I wonder how my mom felt first seeing me,

emerging from her drug-induced coma,

the recommended delivery practice in 1944.

On a rainy morning perfect for starting a project,

I set out stacks of tattered shoe boxes

to leaf through her letters from long ago,

starting from her wedding day,

ending on correspondence with aging friends.

It was there I found it —

the letter in her forward slanting Palmer-style script

recounting her stay at Sydenham * on 125th,

confined for a week to recover from childbirth

but finding the energy to write in her bold hand.

Rose recalls the commotion in the hallway,

a visiting dignitary to the maternity ward passing by her room

Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady,

on her way to peek into the nursery

in support of her humanitarian missions.

I can’t claim that she saw me

but I swear with conviction

that two extraordinary women blessed me

from the day I was born,

one, an American saint,

the other, a mother with no equal.

Mom never mentioned the visit

but she did write the letter to Dad

and saved it for seventy years,

sending a beam of her divine light to me

this Thanksgiving.

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* In 1944 the staff doctors at Sydenham Hospital in Harlem were all white despite serving a mostly African American community. Soon after, it was the first hospital to have a full desegregated interracial policy with African American trustees and staff. Due to changes in the health care system and lack of support from city officials, Sydenham was permanently closed in 1980.