#134: The boy who glowed like a candle.
From NICU to graduation cap and gown: a story about the futures we can’t see coming.
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“Can I touch your baby’s hair?”
Two decades ago, I used to wheel a six-month-old Connor through the aisles of Trader Joe’s. His dough-boy hands grasping the cart’s handle, his chubby legs plugged through the metal slats.
And atop his cherub face and bowling ball head was the fluffiest, spikiest hair. When light caught it, he glowed like a candle behind frosted glass.
People couldn't resist.
And who was I to deny them a chance to interact with this child, electrified by life?
“Sure.” I’d reply.
Then they'd reach out, fingers hovering momentarily before touching that downy magic.
What they couldn't see was the ghost image flickering behind him in my mind: tubes snaking from tiny limbs, machines beeping, a sterile incubator instead of a shopping cart.
In the first hours after Connor's birth, the head doctor in the Georgetown NICU brought my husband into her office and sat him down.
"Your baby is gravely ill," she said.
The next ten days was a fog of oscillating ventilators and intravenous medicine. A tangle of tubes around his IV pole that looked like the underside of a computer server.
It was touch and go…
And yet, there he was six months later, making grocery clerks and soccer moms smile in the cereal aisle, all kicking legs and slobbery grins.
No act of imagination during those dark NICU days could have conjured up that fluffy-haired charmer in the Trader Joe's cart.
Just as no vision of the future could have shown me last week's rain-soaked college graduate, diploma in hand, his megawatt smile now framed by a grown man's face.
Last week, I put the picture of baby bird Connor on the shelf above my stove. So I could drink it in while making my morning tea. So I could remember how far we've come. So I could revel in his past 22 years that almost weren’t.
For me, Connor's graduation isn't just about the boy who lived.
It's about the boy who thrives.
Despite almost dying at birth.
Despite death taking his dad.
Despite the special hell of pandemic high school, the gauntlet of college admissions, and that unavoidable teenage phase where they communicate exclusively in grunts and eye rolls.
He did NOT pirouette through these challenges with a no-problem attitude. There were nights of deep, solitary sorrow, missing his dad. College rejections that had him questioning his worth. Friends who left him hanging.
But also breakthrough moments — the day he realized he could sing beautifully just like Mike, the professor who told him his essay was brilliant, the real friends who became family.
He got the full combo platter of life. And yet, the young man on the commencement stage had bright eyes and a knockout smile.
He glowed.
What struck me during graduation — beyond my disbelief that this towering young man once fit in my arms — is that no matter how hard I tried, I never could have seen all this coming. No one could have: family, friends, teachers. At multiple times throughout his life, it was almost impossible to imagine Connor’s future beyond how absence would surely shape it. What wouldn't happen. What couldn't be. Who wouldn't be there.
Even when we believed in Connor to make it through, we never could have imagined:
An uncle who would step sideways into that dad-shaped hole — helping him fix his car and work through relationship problems; playing ridiculous party games with Connor's friends, giving them silly nicknames; showing up for every milestone with exactly the right mix of celebration and gentle ribbing.
A mother-son relationship forged in adversity's fire and as strong as steel. That we’d bond over shared obsessions with brutalist architecture, fifty-cent vocabulary words, football Sundays, and philosophical discussions about what it takes to become a person you’re proud of.
The frisbee team that would teach him more about leadership than any textbook. The a capella group that transformed my shower-singer into someone who performed fearlessly for crowds.
Professors who would ignite intellectual wildfires no one ever saw coming. Medieval French literature? The history of Irish political movements? The econometric impacts of bycatch in New Zealand's fishing zones. (Don't ask me what that last one means. I just smile and nod.)
Connor standing on that soggy stage, waving as friends, family, and professors cheered him on, felt like a miracle.
But was it? Or is the human brain just bad at giving the human spirit enough credit?
We doubt a boy like Connor — or any kid, really — can survive the devastation of losing a parent.
And this failure of imagination can be wounding.
The stories we tell about our futures, about what’s within reach and what’s a pipe dream, shape our futures. So if you want to move toward a brighter future, you have to be able to imagine that brighter future. Otherwise, why bother even trying to take a step in that direction? Our imaginations give us a reason to fight when it would be easier to stay hidden under the covers. This is Visualization 101.
However, imagination is only half the battle. Because no matter how out there we dream, we will never be able to keep up with how miraculous reality can be. We will always be too narrow-minded with what we believe is possible. (Believe me. My dreams for my family once looked nonsensical to the outside world… And today our lives are even better than we could have hoped for.)
So, after imagination fuels us into action, the second requisite is that we stay open.
Open to all the endless possibilities…
My NICU baby became a baby chick. My baby chick became a sweet, gangly little boy. My little boy became a locked-down, moody teenager without a dad… and then, in what felt like a blink, he became a summa-cum-laude, captain-of-the-ultimate-team, WWII-trivia-whiz-kid college grad. Not because he or I or anyone else imagined it into being, but because it unfolded day-by-day. Because Connor let himself be surprised, intrigued, diverted, and engaged. He said “yes” to the things that felt right, even when they didn’t make sense or follow The Plan. He let his Uncle Richie in, he trusted his professor when she suggested he double major in French, he sang his heart out and accidentally made great friends.
He showed up with openness. Life did the rest.
This is the deal with loss — it makes liars of your predictions and fools of your plans. It robs you of certainty.
But that’s just the beginning of the story.
The pain gives way to life that grows around it — not replacing what was lost, but incorporating it into something new and unexpectedly beautiful.
There is a future after loss. We can't picture its contours. We can only say ‘yes’ to what feels right in the moment, and trust that these small yeses add up to something we never could have seen coming.
That someday, we might even glow.
To endless possibilities,
Once again, your essay makes me think we are living parallel lives. NICU, teenaged boy without a dad, finding a path and graduating Summa. I almost cried reading this.
What struck me most, however, is how you insisted on a future. I was so traumatized that imagining a life without Adam was simply impossible. So I just let it be. Que sera, sera. I still have trouble making plans, thinking about where I might be this time next year.
I am not an ambitious person. My people and caring for them are the most important things to me. Because of this and that, over the 13 years since Adam died I have lost uncountable relationships that were important to me, with a concentration of losses from 2021-2022 that almost broke me and found me having to fashion a new life for myself.
I admire your forward-thinking, tenacity, optimism. Will use it as an example for myself.
"So, after imagination fuels us into action, the second requisite is that we stay open." I really needed this reminder today. Congratulations to Connor!