Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson Page A

I’m juggling so
     many things again these days. Having a job and a baby is even harder than I thought. My respect for all mothers has never
     been higher, and it was high to begin with. Working mothers, mothers who stay at home, single mothers—they are all so amazing.
    Something happened at the hospital today that made me think of your delivery.
    A forty-one-year-old woman who was on vacation from New York was brought in. She was in her seventh month, and not doing well.
     Then all hell broke loose in the emergency room. She began to hemorrhage. It was so terrible. The poor woman ended up losing
     her baby, and I had to try to console her.
    You probably wonder why I’m writing about this. Even I thought twice before sharing this sad story with you.
    But it has made me realize more than ever how vulnerable we are, how life can be like walking on a high wire. Falling seems
     a tiny misstep away. Just seeing that poor woman today, and remembering how lucky we were, made me catch my breath.
    Oh, Nicky, sometimes I wish I could hide you like a precious heirloom. But what is life if you don’t live it? I think I know
     that as well as anyone.
    There’s a saying I remember from my grandmother: One today is worth two tomorrows.
     
    Dear Show-off,
    You are starting to hold your own bottle. No one can believe it. This little guy feeding himself at two months. Every new
     experience that you have, I take as a gift to me and Daddy.
    Sometimes I can be such a goofball. Reduced to gauzy visions of station wagons, suburbia, and bronzed baby shoes. So I had
     to do it. I had to have your picture professionally taken.
    Every mother has to do it once. Right?
    Today is the perfect day. Daddy is off on a trip to New York, where someone has taken a liking to his poems. He’s very low-key
     about it, but it’s the greatest news. So the two of us are home alone. I have a plan.
    I got you dressed in washed-out blue overalls (so cool), your little work boots (just like Daddy’s), and a Red Sox baseball
     cap (with the peak bent just so).
    The cap had to go! You freaked out over it; I guess you thought I was trying to attach antlers to your head.
    Here’s the whole scene, just in case you don’t remember it.
    When we got to the You Oughta Be in Pictures photography studio, you looked at me as if to say,
Surely you have made a grotesque mistake.
    Maybe I had.
    The photographer was a fifty-year-old man who had no kidside manner at all. It wasn’t that he was mean, he was just clueless.
     I got the idea that his real specialty might be still life, because he tried to warm you up with a variety of fruits and vegetables.
    Well, one thing is certain. We now have a unique set of pictures. You begin with the surprised look, which quickly dissolves
     into a slightly more annoyed attitude. After that you enter the cantankerous phase, which swiftly disintegrates into the angry
     portion of our program. And last, but not least, irreconcilable meltdown.
    There is a small consolation. At least you can’t tell Daddy. He’d get too much mileage out of his
I told you so
’s.
    Forgive me this one. I promise I will never show these pictures to new girlfriends, old fraternity brothers, or Grandma Jean.
     She’d have them in every shop window on the Vineyard before dusk.
     
    Nicky,
    It was a little cool out, but I bundled you up and we took a picnic basket down to Bend in the Road Beach — to celebrate Daddy’s
     thirty-seventh birthday.
God, he’s old!
    We made castles and sand angels and wrote your name in big bold letters until the surf came and washed it away.
    Then we
wrote it again,
high enough up so the water couldn’t reach it.
    It was such a total blast to watch you and Daddy play together. You are very much a chip off the old block, two peas in a
     pod, Laurel and Hardy! Your mannerisms, your ways, your gestures, are Matt’s. And vice versa. Sometimes when I look at you,
     I can imagine Daddy when he was a boy. You are both joyful,