Summer

This has been the hardest to write ... a poem about my Summer.
She's my first born daughter and there can be no doubt I love her.
Her story is only 8 years long now but already it's fuller than most.
She's beautiful inside and out and we really don't mind it...we'll boast!!

I remember the day we found out she was coming into this world.
The tech said "She's all girl" and I looked at Joe and he almost hurled!!
It's a girl! Daddy's little girl! She was coming in September!
This was really going to be a day that everyone would remember!
(She was due on Labor Day...'nuff said).

Her birth was average...15 hours of relaxing and then pushing.
But when she was born the doctors and nurses lookes oh, so white and ashen.
She was rushed to NICU where she stayed until she was diagnosed.
Her heart was broken..it'd need repairs...her holes would have to be closed.

December 12, 1999. Imagine if you will...a family of three gathered together
and saying goodbye to each other.
Joe and I held our baby and cried until we were sick...
tomorrow she'd go in for her surgery and we hoped her heart would still tick.
(Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" was our song and to her we sang.
We told her it was ok to let go. We would be the ones to hang on).

She made it through open heart surgery and for days she would lie
we were afraid to hurt her more; the tubes made it hard for her to cry.
Alone in that room with machines beeping, I looked at my dearest one.
And I promised her the moon and the stars if she would just hang on.

Flash forward a few years: This baby had grown up and she was Grammy's little pal!
Grammy took her everywhere and Mom knew she was quite a gal.
To this day there's something about her that reminds me of my Mother.
She can only be compared to her; to me there are none other.

Summer's 8 years old now and she's a pretty young lady...
hair of gold and legs that go on forever...but she'll always be my baby.
She's mostly a great big sister and a pretty good daughter;
I wonder what life holds for here on after?