www.pennhealth.com/health_info/pregnancy
Parents Canada
www.parentscanada.com/340/
Pregnancy_Later_in_Life.htm
Very Best Baby
www.verybestbaby.com/content/article.asp?
section=pr&id=2002107112419632723
March of Dimes
www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/681_1155.asp
Emory Healthcare
www.emoryhealthcare.org/HealthGate/14711.htm
OBGYN.net
http://www.obgyn.net
University of Utah Health Sciences Center
www.uuhsc.utah.edu/healthinfo/adult/Pregnant/stats.htm
Heartlink
www.family.org
U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2002
The eyes open—sunrise is streaming through my bedroom windows, which look over a desert ravine and the mountain towering close behind. Various feelings linger, not quite meshing with the visual stimuli around me. Good or bad, it all depends on the particular dreams I’ve had—dreams that are always reluctant to be left behind. I ease the transition, silently greeting the fictional people with whom I will be sharing my day. Mark’s having a crisis but refusing to see that. And Meredith is strong and determined and in trouble. I’ll start chapter seven today. The beginning sentence reveals itself to me.…
I stop. I can’t write yet. And I don’t want the writing that follows to be secondhand goods by the time I get to my computer. I roll out of bed, wake my teenage daughter, Rachel, for school, and climb into the shower. I dry myself and brush my hair and dress and nag my daughter—infusing enthusiasm into my voice for whatever chore she has ahead of her. I pretend not to see when she steals my favorite shirt out of my closet. And I know that Meredith will be wearing a blouse just like that. I put on makeup and think about Meredith’s eyes. I choose my jewelry, hearing Meredith’s disregard for such useless frivolity. A conversation starts in my head—one between Meredith and Mark. It’s important, something I need to know. Even if I’m not ready to know it yet…
“Ma!” Rachel is standing next to me, ready to go. I have to drive her to Arizona State University, where she is the youngest sophomore in the school’s history. And because of this, I have to stay on campus with her while she attends class.
She grabs her backpack full of books and notes and far too many pencils and pens. I grab my own backpack, weighted down by the lightest laptop computer I could find. With a quick goodbye to the man of the house, we’re out the door. We make a stop at a drive-through for a fast-food breakfast that we eat on the way, listening to a Phantom of the Opera soundtrack—the original with Michael Crawford. We both think his voice is phenomenal. I tap in to the emotion, thinking about a love that is so compelling it drives all action. It occurs to me that Mark and Meredith feel that way about each other.
Of course, they don’t know it yet. I have to be patient, let them discover this on their own or I could blow the whole thing.
I fight traffic as we get close to campus, and then have to bully my way into one of the few remaining parking spots. Rachel’s concerned about her class. She might get a paper back and she doesn’t want to know if she didn’t do well. I talk to her about her worth as a person and how everything happens as it should. I remind her that she did her best and that is all she can ask of herself. I talk to her about a movie we’re going to watch together when we get home.
And I stand with my heart halfway in my throat as she walks into class. I send up a prayer that she did well on the paper—not because I care about her grades at this point, but because I know how hard she’ll take it if she didn’t. And then I slide my back down the cold cement wall, settle on the floor, unzip my laptop and plug it into the wall socket close by, put on my headphones and become Mark Shepherd and Meredith Foster.
In what seems only a second later, the lecture hall door beside me opens and a flurry of college students spill out, always in a hurry to get someplace else. I bite back my frustration at the interruption right when I was getting to something crucial; I save my work, shut down and pack up, watching for Rachel the entire time. I know the minute I see her that she did well on her paper. I can’t wait to get outside and hear what she has to say.
On the way to the next class we talk about the professor’s comments. She’s afraid of being bored in her next lecture. This professor tends to wander off subject. I tell her to do whatever she needs to do to stay awake—doodle with her colored pens or something—and watch as she walks through the door with a slew of young adults who are so far out of her innocent young league. I always hate that part.
