Saving Thanksgiving Baby
At that split second, I rolled over and covered him, without even thinking of possible death
September 21, 1999.
It was an ordinary night. Warm and humid, like any other typical September night in Taiwan. My wife Leah had just had surgery for her melanoma and needed absolute peace and quiet, so I slept with our almost-two-year-old son Mike in the next room. Our six-month-old boy Ben was at a friend’s house. She volunteered to babysit for us so both Leah and I could get a bit more rest.
It was a difficult time for us. Just graduated from college in Hawaii, we were planning to go right back to America for graduate school, but Leah’s sudden sickness halted the plan. We had no jobs and no place to live. Finally my mother agreed to let us stay in an apartment of hers. It was on the 13th floor. Long vacant, we washed and scrubbed and mopped to make it inhabitable for a family with little babies. Sometimes, however, some roaches as big as Komodo dragons would come out from nowhere to try to reclaim their territories. We had to be constantly on guard.
That night we had a little debate with our friend about Ben. Leah wanted to take him home: “I feel much better now, I can take care of him. He can sleep on the floor next to me.” But our kind friend and her family liked our…
