The priest, the psychic and the acupuncturist.
Questioning everything, we began to explore anything. Fertility goddesses, known healers, diets, vitamins -- anything that held promise. I went to a Maori Indian healer, asking for Papa as I had been instructed to, only to be informed, "Papa only goes where he is needed." At the end of my session I would find myself surrounded by every healer in the room, Papa at my feet. My body was vibrating so strongly from their energy I could have sworn I was levitating.
I called a priest, an acupuncturist and a psychic in the course of an hour one day and I met with each one. From the priest I asked forgiveness for divorcing my first husband. Still under the sway of my catholic upbringing, I had convinced myself that I was being punished by God for the divorce.
The acupuncturist, who I went to weekly for a year, gave me the type of period she said women are supposed to have: pain and symptom free.
The psychic told me I would not be denied a child; there was a little girl coming to me and she is beautiful and lively. That my child would be an answered prayer, but comes to me in an unexpected way. I hung onto her every word. I so wanted to believe her.
At some point, hoping for some brevity from it all, we watched the dark comedy "Raising Arizona" with Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter. Michael thought it was funny. I fully rationalized the fact that they stole a baby. I understood that level of desperation.
When depression took hold of me, it slid into the room like an intoxicating invisible vapor, coating everything with a haze of gray. I became ambivalent about everything. I didn't know anything about depression and never even realized how deep down a hole I had fallen until I somehow had the strength to pull out of it. I knew I had come out the other end because instead of being numb I could feel again. I remember thinking, "Huh. THAT's what depression is."
There's a woman in Pennsylvania.
A single 26-year-old woman in Pennsylvania who didn't want to be a mother sought out to find someone who did. I got the call from our lawyer who said, "There's a woman in Pennsylvania and she has chosen you to be the parents of her unborn baby." And then, "Kerrie? Kerrie? Are you there?" On the other end of the line I nodded my head silently, but tears had choked my throat too tight to answer.
We flew out to meet her. I wanted to know the woman who was making this ultimate sacrifice for us. She lived in a poor area of town. Her car had been impounded for parking tickets. Her apartment was on the fourth floor of a run down building with no working elevator. She had no kitchen, only a microwave. She had no friends or family nearby, and walked to her appointments at the local medical facility, despite being ordered to bed rest. She was a chain smoker, skinny as a rail and had a tough chick disposition. It was sobering to take in her reality.
Her apartment was too tiny to hold us all comfortably, so after a few awkward exchanges, we suggested lunch and headed out to Ruby Tuesday, one of the only "sit-down" (her words) restaurants in the area.
Michael and I made nervous chatter in the car. I kept stealing glances at her. She was tiny, really tiny, and her belly was huge. I resisted the urge to touch it. We stopped outside the restaurant so she could smoke. It crushed me to watch her.
When she finished she snubbed out her cigarette on the sidewalk and we headed into the restaurant. I watched as Michael approached the hostess stand, took two steps towards him and stopped dead in my tracks. Michael turned back to look at me and saw my distress. My face had contorted in way that was all too familiar to him and tears started falling. "Honey, what's wrong?" I could only say his name, "Michael." I grabbed his hand, squeezing it hard. I felt like everyone around us froze as if a still frame in a movie as Michael and I stood there, facing each other and holding hands. I didn't need to say anything else. It took him just a moment to cock his head upward and hear the music: "People smile and tell me I'm the lucky one. Life's just begun. Think I'm gonna have a son. He will be like you and me, as free as a dove..."
Here in Lebanon Pennsylvania, 10 years later, we are with the woman who would give us a child. And the song I had wanted to sing to my husband to tell him the news about our baby was playing in the restaurant.
After all this time. I felt like the child herself was speaking to me: "This is how it was to be all along. Don't you see? You took all of the steps leading to this very moment. I knew all along that it would be this way. That I would come to you, your Isabella. I've been waiting for you as long as you have been waiting for me."
We watched Isabella Maria DeMay being born in Nashville. Her middle name to honor the woman who brought her to us. Every year on Mother's Day and on her birthday, I sit with the knowledge that this child my husband and I so desperately wanted was always destined to come to us. The little girl that we planned for. The one with his curly hair and my brown eyes. "... she will be like you and me, as free as a dove."
