The miracle of turtle doves

Years ago a relative said to me,

“You know, someone asked me why you didn't just let your youngest son die, wouldn't that have been easier?”

At the time it was like somebody shot me with a gun. Course I have been known to say some pretty stupid things in my life. Ask my sons. As I've gotten older, I find that pride and hubris are synonymous with garbage. You might as well throw them away.

But then those words have always haunted me. In 1994, sixteen-year-old Michelle Davis was the only person we trusted to babysit our three children when #3 was on oxygen.

The Christmas before Michelle graduated from high school, she gave me a turtle dove and said one day we would be reunited. Every Christmas for the last twelve, I put that turtle dove up and think of her.

Michelle’s family moved after she graduated from high school. She told me that she wanted to be a doctor because of #3, but you never know. Eight weeks ago, we received a “save the date” in the mail.

It said, Dr. Michelle Davis.

We went to the wedding two weekends ago. As I sat in the hotel made chapel, I didn’t notice the flowers, the music, or other guests. My eyes and thoughts and were simply on Michelle. Then I heard the minister say, “she’s a pediatrician.” I was overcome with tears. My husband reached over and grabbed my hands, he too had tears in his eyes.

I was in a bit of a blur, the wedding processed, the reception started yet I barely knew what was happening for I was waiting for the moment to see Michelle.

When my husband and I saw her father, he came over and hugged us, and had tears in his eyes. He said,

"You know I asked Michelle who she wanted to invite from our old neighborhood and the first people she said were you two."

We chatted about her life as a doctor and then he told us she did her residency at Columbia Presbyterian, the hospital affiliated with Columbia University where my son goes to school, and that she met her husband there. I couldn't believe it. How small is the world?

We sat down at the neighbors table. Her family had moved to Houston. An older couple sat next us from Houston and said, “Ah, you must be neighbors that her mother talks about, you’re the reason she’s a pediatrician.”


I walked to the ladies room to powder the tears away and back in to the reception when Michelle and I saw each other for the first time.

She was sitting next to her husband, just the two of them at a small table.

I walked over and threw my arms around her. We both cried, for achieving the unachievable, for the sheer magnitude of what she had accomplished and the fact that

#3 had played such a huge role in her life.

"I told you I would be a doctor, and when things got tough, they were so tough sometimes, but when they were, I'd just think of him...and he kept me going."

"You’ll never know what this means to me.”

"You always told me to wait until I was 30 to marry, and I'll be 31 next week."

Then she introduced me to her husband, a pediatric surgeon. We hugged some more. Then I went outside to digest it all.

And I thought about those words that were said to me so long ago, “why didn’t you just let him die?”

I asked God for wisdom, cried for my pain and thanked him the miracle of turtle doves.

Thank You for Being Here. It really means a lot to me that you take time out of your schedule to come by.

Copyright 2007 Ev Nucci
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