lots of gripping small objects, shoe- tying, zipping and unzipping and play- ing the piano, all designed to strengthen his hands and fingers. With the therapist’s guidance, I bought
Clockwise from top: Cameron in an isolette at shady grove adventist hospital in Rockville; the 5-year-olds in their Bowie house; the boys at about 10 months, with their mother, Tracey a. Reeves; Reeves with Matthew, in the blue cap, and Cameron at the hospital.
the boys drank and when. And there were still medical is-
sues. Before his first birthday, Cameron landed in the hospital several times, in- cluding once for surgery at Georgetown Hospital to correct a birth defect in which his urinary opening was abnor- mally located. Matthew fared better, except for a
worrisome heart murmur, and like his brother, a tendency to throw up almost everything he ate. The boys held their heads up, crawled
and walked later than many babies their age. Cameron almost always followed Matthew developmentally by at least a couple of months. At the pediatrician’s office, I stressed out when I saw other 2-year-olds talking in sentences; my boys were just beginning to string together words. My boys were smaller and slower because they were preemies, I explained to other parents. When the boys entered
preschool at age 3, I made sure to tell the teachers about their history. If they didn’t seem to be measuring up to the other kids in class, I reasoned that it was because they were preemies. If they caught a bad cold or vomited their meals, I blamed it on their prematurity. If they tried to force the square peg into a round hole or had trouble staying in the lines when they col- ored simple shapes, I explained that they did it because they were premature. Even when they excelled, I attributed it to their fight to overcome their prematurity. One day, their preschool teacher
pulled me aside and told me that Cam- eron was struggling to hold his crayons and other small objects, and when he did, he seemed to tire before he could even complete his pictures. Matthew was doing better, but even he was on the lower end of the “normal” range, she said. The pediatrician told us Cam- eron was exhibiting signs of fine motor problems, almost certainly a result of his premature birth. We were referred to Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, where Cameron was as- signed an occupational therapist. Three times a week for three years, I slipped out of work to take Cameron to therapy,
jewelry-making kits that required Cam- eron to slip tiny beads through strings, and spongy balls that forced him to squeeze and release his hands. In time, his coloring improved. So did his sketch- ing. He started to draw simple pictures and then more detailed ones without tir- ing. Soon, I was buying drawing tablets and colored pencils and paints. My fa- ther gave Cameron an old wooden easel, which he used one day to draw me a bowl of fruit. Later, in elementary school, his art would be chosen for display at a law office and at the local mall in Columbia, the community where we now live. I was so happy with Cameron’s prog-
ress that I replicated my approach with Matthew. My mommy instinct told me that the more I worked with the boys and exposed them to books, music, toys and sports, the more I could help deflect, or at least minimize, any developmental issues. Soon, both were reading and writing legibly, and it was becoming more difficult to notice delays in Cam- eron. In fifth grade, after completing a book report on Frederick Douglass, Matthew one day declared he wanted to play the violin. I rushed to buy one. “That was the first time I heard of a
black man playing the violin,” he would tell me later. “I thought if he could play it, so can I.” For the first time, I was allowing my-
self to think that maybe the boys were growing out of the preemie factor. Some medical issues lingered, but they paled, compared with what Sally was going through. She had brought her firstborn home not knowing that his prematurity would manifest itself in eating prob- lems, low muscle tone, and even tics and speech issues. Robert, who also will enter high school this month, is slow to process information and struggles with tasks that require him to use his fine and large motor skills. Because of his speech delays, it is difficult to under- stand him when he talks. One recent afternoon, Sally and I sit
in my family room and reminisce. Both of us recall hearing in the NICU that,
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