Love Warrior

by Glennon Doyle Melton

  * * *

  Craig holds my hand as I lie on the examination table and stare at a computer screen, trying to make sense of our ultrasound pictures. First, the technician says: “Well, it’s a boy.”

  I look at Craig and he says, “It’s a boy? So it’s a real person?” I laugh. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe any of this. I want to cheer, but my excitement is tempered by our technician’s seriousness. She’s distant and at first I feel angry—What the hell’s wrong with her? No trumpets? Can’t she see a prince has been announced? But as I look more closely at her face, I start to feel afraid. She’s stoic and silent and she won’t allow her eyes to meet mine. She finishes her part, tells us to wait for the doctor, and leaves the dark room. Craig and I do not speak.

  The doctor walks in and quickly tells us that our baby has a cyst on his brain, a bright spot on his heart, and a thick neck. He says that these are markers for “a certain chromosomal issue.” His face is grim and stern, like he’s mad at us about this. I don’t know what issue he’s referring to, so I understand that my baby is going to die and it is my fault. This makes horrible, perfect sense to me. You do not get to spend your life as a drunk and have an abortion and then have a healthy baby and sit on the floor smelling pajamas and being happy. This is what happens. Your baby dies. I am getting what I deserve. I am embarrassed that I ever thought I could get away with all of this happiness. There is no starting over, there is only continuing on.

  I hear myself say, “Is my baby going to die?”

  “No,” the doctor says. “But it’s likely that he has Down syndrome.” I can breathe again. My baby is going to live. I close my eyes.

  Craig asks, “Honey, are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Just give me a second.” I am trying to imagine what a little boy with Down syndrome who is part me and part Craig might look like. I am trying to see my son. An image of a two-year-old materializes like a gift. He has slanted almond eyes, olive skin, and thunderous thighs. He is laughing and running away from me but I am gaining on him and I scoop him up and bury my nose deep into his neck. We both giggle madly. We are beautiful. This understanding wraps around me like a blanket.

  I open my eyes. I am smiling but the doctor is still scowling. I feel a deep dislike for him. I want him to stop pretending that he’s in charge of how we feel about this. I want him to stop thinking he has delivered bad news simply because he’s discovered part of who my son is. My son will be who he is. I want my son to be who he is. I meet Craig’s eyes and there is fear there, but also relief and a glint that suggests he is ready to kill this doctor. Craig leans down and whispers, “Let’s get our guy out of here.” Yes, I think. Let’s. I tell the doctor I’d like to get dressed and he says something about further tests and we say thank you and good-bye.

  We stop at a library on our way home. There is an aisle filled with books about special needs and we find several about Down syndrome. We take a stack of books, sit on the floor together, and read for an hour. This aisle, the special needs aisle, is where we have landed. We learn that the test the doctor referred to is called an amniocentesis and that one in every few hundred accidentally ends the pregnancy. I sit and think about this for a minute. Another image enters my mind, this one of a roller coaster with a sign at the entrance that reads: WARNING: ONE OF EVERY FEW HUNDRED RIDES ENDS THE PASSENGER. I tell Craig about the roller-coaster sign and we agree quickly that we will not let our boy, who we’ve already named Chase, ride that roller coaster. There will be no further tests. I say to Craig, “We just made a decision for Chase. We are being parents together. We are parenting.”

  Craig says, “This is the weirdest, scariest, coolest day of my life.”

  For a long while, we sit shoulder to shoulder, our backs against a shelf of parenting books, silently staring at nothing together. Something is settling in. Something happened to us in that exam room. We have gotten all tangled up with each other.

  We begin to understand that to coparent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don’t rise and fall together, when your minds don’t race and panic together, when your stomachs don’t churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the side of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride.

  We put the books back because we don’t have a library card. Having a baby is one thing, but applying for a library card is another thing entirely. As we walk out into the sun, Craig says, “Is it going to be okay? He’s going to be okay, right?” I look at him and understand that when your coaster partner gets scared you must quickly hide your own fear. You can’t panic at the same time. You must take turns. I grab Craig’s arm, hold tight, and say, “Yes. Absolutely. It’s all going to be okay. He is going to be amazing. This is just part of our ride.” I am smiling. Not because I am not afraid, but because I am deeply, solidly, unshakably happy.

  * * *

  I gain sixty pounds because the baby loves chocolate chip cookies and rocky road ice cream, and providing for him daily is very important to me. I am only five foot two so I begin to resemble a cube. I am mostly an ecstatic cube but every so often I wonder if instead of healing from my bulimia I have become a half-bulimic—all bingeing, no purging. Craig tells me I look fantastic every day. He says, “You’re glowing!” He buys a machine that looks like a CB radio and he presses it to my belly after dinner and reads children’s stories into it. Then we lie together on the couch, spooning and watching TV. During the commercials Craig touches my stomach and says again and again: “I can’t believe there’s a boy in there. We made a person. I can’t believe it.” I can’t believe it either, but it proves to be true.

