Home

There's something special about going home. We all know the feeling. There's home where our house is and home where we came from and it is often our hearts that link the two. Some of us still live in the town we were born in, others of us have long since left but still carry that town, in our hearts, like a love letter. I was born in Pittsburgh, moved with my family to California shortly thereafter, went home to visit only twice in my childhood, once while in college and a final time when my grandmother died. But if you ask me where I run when I need to feel safe? No question about it. The answer is Pittsburgh. With Anthony's slow development, with the very real chance that he could be handicapped or worse, I needed to go home. I needed to draw on the energies of family and family love and, I won't lie, as odd as it may sound to you, I needed to visit my grandfather or, more importantly, his grave.

When you are born with a number next to your name you either take it as a novelty or you take it seriously. When I was growing up my grandparents often made the trip to visit my Dad and I (my parents had by then divorced) and my Grandpap became a very powerful influence in my young mind. He was quiet but jovial, loving and encouraging. It was often hard to understand him with his thick Italian accent but we formed a very tight bond. I knew immediately that this man expected me to carry myself a certain way, behave a certain way, and to honor our shared name of Anthony in the life I would lead. Grandpap and I touched lives briefly, only a half dozen times or so in all before he passed but it was the very same brevity in these visits that made them so powerful. It was as if the lessons and advice he had time to give his other grandchildren over many years had to be distilled and concentrated for me. I ate it up and, I'm sure, romanticized a lot of it, but it worked. When my own Anthony was born his name and the roman numeral that followed were a given the second he popped out. Many times next to that incubator in the NICU and Huntington Hospital, all alone, terrified, I felt my grandfather's teachings ringing in my ears and, I am positive, his ghost at my side.

After unpacking at my cousin Celeste's home and visiting for a few days it was obvious to many that Anthony had issues. His eye was one thing but even now, at eighteen months, he wasn't crawling at all. His legs were very stiff and when he moved he dragged them across the floor with his upper torso. I have a large Italian family. Many cousins and aunts, many mom's, and they knew something was wrong. I caught many a loving but worried glance in their eyes. After a bit I asked to go to my Grandpap's grave, not realizing how rare and hard this was for the vast majority of my family to do. Even then, more than a decade after his death, no one could fully accept that he was gone. It hurt too much. Such was the weight of his memory in all of their lives. My cousin Patty Ann finally agreed, almost in tears, to take us.

The next day at the cemetery under the shade of a tree I set my son down on my Grandpap's grave. He sat and stared at the birds and the big blue sky while I prayed for miracles and interventions. We placed flowers there. Anthony played with them. My cousin cried, my wife cried. I did not. Instead I talked to my Grandpap in a silent whisper. "This child has our name now. I have passed it on. Help him, or find someone in heaven who can." Silly? To some reading this yes, to others perhaps not. In my heart? No doubt. I had gone to the Big Guy in my life and asked him to go speak to the Biggest Guy of all. When we left the wind was at our backs and I took note.

The next day Anthony crawled for the first time, across the carpet in my cousin's front room, right next to her piano. It was amazing. It was a miracle. He scooted, then he scooted some more and his legs bent enough to get him going and then there was no stopping him.

18 Months

The first eighteen months of our son's life were a series of big moments and big decisions. We brought home our son without an apnea monitor or any of the other equipment we had detested in the hospital but now wished we had at home. Having been there in person many a night when the nurses literally had to shake my son to get him to wake up and start breathing again, those first few nights home should have been nearly sleepless. Instead I can remember my wife and I being so exhausted that we passed out each night in spite of our fears, our son's bassinet right next to our bed. I'm a little ashamed to admit that but having a premmie can remind you like few things on this earth that you are very, very human.

Like an angel from God my mother-in-law still hovered, each night. She's gone now. She passed away when Anthony was five. But as a grandmother she was unparalleled. She saw her own daughter weak and in pain, barely home alive in many ways, and she saw the same in her new grandson. As for me, to be honest, I think the expiration date on "useful" in her book hit right around the time we brought Anthony home. I was a man. Not a bad word but not really the first word that comes to a woman's mind when a newborn arrives on the scene. For me the danger had passed. My wife and child were home. It was time to get back to the "providing" part of my job description and so I did.

Anthony grew, slowly at first, but then more each week. Though he would always be on the small end of the growth scale in those early years he at least attained and maintained a healthy weight. His eye refused to stop turning in and he was slow to reach his developmental milestones and deep down we knew what this could all mean but we were too shell shocked those first eighteen months to find the energy to speculate. Some of the brightest medical minds around us were only willing to hazard guesses so who were we to try and predict the future. Still...the words lingered there, just outside the touch of our conscious minds: autism, mental retardation, brain damaged. When Anthony began to smile and interact with us in the smallest ways we would break out in celebrations worthy of a celebrity. His first word was "light", which was the thing that most fascinated him during bottle feedings (the light on the ceiling fan overhead). Then came "ball" (that thing Daddy kept bouncing across the floor to him), followed by his first real communication of what he was feeling from his physical environment "windeeeeeee" (it was, after all, a windy day). He was late sitting up. Very late crawling. But his mind? His mind seemed fine. I still have on videotape the very first time he said his full name: Antnee FeAgioli. The tape stops with me cheering in the background but I didn't dare turn the camera on myself; I was crying tears of pure joy.

He had eye surgery, which was gut wrenching, but he (and we) got through it. After that challenge I realized it was time to take him home to Pittsburgh. He was the family namesake. Anthony the IV. My family had waited long enough, with bated breath, each week for updates. My Aunts and Uncles, my cousins...it was time they meet our little fighter. So home we went.