"How is he?" Norman asks, sitting down at the table still strewn with the remains of the snack I'd made for our kids and the daycare children. "He's asleep now," I answered, sighing, scared again. Eliott was reacting to the Halloween candy, covered with itchy red hives from head to toe, except for the back of his knees.

As I sat there I thought how I love the fall; the glory of God's bounty never ceases to amaze me at this time of year. Leaves of gold and rust, browns and oranges explode across country with a soft hurrah, heralding the coming of rain and cold, blustery winds and puddles rhimed with ice.

Fall also heralds the the months after Ethan's death. I did not notice the leaves that year, nor the change of the seasons. It seemed I woke up one morning to cold and wet, and the delivery of another baby, just two months after my beloved firstborn died.

It was so hard to be happy, knowing this little boy would never know his big brother except through stories, pictures, and a well-worn video tape. So hard to enjoy this third child! Eliott was a difficult child from his first breath. Crying almost constantly, diagnosed with severe colic, gastric reflux, allergies, and eczema, my husband took over the majority of the care for this busy, needful, crying child.

Every night for four months, Norman pulled out a roll-away mattress and slept on the living room floor with Eliott. Night after night, soothing the cries, dealing with the vomit after each feeding, rubbing medicated lotion into his itching skin, while I slept deeply with our second child who was now so very terrified to be alone, especially at night.

Three months after Ethan died, when Eliott was barely four weeks old, he contracted the respiratory illness called RSV. Hospitalized because he stopped breathing, I again had to enter the hospital where my son had died. The terror and panic I felt carrying him there defies words; I was so desperately afraid he too would die, and I would once again have to leave this huge place without my child.

"Mommy?" Eliott calls from the bedroom, awake. Laying down with him in our family bed, I hold him close, and breathe his hair, feel his skin beneath my fingers, trying to implant the memories of this so-difficult child forever in my head.

"Mommy's here, honey, Mommy's here," I whisper. And I am. I am all for this child, right now; not for Evan or Eli, and not for Ethan either. This boy, now, needs his mommy, and I do not have to leave him. I can hold him, soothe his fears and his itchy rash, and rock him back to sleep. I do not have to leave this one, now . . .

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