I Wanted a Baby and all I got was this Blue Box

I woke up this morning in a terrible mood, lower than I've been in awhile (which is pretty low already) and decided I wanted to look at Ezra's memory box. The kind nurses at Pennsylvania Hospital put the box together for us, as I guess they do for all the babylost mamas, with momentos of Ezra's short stay on this earth. The box has Ezra's tiny foot prints, with those tiny tiny toes and his daddy's flat feet. There's a lock of his amazing black curly hair (we thought he'd have no hair, like both of us, when we were born), and the tiny hat he was wearing when I held him in my arms. And the blanket and matching shirt and hat they dressed him in for his beautiful angel photo. And a few other things like the measuring tape the nurse used to chart out his 18 inches, and his hospital arm band.

At around 2am the day after I delivered Ezra, the nurse came in to give me the box. She wanted to make sure it didn't get lost, that I didn't get separated from Ezra's box. How I howled at that poor woman, I didn't want a box, I wanted my baby! And I screamed at her to get it out of my sight. Gently she put it away with my things, in the overnight bag I had packed with such excitement a few weeks earlier in anticipation of the arrival of my son.

A few days after I returned home from the hospital I did open the box...and I cried and smiled all at once...I do that a lot these days. Cried that I did not have Ezra in my arms...smiled at these tangible rembrances of him.

The box still brings me some comfort...although I really didn't ask for a box...I wanted a real live baby to hold and nurse and introduce to the world.

Never has a plan I made fallen so flat on its face.

And so instead of a baby I have a box.
A blue box.
A box of memories
And a broken heart.