“Then why don’t you save yourself the trouble and just ask the doctor?” I asked.
“What?” she said. “And spoil the mystery? Every parent knows that the gender of your child is the one greatest mystery in the world. Why would I want to go and ruin it?”
Granted I could’ve mentioned that she was a person who had just mixed urine with Drano to see if it would make green.
But instead, I said simply, “You’re right.”
With pregnant women, sometimes that’s the best way.
Debbie Farmer
Outpouring of Love
It was 8 P.M. and cold. The rain, undecided whether to turn to snow, came down in sheets. It didn’t matter to us. Three cars filled with family found their way to the Denver airport to meet the plane that was bringing the most precious of all cargoes—a ten-month-old baby boy.
My daughter Katy and her husband, Don, were adopting this boy, who was coming almost ten thousand miles from his home in the little country of Latvia. The infant had lived every day of his young life on his back in a crib in an orphanage along with 199 other children. He had never even been outside.
The entire family stood at the end of the ramp leading from the plane to the airport, expectant, awed and barely breathing—waiting for a first glance of this child. As passengers began coming off the plane, a small crowd gathered around us. No one in the waiting group spoke. Every eye was damp. The emotion was almost visible. One of the flight attendants handed us a congratulatory bottle of wine. Even passersby, feeling the electricity, stopped, asked and then stayed to watch.
When finally (they were actually the last ones off the plane) the woman carrying our baby turned the corner and started up the ramp to us, Katy could not contain herself another instant. She started running toward them crying openly, her arms outstretched, aching to hold her baby boy for the first time. Cradling him, she started back up the ramp. Don, with their other adopted child, a two-year-old girl, started running to meet them; he too crying. And when the four of them stepped inside the airport where all of us were standing; it was as if they had stepped into a warm and soft cocoon filled and overflowing with emotion and love. Everyone was hugging them, and then each other. Overwhelmed by the power of the scene, no longer was anyone a stranger, but then, love is like that.
I stood slightly to one side of the hubbub, so I could really “see” it. This poor little boy, so far from home, was hearing no familiar words. Even his name had been changed. He saw no familiar faces. He had been traveling for over twenty-four hours straight and seemed completely dazed. He was being passed from person to person, each one needing to touch him to believe he was real.
I looked closely at him. He had skin the color of chalk, his every rib was showing, and his nose was running. I reached over and found his forehead was warm to the touch. Clearly, he was ill.
I also noticed he couldn’t hold his head up by himself or even sit alone, signs that his development was way behind. Plus, he did not respond to noise. Could he be deaf?
At that moment I knew we probably had saved his life. I also realized with a rush of feeling that I would guard him, nurture him and love him with every fiber of my being. Katy was a wonderful mother, and I would be right behind her all the way.
As we finally left the airport for home, I crawled into the backseat of the car and sat between the two car seats full of miracles. Now there were two lives dependent on this family for all things. All the way home I had one hand on him and the other hand on her. I think I was praying.
The next morning we took the baby, who had been named Zachary, to the doctor. She found that Zachary had serious infections in both ears, which had apparently never been treated. She told us that our baby would hear once the infections cleared. The doctor went on to talk about solid foods (Zachary had never had any) and his need for exercise. Sending us home with medicines to help him, she assured us he would “catch up,” with care.
And he did, as we watched in amazement! In one short week this child held his head erect, sat alone, then flipped over and crawled on hands and knees. A few weeks later, he reached the stairs, climbed up two of them, then grabbed the rail and, pulling himself to a standing position, just stood there looking at his new mom in triumph!
As the doctor predicted, Zachary’s hearing returned and rosy apple cheeks replaced his chalky color. But the most important change of all was that our Zachary began to laugh and cry.
This little boy had never cried. When crying hadn’t worked to draw the attention he so desperately needed, he quit early on. As for laughter, I doubt there was too much to laugh about.
Now when Zachary laughs, it is no infant giggle but rather a hearty guffaw right from his toes. When he laughs like that, anyone with him has to laugh too.
Once again, I have seen the tremendous power of love. No one can thrive without it. And with it, all things are possible.
Jean Brody
Love Can Build a Bridge
It’s the tiniest thing I ever decided to put my whole life into.
Terri Guillemets
Christina Claire Ciminella entered this world screaming on key and searching for harmony. She was thrust into the eye of the Judd family hurricane on May 30, 1964, attended by the same nurse who had overseen my own birth in the very same room, only eighteen years before. Christina arrived at King’s Daughters Hospital, a block from our house, in sleepy Ashland, Kentucky, just as I had when my own eighteen-year-old mother had me. It was a quiet moment of personal joy for humble parents hardly prepared for the greatest job on earth. At Christina’s birth, I crossed the threshold to adulthood, ready or not, and took the first baby step on a giant adventure.
Christina and I plunged headlong into an epic, lifelong search for harmony that would alternately unite and divide us a thousand times. A journey that would see us grow up together, scale impossible heights as partners, and embrace the elusive rhythms of a unique mother-daughter relationship. Some say we helped to reshape the history of country music in the process, but for us the experience was deeply intimate and richly private—even though we lived it in the public eye. It’s been quite a modern fairy tale, what this infant brought into my life and the lives of millions of other people, but in 1964 there were other, more pressing matters on my mind.
