cleft palate

I could hear beneath the curtains in the triage room. She was 33 weeks pregnant, checking her baby after a bad fall in the icy walkways of New England. We both waiting for the nurses with their well practiced amiability and their expertize. This is her first baby and the grandmother sits at a glider nearby, listening and consoling the woman: the baby has cleft palate and something wrong in both feet. The fall was not the most important issue, considering that this child was already marked as atypical, marked and - horrible fate - not beautiful. Protected by the fragile privacy of the curtain, the young mother allowed herself to vent her sadness and frustration, looking for explanations as if that would minimize the pain. In and out, the nurses participated in the conversation. Does it run in the family, yours or his? No, dear, it has nothing to do with anything you have done...We are going to check on his heart rate, don't worry...
The mother questions God - whose sins would bring down to life a suffering inocent - and give it to me as my first son? I closed my eyes and thought about it for a while, consoled by the fact that I was no longer looking for a God measurable by the human rules of justice and love. I had given up on miracles, and felt good about it. Until I heard the high-pitched voice of a nurse, telling mom,
- Oh I am so happy you came on my shift! I was a cleft palate child and I love when they come my way!
What followed was a sequence of reassurance, compassion and hope that dismantled my theory about the distant God. Someone had sent that nurse, bending the inertia of randomness. I turned my big belly to the other side and let my soul rest over the plastic pillow.