  One snowy January evening, Craig and I are lying next to each other in bed and the contractions begin. I squeeze Craig’s arm hard and widen my eyes. He springs out of bed and starts using the breathing techniques we learned in birthing class. Craig wants to hurry me into the car, but I insist on showering, drying my hair, and applying makeup. My baby is about to meet his mama for the first time, and I want him to think I’m beautiful. We finally get into the car and begin driving. Craig is visibly terrified. Without taking his eyes off the road he keeps saying: “We’re almost there, honey. We’re almost at the airport.” The contraction pain has rendered me unable to speak, so I silently pray that Craig is not actually taking us to the airport. By the time we tumble into the hospital waiting room I’m screaming and Craig continues to be the only one using breathing techniques. A nurse rushes over to the big glass doors to meet us and she seems alarmed by my appearance. She looks at Craig and asks, “How long has she been like this?”

  Craig says, “Nine months.” At first I’m sure that he’s misunderstood the question but then I think maybe not. We are wheeled into the delivery room fast. Comforted by all the beeping, machinery, and scrubs, Craig becomes the perfect partner, rubbing my legs, kissing my forehead, and remaining calm—until they turn me around to administer the epidural. I close my eyes, squeeze Craig’s sweaty hands, and hear him say the following: “Oh my God! That is the biggest needle I have ever seen in my life!” There is silence and I open my eyes in time to see the nurse look directly at him, shake her head in disbelief, and mouth the word: WOW. I look up at Craig and say out loud, “Yes, honey. Wow.”

  While the blessed epidural does its job, my parents and sister burst into the delivery room. We squeal and squeeze each other mightily. I ask them to look in my bag for the letters I’ve written to thank them for believing in me. The letters are promises that believing in me was the right thing to do this time. My sister and dad find the letters and start to walk to the waiting room together. My mom lingers and takes my hand. I can tell she is trying to transfer every ounce of her hope and strength out thr
ough her arm and into me. Her eyes are full and her lip is quivering and she whispers, “God bless you, sweetheart.”

  This is the first time she’s ever said these words to me. I feel thrilled and scared. Then she is gone and I am staring at Craig and I’m pushing and pushing and there he is: Chase Doyle Melton. I see his back before the nurse whisks him away. He looks purple and he’s silent. My heart stops. I ask, “Why isn’t he crying?” When no one answers I understand that this is when I get punished. This is it. “Why the hell isn’t he crying?” I yell. Chase starts to cry.

  “He’s fine, honey,” Craig says. “He’s fine. He’s perfect.” Craig is crying, too. We are all crying now. The nurse hands Chase to me wrapped up in a blanket. The moment I hold him is one of the first in my life I do not feel like I am acting. His body fills my arms and I think, Oh. So this is what my arms are for. In that instant, I forget my loneliness. I am this baby’s mother. He is mine. I am his. He is the key I’ve been waiting for my entire life. I am unlocked. Chase and I belong to each other.

  A few hours after Chase is born, a doctor I don’t recognize comes to examine him. I hand Chase over reluctantly and watch the doctor’s face carefully. After several minutes he hands Chase back to me and says, “Your son is perfectly healthy. Congratulations, Mom.”

  He turns to walk away and I call after him, “Just one question: Does Chase have Down syndrome?”

  The doctor looks back, raises his eyebrow, and says, “No. I usually lead with that.” I look down at Chase and at first I feel the loss of who I thought he was and then I am filled with joy for who I know he is now. He has always been this baby boy. He is the boy with almond eyes and thunderous thighs, laughing and running. This is my son. During my decades of addiction I’d quit believing that I deserved to be a mother. I have only been a grown-up for eight months, but I am Chase’s mother, and as I look at his pink lips I think, I am no longer half alive. I am fully alive. You, baby boy, have brought me into the world.

  Two mornings later, the nurse peeks into our hospital room and sings, “Time to go home, Meltons.” My first thought is that she has made a mistake. There are no doctors or machines or fancy thermometers at home. Home is no place for a child. Craig grabs my hand and says, “You and me, honey. We’ve got this.” It’s clear that he has practiced these lines, and I’m touched. I dress Chase in his going-home outfit and then shuffle slowly to the bathroom to get myself ready for my new life. I pull my sassiest prepregnancy jeans out of my bag and realize with confusion that I cannot pull them past my calves. But I had the baby two days ago, I think. Maybe it takes a whole week. I pull my maternity pants back on, walk out of the bathroom, and lie, “Okay, I’m ready.”

  The nurse wheels Chase and me toward the exit while Craig follows behind with our bags. Cold air blasts us as soon as the automatic doors part, so Craig hurries us to the car. I quickly buckle Chase in his seat and climb in next to him while Craig settles into the driver’s seat. Neither of us speaks until we are halfway home. We cannot believe how much the world has changed during our short stay in the hospital. Apparently, our city has exploded with swarming people, jarring horns, and trucks releasing clouds of deadly gases into the sky. The oncoming traffic is a relentless procession of metal death missiles inches from obliterating our little family. We are a tiny, silent army in a tank trying to make progress through hostile territory. My God, I think. We will definitely have to stop driving. I look at Craig’s hands on the wheel and his knuckles are white. I say, “Have there always been so many cars?”

