Should I keep this?  

Marie Kondo whispered, “Tidy up!” in my ear as I studied the small, missile-shaped backpack. There were a few tears along the bottom, a grommet was missing.  A long-forgotten zip-tie still prevented worn zipper from falling open and allowing the heavy oxygen tank inside to tumble out and put a hole in our floor.

I bet if I slipped the backpack over my shoulders, it would still fit the way it did eight, almost nine years ago when we used it last—our Portable Oxygen Era.

When The Baby came home from the NICU at six months old, a tiny nasal cannula accompanied him, keeping him flush with oxygen. At home, we had a giant blue box that farted heat in our hallway day and night. Long clear tubing ran from the box to The Baby. For the first six weeks that he was home, we didn’t leave his bedroom. We did all of our feeding and playing in there. I was petrified to move him.  

We eventually figured it out though. I wore him in a backpack over my belly and put the tank on my back. Wearing essentially two backpacks, I looked like RoboCop had been conscripted to babysit someone’s kid. It was heavy and bulky and the oxygen tubing constantly got caught on corners and shut in doors, but we were mobile.

We had to carry portable oxygen with us for about a year after he came home and then, one day, doctors pronounced that his lungs were strong enough when he was awake that he didn’t need it during the day any more.

The only times we’ve touched those tanks since is to move them from closet to closet.

The guy from the durable medical equipment company came to pick up the Bipap and the big blue oxygen concentrator.

“Anything else?” I asked him.

“I think just the oxygen tanks,” he looked at his ipad.

I couldn’t even remember where we had stashed them, but I found them eventually. Now, I felt the heft of that backpack in my hands, feeling a deep well of emotion open up.

The oxygen days had been hard times.

Really hard.

I’ve been reading old blogs from around the time when the baby came home and, my god, how did we survive that? So many sleepless nights. So many tears. I think most days, that trauma still lies dormant, unless we’re reminded of it.

Like today.

This backpack. This stupid backpack.

Holding it felt like I was holding a battle scar. It represented so much.

I listened for the boy in the next room, who was making his happy static sounds and trashing his room in search of just the right toy. If he found it, he’d bring it to me to help him turn it on.

We didn’t need it anymore.

“Here you go,” I smiled as I handed the backpack over, my eyes ringed with tears.

As I shut the door behind him, I sat on the stairs for a moment to have a little cry, feeling everything all at once.

Sad

& tired

& anxious        

& happy

& proud

of all of us.