The American Spectator

I had a crazy idea. “I’m sure she’d like to talk to you again. Right now, in fact.” I called her on the telephone and re-introduced her to Dr. Reiquam.

“Well,” he said softly, no more than a minute into the conversation, “No, that’s really nothing to worry about. Many newborns experience a red rash around the neck, where the chin touches the chest. You weren’t doing anything wrong. Quite common. It wasn’t a problem at all. Don’t worry.”

Almost fifty years later, and my mother is still worried, genuinely concerned!, about a neck rash I had at six weeks of age! Always my mother’s child.

It was only a short time later we learned my mom had lung cancer, and only a short time after that when she breathed her final breath. Every Mother’s Day since her passing (the windier the better), I try to take a particularly strenuous bike ride or maybe hike to the top of a mountain peak and make my heart pound and my lungs gulp air so that I may savor the gift of life she gave me and nurtured. For, I believe, her soul still keeps a careful watch on me, forever a mother’s child.