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 BY ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

They’ll see Tricia, of course, still a tiny little thing, not quite five feet tall, standing there in her cap and gown, and swell with pride that their first born is a straight-A student and class valedictorian, making her class’ last graduation speech in the 20th century.

But they’ll be remember the baby she once was, too, the way all parents do when a child graduates from high school.

And think about that August night almost 18 years ago when she was born two months early – and thank God for their miracle.

‘‘It seems like it was just yesterday,’’ her mother says, ‘‘but then it seems it was so long ago. It’s so hard to believe that almost 18 years has passed.’’

Almost 18 years ...

She was seven months pregnant, but still not into maternity clothes.

‘‘She was still wearing the same jeans she always wore,’’ Terry remembers, but she hadn’t had any trouble and didn’t suspect that anything was about to go wrong – until it did.

Terry was in Hickory, selling insurance door-to-door, when Terresa realized something wasn’t going exactly right and called the doctor’s office.

‘‘They told me my water had broken,’’ she says, ‘‘and the baby was going to be born, and the doctor sent me to Winston-Salem, but the doctors there told me if she was born, she wouldn’t live. She was too small. And we couldn’t get in touch with Terry.’’

That was about 2 in the afternoon, and the Catawba County sheriff went looking for him. By 6 p.m. he was in Winston-Salem with her – and with a message of hope neither of them will ever forget.

‘‘He said, ‘It’s going to be a little girl, and she’s going to grow up just like you,’|’’ Terresa remembers, and Terry remembers it just as clearly.

‘‘They told us the baby couldn’t possibly make it,’’ he says. ‘‘She was too little to live. But I believe the Lord increased my faith that night. I believe the Lord gave me a message.’’

And she was alive when she was born at 2 the next morning, weighing a pound and 13 ounces. And her weight dropped to a pound, 8 ounces, before she began to gain an ounce a day.

Terry and Terresa had known nothing about the neonatal nursery when she went into labor, but by the time they took tiny Tricia home 91 days later, still weighing less than four pounds, they knew all about it and everybody in it.

‘‘At times,’’ Terresa says, ‘‘I think how did we cope and deal with all of it, but I know it was just the Lord giving us strength.’’

She’ll never forget the moment she heard her baby cry. She couldn’t believe that. She thought she was losing a baby. not having one, and she’ll never forget reaching her finger out gingerly and touching that tiny little bundle.

‘‘She grabbed my finger with her hand, and I couldn’t turn lose.’’

She’s never turned loose, even though she had to go home without her baby.

But she drove back to Winston early every morning and stayed until supper time, ‘‘and several times they called, and we’d rush back over there because they’d have to do some type of treatment and we’d have to give permission.’’

And to be there to worry and wonder – and pray.

‘‘That was mainly in the first month,’’ Terresa says, ‘‘when things were so touch and go,’’ but all three months that’s where she spent her days, rocking and feeding her baby and worrying when she stopped breathing because she did, ‘‘every day, many times a day,’’ Terresa says. The doctor said that was something that happened to premature babies and usually all it took to get her awake was a tiny shake.

‘‘The way he explained it,’’ she says, ‘‘is they forget to breathe. She had to go two weeks without an episode before they would consider letting her go home.’’

And when they did come home, Terresa says, ‘‘we kept worrying. What if it would happen and us not know it? You just had to listen so carefully and go check. I remember the very first night we brought her home, we put her in her room and her crib, and the first time she cried, Terry and I both jumped up and hurried in her room ...

‘‘After several months of having her at home, we finally quit worrying. We felt like she would be OK. But I think I was more protective. I think I’m still protective of her. She was always so small.’’

When she had her one-year evaluation, her mother remembers, ‘‘she was physically behind, but her vocabulary and everything else was off the charts, so that made me feel better. I knew we could deal with the physical thing.’’

At a year she weighed 15 pounds, 6 ounces, and was only 26 inches tall. And she didn’t walk until she was 17 months old.

‘‘But she was talking in complete sentences,’’ Terresa says. ‘‘We’d be carrying her, and she’d be talking like a child much older, and people would stop us and comment on it.

‘‘We still keep in touch with two of the nurses that took care of her at Baptist Hospital – Andrea Hall and Diana Cameron. She was the flower girl in Andrea’s wedding when she was three.’’

And size was never a problem at school for Tricia.

Well, maybe a little problem, her mother says.

‘‘When she started kindergarten, she did well with her work, but after a couple of weeks, she told her teacher, ‘This school’s too big and this playground’s too big and I’m not coming back.’ But she went back.’’

And she always did well.

‘‘She’s known for the past couple of years that she was second in her class,’’ her mother says, but she was surprised when the announcement was made during an assembly that she would be valedictorian. In fact, she went to the guidance counselor afterwards to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake.

And sometimes she wonders if her parents have made a mistake when she hears them talking about how little she was when she was born. And that she wore doll clothes her grandmother, Mary Denton, of Woodleaf made for her.

‘‘It seems like it’s not me,’’ she says, ‘‘because I don’t remember it.’’

When she hears her dad tell someone she was so tiny ‘‘he could hold me in his hand,’’ she says, ‘‘I say, ‘Daddy! *itpleaaaase!’ But he tells it anyway.’’

Of course, she’s always been the smallest in her class and still is at 4-feet-10 and 102 pounds. And though Sheets Memorial is a private school and not as large as the public schools, it’s not all that small with 15 in her class and 80 in the high school and about 400 students in the whole school.

Terry and Terresa sent her and their other two daughters to Rockwell Christian School to start with and then transferred to Sheets ‘‘because we wanted them to have a good Christian education – and because Tricia was so small,’’ her mother says. They felt like she would be overwhelmed by the size of a public school.

‘‘And we’ve been well pleased with Rockwell and with Sheets. I feel like she’s gotten just as good an education and maybe in some areas better.’’

But being small is not unusual in her family. Her mom only weighed three pounds when she was born, and she’s only 4-9, maybe 4-10 like Tricia (if they stretch, Terry says) and weighs only 96 pounds, and her sister Joy, who is 15, is only 4-11, ‘‘and Leslie, who is 10, is going to be taller than all of us, 5-2 or even 5-3 maybe.’’

And even Daddy who looks so tall next to Mom and the girls is only 5-9, which isn’t *ittall.

So size is no issue.

Neither is the future.

For the past year and a half, she’s been working with the two-to-four-year-olds in the after-school program at Sheets Memorial Christian School, where her mother teaches the two-year-old class.

‘‘And she loves working with those children,’’ her mother says, so maybe ...

But maybe not.

‘‘I’m just clueless right now,’’ she says, about what she wants to do someday, so she’s going to Rowan-Cabarrus Community College now and make up her mind later. Her dad says there’s plenty of time.

Her only issue right now, today, is the speech she’s going to make tonight.

‘‘I’m really nervous about it because I don’t like to speak in front of people,’’ she says.

But she’s going to talk about looking toward the future and understanding God’s will, and she knows how important that is.

‘‘It amazes me that I lived,’’ she says. ‘‘I know God is going to have something good for me in my life because He let me live.’’