And then I feel the cold brick wall at my back as I slide down, hook up and rejoin the people who are, right now, my closest friends.
Until I’m interrupted again. This time I lug my backpack over to the student union, trying not to pay attention to the pain that’s slowly forming in my left hip, and stand in line for lunch. While Rach and I eat, I hear all about whatever topic her last professor got lost in. We discuss the homework she has to do that night. We also talk about the boy she instant-messaged with the night before. She wonders what he meant by certain things. I try to give her insights into kids her age.
And then we’re off to dance. Rachel’s a member of a professional company in town, and she has class followed by rehearsal. I’m helping with the costuming of the upcoming show and turn my mind to the ways I can make strange pieces of fabric stay in place during total-body gyrations. I’ve been doing this for years and know many tricks. I just have to figure out which one to pull out of the hat. I think about the dancers in this particular piece, the challenges, and I wonder if Mark and Meredith have ever seen a modern dance performance. Meredith has—once—with her sister. Mark has not. I’m not sure whether they ever will. Or if the information is even pertinent.
An hour later I’m sitting in a darkened theater, unable to write, as the technicians are working on lighting for the show and my laptop throws up a glare. I’ve seen these pieces performed more times than I’ve slid down that cold brick wall at ASU. I’m anxious to get to my life, my work. I have a deadline, and not one person there is aware of that—except my daughter. And she cares.
That’s all that matters.
I see dancers on the stage. I know they’re there, creating movement and shape that I recognize, but suddenly there’s a woman in a car. She’s rich, but posing as a low-income single woman. She’s infiltrating small towns, getting jobs in fast-food places or school cafeterias, looking for her missing five-year-old son, who was abducted while on a ride at an amusement park. As I sit there I’m going from town to town, picking up clues about the whereabouts of this little boy—and then discover that what I thought was a clue wasn’t, and I wonder if the whole thing is a figment of the woman’s imagination.
Suddenly the lights pop up and I’m blinded for a moment while my eyes adjust to the brightness. Rach is beside me in the theater, her dance bag over her shoulder. I stand up slowly, dazed, call goodbye to everyone and head out into the night. A quick call home reassures me that my husband’s had dinner, and it’s another pass through a fast-food restaurant for Rachel and me. But this time we wait to eat until we get home.
I eat—not really tasting whatever I’ve brought home, listening while Rachel tells her father about her day. At least, I’m half listening. The other half of me is on my way into my office and the computer that’s waiting there. I have another couple of hours before bed and I think longingly of uninterrupted time with the woman in the car—with me sitting in a comfortable chair.
Rach wanders to the other desk in our home office. I can hear her online, the beeps of her instant messages blending into the Pachelbel’s Canon CD I have playing. At some point she laughs out loud. I stop to ask what was so funny and she shares an anecdote from a conversation she’s having. It makes me laugh, too.
Hearing my voice, my husband comes in to ask how much longer I’ll be. He’s waiting up for me. Rach laughs aga
in. I’m thinking Mark and Meredith might end up making love. I look at myself, sitting at my desk with things I love to look at scattered around me, my favorite music playing, the lights low, a lavender candle burning, my family close by, and know that I am very, very lucky.
This is my life. And I am happy.
Exactly how does my love of the West influence my books? I vary settings for my readers—from small towns to ranches to cities. However, my heroes are always men of strong character with a passion for life and abiding values that give them integrity…like cowboys. My heroines are compassionate, independent women with a gift for nurturing…like pioneer women. Am I a cowgirl at heart? You bet. And I know how to recognize a cowboy even if he’s wearing a suit!
