Motherly love: ‘We’ve got this’

Craig Anderson was supposed to arrive in the world in the summer of 1950. His mother’s due date was the Fourth of July, which was appropriately historic, since they lived in Philadelphia.

But Mary Capriotti Anderson barely made it past Mother’s Day before she was rushed to the hospital, where doctors performed an emergency Cesarean section.

Craig, the first of her five children, was born more than a month premature. He weighed 2 pounds, 2 ounces — not much more than the family Bible.

In the hospital room, the odds were long, the faces grim.

“My grandmother was there when the doctor explained my chances of survival were virtually nil,” said Craig.

Nil. Look it up in Webster’s. The arithmetical symbol zero, denoting the absences of all magnitude and quantity.

“The doctor made an off-handed comment that, if we were rich, we could employ two nurses to watch over me around the clock,” he said.

His mother’s side of the family was not wealthy. But they were rich in the sense of most Italian families, where blood is thicker than five-cheese lasagna.

“We’ve got this,” said his grandmother, Vincenza Capriotti.

The city of brotherly love became the city of motherly love.

For 35 days, family members kept vigil. Uncles. Aunts. First cousins. There were 28 in all. They paired up and took two-hour shifts — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — for more than a month.

The concern, particularly for a “preemie,” was what would later become known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. So they stood guard over both sides of the incubator, reaching to nudge him if he began gasping for air.

An aunt later told him: “You don’t know how many times I sat there and watched your chest go up and down, praying please God not to let you stop breathing while I was watching you.”

He was 21 years old before he knew any of this. By then, he was majoring in textile engineering at Georgia Tech. His father, an Army officer, had been stationed in Fort Benning in Columbus, and the family eventually settled in the mill town of Thomaston.

The oldest of William and Mary Anderson’s five children grew up wondering why his extended family treated him as an extra-special blessing.

An aunt came up to him at his grandmother’s funeral.

“You always were grandma’s favorite … by far,” she said.

“I have always felt like I was everybody’s favorite,” he said.

She looked at him.

“You don’t know, do you?” she said.

He asked her to explain.

“Not here, not now,” she whispered.

It would be four more years before the full story unfolded. That same year, his best friend from college — they shared the same birthday — lost his newborn son to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

After Craig graduated from Georgia Tech, the university hired him to help recruit prospective students by performing science experiments at textile engineering shows.

He and his wife, Pam, moved to Macon in 1980. She owned Great Impressions on Vineville Avenue. He served on the faculty at Mercer’s engineering school and became well-known for his “Doctor A’s Science Shows” in local schools.

He promoted himself as “Macon’s Mad Scientist” and took his shows on the road to almost a dozen states at science fairs, museums, PTA meetings, libraries and even youth detention centers. (He recently performed for what marked the 1.15 millionth audience member. And, yes, he keeps a pretty accurate count.)

He lost his mother the week before Christmas three years ago. Mary Capriotti Anderson was 11 days shy of her 84th birthday.

Part of her will always be with him — not just on Mother’s Day, but every day.

He remembers her as a voracious reader and, true to her Italian heritage, she had an appetite for cooking twice as much food as necessary at family gatherings. Her rule of thumb was a pound of everything for each person, and the leftovers would be sent home in containers.

“She believed food is love,” Craig said. “That’s a very Italian thing. Cooking is an art form.”

There was a time in his adult life when he was too much in love with food. When his weight ballooned to 340 pounds, with a 60-inch waist, it made it difficult for his family to believe he began life at a smidgen over 2 pounds.

One day, his mother, who had no enemies and never spoke unkindly about anyone, pulled him aside. She carried a look of concern and wielded the power of persuasion with her words.

“All she had to say was ‘Son, you’re supposed to bury me, not the other way around,’ ” he said.

Although she nurtured her children, she was careful not to dote. She taught them to be frugal, independent and self-sufficient.

When Craig was 13, a neighbor with only one child marveled at Mary, the mother hen.

“How do you divide your love between five children?” the neighbor asked.

“You don’t divide love,” his mother replied. “It multiplies.”

Like the rise and fall of a baby’s chest, surrounded by love on all sides.

“We’ve got this” said his mother’s mother.

And they did.

This story was originally published May 12, 2017 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Motherly love: ‘We’ve got this’."