Light giving over to shadow and shadow to light.

October 18, 2004 8:27 AM

My Heart vs the Real World
"He's a normal kid. He's a good kid. He's a real normal kid. And we get him to do the drums and we take him for tryouts and we do everything we can to keep his life as normal as we can make it. We've never lollypopped him. You know, mollycoddled or – we let him try everything. 'Cause if we didn't it would be a big crutch for him. We don't want that to happen. Like I said, we waited – we wanted to have another child right away. We wanted three, we always did. We were scared to death after him. To have another one, to have another baby. What if the third one, you know – what if it were Cheryl and I? Our genes?
-- The father of Grant Skowkron, Fifteen years old, Single Ventricle, Transposition of the Major Vessels, M.V. Prolapse, Implanted Pacemaker.
Photographer Max S. Gerber has had a pacemaker implanted because of his bradycardia. In his website, he tells the story of ten other heart patients -- all of them kids -- with his images, and with their parents' words.
posted by matteo (6 comments total)

Very powerful.
posted by tommasz at 9:14 AM on October 18, 2004

nice...
posted by shoepal at 9:16 AM on October 18, 2004

Very nice pictures, but oh wow did this make me weepy, especially finding out that Micah died just a few months after the pictures on the site were taken. I did my nursing internship on a pediatric cardiology ward and got to know many kids like this. I vividly remember seeing a woman yelling at her kids on the street as I made my way home after finishing a shift during which one of the most wonderful kids I'd ever had the pleasure of knowing had died, and wanting to tell that woman that I met parents every day who'd give both arms to have kids who were as healthy as hers were. Sure, everything's relative, but spending even a small amount of time with families with seriously ill children can permanently change your perspective on sweating the small stuff.
posted by biscotti at 9:47 AM on October 18, 2004

* the quote from the post's title comes from a Charles Wright poem,



Filing my nails in the Buddha yard.

Ten feet behind my back, like slow, unsteady water,

Backwash of traffic spikes and falls off,

Zendo half-hunched throughout the giant privet,

shut sure as a shell.

Last cat's-eyes of dew crystal and gold as morning fills the grass.

Between Buddha-stare and potting shed,

Indian file of ants. Robin's abrupt arrival

And dust-down.

Everything's one with everything else now.

Wind leaf-lifter and tuck-in,

Light giving over to shadow and shadow to light.


posted by matteo at 9:52 AM on October 18, 2004

*sniff*
posted by dejah420 at 3:41 PM on October 18, 2004

what she said. cool kids--i'm crying tho.
posted by amberglow at 6:22 PM on October 18, 2004