Donor: Baby defies mother's attempts to self abort and she grows up to donate her kidney to her 30 years later

 So while reading my alerts....I came across this from the late Lucille Clifton, award winning poet, who died in 2010 at the age of 73. What caught my eye is that she wrote a poem called donor about her daughter who donated a kidney to her. Even more remarkable is that Lucille tried to self abort this daughter several times during her pregnancy and tells about it in an interview later on NPR  which publishes the poem.


Lucille
This is a poem written to my youngest daughter when I had a kidney transplant. She donated her kidney to me, and what I think is interesting is this: I had six children in six and a half years, and she was the youngest, and she was the child I tried...I did quite a number of things to not have her…which she knows very well; I don’t keep things like secrets from my children. And I did things that I say are still illegal. But, she was bound and determined to be born.
Grace
'With the 'fierce frown of an angel.'
Lucille
Yes. And she said to me that if she had been able to talk, she would have said, “Give me thirty years, and you’re gonna need me!”
Grace
And so you did.
Lucille
So I did. This is called "donor"
Grace
And she came in quite handy.

                          to lex.

When they tell me that my body
might reject
i think of thirty years ago
and the hangers i shoved inside
hard trying to not have you.

i think of the pills, the everything
i gathered against your
inconvenient bulge; and you
my stubborn baby child,
hunched there in the dark
refusing my refusal.

suppose my body does say no
to yours. again, again i feel you
buckled in despite me, lex,
fastened to life like the frown
on an angel’s brow.

HT: Abortioneers
Photo Courtesy of BOA Editions, Ltd.