All I knew right then was that I had given birth to a healthy, beautiful little girl. I had somehow known my child would be a girl; I had had a powerfully instinctive feeling months before and had already picked her name. She would be called Christina Claire, and it would fit her perfectly. Much later, of course, she would become “Wynonna,” and that too would fit her perfectly. We are not born with our destinies stamped on our foreheads.
When the nurse brought my baby in, I looked into her face and saw myself—her eyes, her skin, her expressions, her spirit. She looked up at me and smiled her first hello. A broad and mischievous grin lit up her face, a sign that told me in no uncertain terms that this was a child to be reckoned with, a child who would be worthy of great things. From that moment on my heart was all hers. I was terrified, elated, proud, and complete . . . all at once. We began our lifelong search for harmony with slow and halting steps, a teenage mother and an unplanned child on a journey that would lead to magic and milestones that neither of us dreamed possible. Wynonna and I were instantly one, a partnership, a team—just the two of us against a frightening and unknown world. On that spring day in 1964, we began our wonderful duet, a blend of heart, mind and soul that continues to this day.
Naomi Judd
Calling Mr. Clean
Maybe it was nesting on steroids. Possibly it was my less-than-neat twin toddlers. Or perhaps it was a compulsive desire to maintain the illusion of order in my life. Whatever the reason, during my last pregnancy I just could not stop thinking about cleaning things. I just couldn’t get enough of All Things Immaculate.
So when I saw the sponge, yellow, five inches thick and really squishy looking, I had to have it. Had to have it in a way only a p
regnant woman has to have something. It’s bizarre, but I actually salivated when I saw it. Had I ever seen anything more useful, more amazing? And for a mere ninety-nine cents! Who could pass up such a bargain? Certainly not pregnant old Pavlovian me.
Myriad cleaning endeavors starring the sponge and myself tap-danced glitzily around in my head. I would try it out first as my own personal bath implement. Unfortunately, it made a squeaky noise as I pulled it across my skin, so I had to nix that idea. I used it to clean the bathtub instead. After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d giddily daydream, planning our next encounter. Maybe tonight it would be the bathtub again. Or the kitchen floor. Or maybe even the car.
And it didn’t stop with the sponge. Other cleaning implements, things that I hadn’t glanced at in years, let alone used, became tantalizingly attractive to me. The white scouring brush under the sink. Brillo pads. Bottled cleaning products. I couldn’t keep my hands off them.
At the supermarket, instead of standing pondering ice cream bars in the frozen foods aisle as usual, I stood transfixed by Ajax, Soft Scrub and Pine Sol. Mr. Clean winked seductively at me, and I fantasized about just how sparklingly clean I could get my bathroom faucet if only I brought the burly fellow home with me.
I scoured the finish off the linoleum in the kitchen one night. I washed the car every day for a week. Masked and gloved, I obsessively sprayed, spritzed, rubbed, wiped, waxed and polished my way through my last trimester.
And then I had my baby boy, and the romance was over. Whatever hormone it was that caused my sponge fetish thankfully exited my body with my son, leaving me once again a comfortable slob, unconcerned about suds and sparkling appliances. The scrub brush got tossed back under the sink with a shrug; the brigade of impulse-purchased cleaning supplies was relegated to the back of the linen closet. I stopped returning Mr. Clean’s calls. The wonder-sponge sulkily disappeared into the basement. I wondered, perplexed, just what I’d seen in the thing when I stumbled upon it about a year later. I held it in my hand and tried to rekindle the old flame. Nothing doing.
And then a couple of days ago, we were at Sam’s Club, and there it was. Another sponge. A big, meaty, make-everything-sparkling-clean yellow sponge. My heart skipped a beat. I could practically taste the bone-tingling satisfaction of a cleaning job done right. I started to drool.
And that’s when I knew.
That sponge and I were going to be very busy for the next nine months.
Karen C. Driscoll
I Am a Mother
I was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, getting my hair cut when my husband called. He didn’t even talk to me, but the message he gave to the receptionist was simple, “Stop home on your way to the dentist.” It was a beautiful day in July. I had ended work a few days before and had lined up appointments for all those things one puts off when one is working full-time.
Just the week before, we had finished our home study with the adoption agency, and we were told we probably had at least a couple of months before we would be matched up with a baby. My husband, Joe, and I had gone through eight years of medical intervention for infertility, and for much of that time I believed I could not be a mother. After much soul-searching, Joe and I realized that our goal was to become parents and that adoption was just as wonderful a way of building a family as giving birth. Our adoption counselor told me I would be a mother, but was it really true?
As I was driving down the highway after the haircut, I thought about my husband’s request to stop home. Did he have some time from work to have lunch at home with me? Then I became curious: Joe has no idea where I get my hair cut, so he must have gone to great lengths to track down the phone number. Now, why would he go through all that trouble to find me and just leave a message to stop home? Could it be we got “the call”? Was I a mother already? My heart began to race with excitement, and then I checked myself as I had a dozen times before when we were trying to get pregnant—no, it couldn’t be that.