When I wrote my first “cowboy” romance, I was intrigued by my hero. Something about the cowboy mystique took over and gave the romance a flavor I’d never used before. I was hooked. I’ll admit I once had a crush on Roy Rogers, longed to own a horse like Trigger, and as a child was more comfortable in a barn with horses snuffling and kittens playing amidst the hay bales than almost anywhere else. I liked the peace and the animals and the “set apart from the world” feeling. Although I lived in Pennsylvania, I felt an affinity with all things Western and dreamed of someday visiting a “real” ranch out west. But over the course of my career I’ve also found I’m inspired not only by ranches but by a very special place in Oklahoma that draws me to it again and again.
Oklahoma is a long way from Pennsylvania, but our son lives there now and we visit at least twice a year. Each time we do, we plan an afternoon at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The first time we toured it, I’m not sure what I expected. I’m not a museum fan. I’d rather be “experiencing” than “viewing.” But the cowboy museum changed my outlook. This is why in my novella Promoted to Mom the cowboy museum is a favorite and even romantic dating venue in my couple’s history.
Every time I visit this museum I’m uplifted by the architectural beauty of the building and the light pouring in the floor-to-ceiling windows in the lobby where the original plaster statue of Fraser’s The End of the Trail stands. I usually follow the off-white tile to the galleries. There are sixteen points of interest, but I definitely have my favorites. Even before reaching particular galleries, I can view contemporary artists’ work in the hall. I’ve become acquainted with newer artists—both photographers and oil painters. Their works capture the West in all its facets—from children on a ranch to the magnificent scenery in Big Sky country.
One of my favorite rooms safeguards and displays the works of Reynolds, Russell and Remington—from bronzes of cowpokes at work to paintings with varying color palettes of the West. I usually want to linger there, absorbing history in a way I could never discover it in a book or on the Worldwide Web.
The Native American gallery is another favorite. The artifacts—clothing, tools and implements—show incomparable creative expertise, particularly in design motifs, from generation to generation. Weaving patterns passed down from mother to daughter and designs—whether abstract or geometrical—are intrinsic to the natural world.
I am fascinated by their simplicity as well as their complexity.
For a different view of the ambience of the Old West, I time-travel to Prosperity Junction, the life-size replica of a cattle town with two-story structures, kerosene lamps and even sound effects that make the twenty-first century disappear. From there, as a Roy Rogers fan, I step into the Western performers’ gallery—a presentation of how the West has been portrayed in film and books. Moving on, I can easily spend hours at the American Rodeo Gallery, which is interactive and a wonderful source of research for my “cowboy” books.
I can never leave the cowboy museum until I’ve visited the gardens, lovely with their waterfalls, larger-than-life sculptures and memorials to famous horses. There is one particular secluded spot with a bench and pond where I envisioned my hero proposing to my heroine. With the overhead sun bright, the Oklahoma breeze blowing, the splash of water dribbling over rock gardens, I find a peace that is rare and a contentment from doing the work I love—imbibing the history, struggles and beauty of the West to pour into my books.
I’ve taken several research trips to the West and each time I visit there, part of my heart remains. On my first trip I was sixteen and rode on a train with my grandparents to California. We stopped only briefly in Albuquerque, but I never forgot the flavor of it or the red bluffs and turquoise sky as we sped through New Mexico. After I wrote my first cowboy book, I decided I needed Western inspiration in Pennsylvania.
Just as writing has seemed to come naturally, I’ve always enjoyed mixing colors and textures. When our son was small, I was a decorator for Home Interiors and Gifts. I became an expert at coordinating styles, forming groupings and adding color with paint or material. I’ve always known what colors make me feel good, which fabrics feel formal or comfortable and what knickknacks lift my mood. After we sold our first fixer-upper house to move to a quieter neighborhood, we eventually decided to add a garage with an office above it for me. I wanted this space to reflect my love of the West and Southwest.
I began planning decor for the room with a beautiful Native American vase my son gave me for Christmas that was painted in turquoise, teal and tan. Those were my basic colors. When in doubt I added rust and off-white. I carefully collected decorations from catalogs and a Southwestern shop in Tennessee where our son went to grad school. Every time I walk into my office, the cream buttered-plastered walls, Native American motifs and trading post rugs welcome me and help me invoke my muse.