  He says, “I don’t know, but I hate them all. Let’s just be silent and concentrate.” For the remainder of the trip, I comfort myself by holding my face as close to Chase’s as possible. I keep my eyes closed and inhale him. He is the opposite of smelling salts. The scent of him is so comforting and soothing it has ruined regular air for me forever.

  Against all odds, we make it home. As soon as the car is safely parked in front of our apartment, I tell Craig that he’s a war hero. We carry Chase inside and set his car seat in the middle of the quiet living room. We say to him, “Welcome home, sweetie.” He does not respond. Craig and I sit down side by side on the couch and stare at him for a while. Craig finally says, “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “I have no idea,” I reply. “I think we’re supposed to, like, give him a life.”

  “Okay,” Craig says. “We can do that.”

  We take off our coats and get to work.

  * * *

  During our first week as a family, we sit on the floor in front of our sliding glass doors and watch the snow fall. When we touch the glass and feel the cold, we’re surprised. We are so warm inside together that we have forgotten what cold feels like. We play soft music and listen to Chase’s coos and gurgles and when the phone rings, we’re startled because we have forgotten that anyone else exists. I warm Chase’s bottles on the stove and notice the clock still announcing the time. The reminder that time is passing amuses me. There are no people other than we three, no world other than our apartment, no time other than Chase’s time, and no path other than the well-worn one from Chase’s crib to his bathtub to his rocker to our hand-me-down couch, where we huddle together in one corner and stare at each other long into the night.

  When it’s time for me to return to teaching, I leave Chase at day care and then cry at the sight of his empty car seat in the rearview mirror. All day at school I am untethered. Without the weight of his soft body in my arms I feel like I might float away. One day his sitter meets me at the door and announces, “Chase rolled over for the first time today!” I look at her holding my baby proudly in the air and I feel like screaming. I am missing things. On the way home I call Craig and threaten to quit work, so he comes home early. We take Chase for a walk and stop the stroller in front of a bush with a bird in it. The bird chirps, right at Chase’s eye level, and Chase laughs for the first time. Craig and I are stunned. We look at each other with wide, wet eyes. Chase’s laughter sounds like a waterfall of crystal bubbles. His laugh is like music class when I dragged the felt-tipped xylophone mallet gently from the long, deep bar all the way to the tiny, tinkly one to hear every note in rippled succession. It’s like a full rainbow of sound stretching from one corner of the sky to the other. Before this moment, Craig and I have not truly understood Chase to be a whole person, separate from us, capable of being delighted by the world around him. Craig and I hold each other and cry right there in the courtyard while Chase looks away from the bush, up toward us, and laughs and laughs.

  We three are living so close to the surface of ourselves that it seems easy to touch each other. There is so much laughing and crying during that first year of our son’s life. The laughter and tears are each of us bursting through our own skin to get to one another.

  * * *

  Craig, Chase, and I fit together perfectly. We strengthen each other like a braid. But as Chase grows, Craig and I are left alone with each other more often. Without Chase present, we begin to unravel. I am a child of Disney, so I learned early that a wedding is a woman’s finish line. I thought all I needed to do was cross that wedding-day finish line and I’d finally be whole and content. I could sit down, brush my long pretty hair, plan my outfit for the ball, and never feel lonely again. Happily ever after. But I’m married now, and I’m still lonely. Loneliness after marriage isn’t what I’ve been promised. I wonder if we’re doing something wrong, if marriage isn’t taking hold for Craig and me. I long for the depth, passion, and connection with Craig that I assumed would magically come with I do. And if this magical husband-and-wife bond isn’t going to materialize, then I at least want to build a solid friendship. The problem is that none of my relationship-building strategies seem to work with Craig.

  In all my close friendships, words are the bricks I use to build bridges. To know someone I need to hear her, and to feel known, I need to be heard by her. The process of knowing and loving another person happens for me through conversation. I reveal something to help
my friend understand me, she responds in a way that assures me she values my revelation, and then she adds something to help me understand her. This back-and-forth is repeated again and again as we go deeper into each other’s hearts, minds, pasts, and dreams. Eventually, a friendship is built—a solid, sheltering structure that exists in the space between us—a space outside of ourselves that we can climb deep into. There is her, there is me, and then there is our friendship—this bridge we’ve built together.

  This process seems foreign to Craig. Instead of taking my words in, thinking them over, and building upon them, he seems to let them bounce off of him and fall away. His responses are so disconnected from what I’ve just said that I have to fight the urge to touch my mouth and say, Is this thing on? That is not what I meant at all. It’s as if I’m offering my thoughts into a void, so every effort I make to be known by him is wasted. I am handing him bricks and he’s dropping them. One night I read this in a book about two lovers: “They could have a whole conversation with just one glance between them,” and it makes my stomach lurch with longing. Craig and I can’t even have a whole conversation when we have a whole conversation. Without that, I don’t know how to reach him. I don’t have any other building materials. Without a bridge to step out onto between us, I feel stuck alone inside myself.