhythmically for so long. I've seen countless miracles since I first felt her move inside my belly, have they become commonplace? How many more have I missed?
No sooner did I notice this than did the "thump-thump" from the exam room next door make it into ours. Someone else's heart beating, their cells pulsing. And I suddenly realized there is more than just this, my one child's heart. All throughout the world all these hearts are beating of their own accord, without our willing them to, billions of them. And barely a person notices these hearts just beating on their own. One miracle in countless ... and even though we're at the centre of it, we miss it.
I'm still in thought when the technician brings me back to the room with "Alright, I'm done."
The machine goes black. The miracle of my baby's heart now hidden, my memory holding it for as long as it will. It's hours since the test, my baby sleeping upstairs a natural sleep, in our home, her breaths keeping a rhythm like her heart. The tiny holes have probably closed in that small heart the doctor said when he booked the ultrasound, on their own. I'm not so worried. It's a miracle so many babies have these holes that close and it's just fine, a breath of time in their life and their little body's fully healed. I will know for sure in a few weeks.
Today I realize there are miracles more than I have time to even begin to count in this world. And it's not necessarily for me to spend my short time on this earth to find them all and count them. Maybe one day I will have enough time to count. But every once in a while, they wave themselves in front of us beating in rhythm with what our hearts need to know, and I think ... this is a gift, a gift that brings me back to what life is really about.