More recently, after research trips to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, we redecorated our living room. My husband decided he wanted to install a hardwood floor to replace worn carpet. I wanted more of the West in our home. Our living room is now a haven with a blue three-foot-long spirit horse on the wall, chunky oak furniture, Kokopellis and my favorite statues—The Cowboy’s Prayer and Welcome Home—sitting in prominent spots. In Oklahoma I found a candle that actually smells like saddle leather! This year when we took a research trip to Wyoming, we came home with a throw pillow and cowhide mats that went beautifully with the rawhide shades on our handcrafted drum lamps.
When I do have the opportunity to set a book on a farm or west of the Mississippi, I embrace the setting and attempt to give my readers an accurate feel for the scenery, an iota of my love for furry creatures and the fulfilling grounding I feel every time I work in my office or relax in our living room. Whether I write about doctors, lawyers or CEOs, I think my readers will always find the cowboy spirit in each of them. Whether my heroines are stay-at-home moms or businesswomen climbing the ladder to success, they will possess a pioneer spirit. In whatever settings I choose, often my readers will see a horse or feel wide open spaces around them somewhere. My love of the West is part of me as much as my Pennsylvania roots and hopefully they will both always enrich my writing.
Dear Readers,
On Angel’s Wings is a work of fiction in which I employed full creative license. My story in no way represents the policies, opinions, guidelines or representatives of any such real-life program.
I have worked as a volunteer with a program called Bridge of Hope, a summer camp for older Russian orphans, ages six to eleven. The children in Bridge of Hope come to the United States for a one-month stay with a host family. Many of the children end up being adopted by these families.
Below is a conversation I had with Patrice Gancie, director of the Bridge of Hope program.
IC: Tell us about Bridge of Hope.
PG: Bridge of Hope was started in 1997 by families who’d adopted children from Russia but couldn’t forget the kids they saw and left behind in the orphanages—especially the “older” ones, who have little chance of adoption. With this year’s program, we’ll reach about 380 children who have been hosted and adopted through BOH, and every year our families come home with the same haunted memories.
My own two sons were adopted through BOH in
1998, and my husband and I remember the tug between the happiness of our reunion with our boys at the orphanage and the sad feeling of all those other kids standing by, observing our joy. Our boys entered the orphanage when they were three and five (we adopted them at six and eight), and they still recall being the observers who wondered why families visited and chose only the younger children. Can you imagine such young boys feeling too old to be loved?
IC: What makes Bridge of Hope unique from other programs of this type?
PG: We are one of the oldest, most experienced Russian hosting programs, and we are very proud of our outstanding 90 percent adoption rate for our children. I often tell people that I work for BOH after adopting through this program because we and our children were taken care of so well throughout the hosting and adoption process. Our parent organization, Cradle of Hope Adoption Center, is an international adoption agency founded by adoptive parents and working year-round in Russia. We are committed to protecting our host children and giving host families the best support we can give them. We know that the road to international adoption is often a difficult one. We provide host parent training, social worker and other staff consultation and assistance, dedicated local volunteers (many of them adoptive parents themselves) and an extensive support network for traveling families in Russia.
IC: How did you become involved with the program?
PG: We, like many of our families, felt that fate played a hand. We were in our late forties with no children, but had never been able to agree on adoption. In spring of 1998 a friend forwarded a fund-raising letter for BOH, a program we’d never heard of before, and the idea of being able to host before making an adoption decision struck a chord. What better program for people like us? We decided we didn’t want to give money—we wanted to host a child! Even though we called very late in the application process, we were told there were still two sibling groups who needed families. One was two brothers. My husband had always wanted a son, and I had always thought if we ever adopted one child, we should adopt two. That’s how our boys came into our lives.
From Here To Maternity: A Second ChancePromoted to MomOn Angel's Wings Page 23