As I pulled into the driveway, the large quilted heart flag that I had made years before as a Valentine’s present for Joe was hanging over the driveway. Where had he dug that up, and why was it hanging? As he walked out of the house with a champagne bottle in his hand, I knew.
“Joan, you’re the mother of a baby boy!” he told me. Our adoption counselor had called him at work to give him the wonderful news. He filled me in on the details and told me we could pick up our new son the next afternoon.
What should we do first? We weren’t expecting a baby for at least a few months; like a couple that is pregnant, we thought we would have time to plan and get ready. We called our parents first. “Mom, Dad, we have a baby boy!” I told my parents. “Oh, Joan, we’re so happy that you’re a mother,” they said. I didn’t feel any different than I had the day before. When will I know I am a mother? I wondered.
The next twenty-four hours went by quickly, yet I remember every moment in great detail. First, we had to talk with the adoption agency to receive more information and directions. They gave us the phone number of the foster mother who was taking care of our son until we picked him up the next day. We dialed the phone and waited what seemed like eternity for an answer. Mary answered. “Hello,” I said, “this is Joan and Joe. Do you have our baby?” “Oh, yes,” she said, “he’s sitting right here on my lap. Do you hear him?” We listened, and heard his voice for the first time, making his baby sounds.
The next fifteen hours were a rush to complete paperwork, get to the bank for payment to the adoption agency, and get to the mall before it closed to pick up a few basics. Although we knew an adoption would happen in the near future, up until that day I could not allow myself to buy or borrow any baby things. For years, each time I would see the grocery aisle that carries diapers and baby food, I would pass by quickly. I believed that aisle was off-limits to me; I was not a mother. It’s not a very rational feeling, but one that many infertile women experience, even when they are told a baby is coming for them through adoption.
At the department store, we ran into an old acquaintance. “Hello, what’s new?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” I said out of habit.
“Oh, everything!” Joe said out of excitement.
We rushed on, leaving the poor woman quite puzzled. I picked out receiving blankets, diapers, bottles, formula and socks (are baby feet really that tiny?). While I was stocking up on the practical things, Joe ran off and found our son’s first stuffed animal—Winnie the Pooh.
Around 1:00 in the morning, while we were trying to figure out how to sterilize bottles, we began to pick a name for the baby. Previously, it was too hard to look at books with baby names; what if our baby never came? Once we picked the name, we tried to get some sleep. Impossible. We had heard his voice, we had given him a name, but was he real? What did he look like? Was he truly going to be ours?
Later that morning, we went to the adoption agency for last-minute paperwork and to meet the birth mother of our son. She had made a careful adoption plan for him and had chosen us to be his parents. It was a very good and touching meeting. She was his birth mother, the one who had given him life, but I was his mother too, the one who would love and care for him every day.
We followed the directions to the foster-care home, and as we pulled up to the house my heart was racing. I don’t remember how I got to the front door. Mary opened the door, and as we walked in, she placed in my arms the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. He looked up at me, and said without words, “You are my mother.” I will never forget that moment, for that was when all my questions ended.
Looking into his eyes, I knew for certain that I had become a mother.
Joan Sedita
I’ll Do It
Life is a journey . . . taken one step at a time.
Anonymous
Finally, I thought as I tallied up the grade on the last test paper. I jotted the score in my grade book, and was just about to leave my office at the college where I taught math when the telephone rang. It wa
s a social service caseworker from New Jersey, and though I’d been half-expecting her call it still took me by surprise.
“Your sister’s condition is getting worse,” the woman told me. “You said I should let you know. . . .”
“Thank you,” I said, and my heart ached for my big sister, Pam, who had battled schizophrenia for years—and even more for her three-year-old daughter, Scarlett, whom I’d never even met. “How can I help?” I asked, and when the caseworker answered I knew there was no way I could agree to her request . . . and no way I could refuse.
Growing up Pam and I shared a bedroom and played on the same community league softball team. But after high school I went to college to get my engineering degree. I got married, moved to Florida and looked forward to starting a family. “I can’t imagine a life without children to raise,” I told my husband. But things didn’t work out—the kids, or the marriage.
Newly divorced, I enrolled in grad school and earned an M.S. in math. I spent a year as a volunteer teacher in Haiti, then moved to South Carolina to work on a Ph.D. in medical statistics. But the teaching bug had bitten, and before long I put my Ph.D. on hold and began teaching part-time at three different local colleges.
I filled my spare time snorkeling and sailing with friends from a church singles group, but I knew I was just filling time to fight loneliness. I dated occasionally, but there were never any sparks, and by the time I turned forty I could almost feel the ticking of my biological clock.
I began to dread friends’ baby showers, and every Mother’s Day tears coursed down my cheeks when the pastor asked the moms to stand and be recognized. “Dear God, why not me, too?” I prayed, and I was so frantic, I even considered artificial insemination. I backed out at the last minute, though, and I never seriously considered adoption. Raising a child on my own seemed like such a daunting responsibility. Marriage and then a baby—that’s the way the world was supposed to work.