by Sara Connell
I recommended some books and asked if she was open to meditation. “It’s the only practice I recommend for everyone,” I said. She found a rock in the woods near her house and began meditating on it daily after her morning walk with her friends. “I hope no one sees me,” she said. “They’ll think I’m the crazy woman in the woods.”
“Dad meditates,” I said.
“Only in the house,” she answered.
Sometime in April she called me, agitated. “I’ve got nothing,” she said. “I’m meditating every day. All the coaching books say to think of the time you were happiest in life, the thing that brings you more joy than anything else in the world.” Frustration echoed in her words.
“The only answer I have is being pregnant with you girls. It’s the same thing when I meditate. I see images of being pregnant. I’m fifty-nine years old. I’ve been through menopause. I’m trying to see it symbolically—pregnant with a vision, birthing an idea—but honestly, I don’t see it.” She hung up the phone muttering something about looking into microloans for mothers in Africa.
Bill and I did our “check-ins” at the beginning of each month. In May we sat outside under our new green patio umbrella that Bill had found on sale. We’d spent the previous weekend clearing pots for a new crop of tomatoes and packing the herb boxes with fresh, dark soil. The wind that felt omnipresent in Chicago in the winter months was lessening but still cool. I was counting the days until our vacation to Mexico. We were leaving in a week. I moved out from under the umbrella’s shade to sit directly in the sun.
Our conversation was the same as it had been in February and March: Bill wanted to do more IVF. I wanted to say “great!” and share his enthusiasm, but more IVF was not the answer that came to me when I sat in my quiet times and took walks in the forest preserves north of the city. Often before starting on a trail, I’d ask for guidance about having a family. I never heard a clear answer, the way I’d heard from the Divine Mother in my bedroom, but I would regularly find a Y-shaped branch, often in the middle of the trail, so obvious it was impossible for me to ignore. I brought these branches home and was starting to form a little forest on the twins’ table in the solarium. The branches did not give me a specific answer, but my heart did. The answer that rose up again and again was surrogacy.
“We have good eggs and sperm. They like each other and make great embryos,” I said to Bill. In April I’d attended a meeting of an organization called Resolve that ran support groups for people going through fertility struggles. The group was self-run by members, and I’d been surprised by the accounts of women years further into a journey than we were, people with different challenges than ours: older or defective eggs, partners with low sperm count, deficient embryos. I hadn’t realized how much we had going for us.
“We have great biological components,” I said. “The part we need help with is the carrying of the baby.”
“I don’t want a stranger carrying our baby,” Bill said. “I want to share the experience with you. I want to rub the belly and talk to the baby the way we did with the twins. What happened wouldn’t have with one baby.”
I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t trust the process or the doctors or my body anymore. Dr. Baker imagined I would be put on bed rest for the second and third trimesters. I could be hospitalized for a large majority of the pregnancy. And that was if my cervix stayed closed. I’d looked up success rates for pregnancies with a cerclage again: still 60 to 80 percent.
“Every pregnancy is a risk,” people told me.
But things changed for me when I knew the odds going in. Sixty percent was not high enough for me; neither was eighty.
Bill and I were at an impasse, but we agreed to stick with our agreement. We’d continue considering options and check in again after our vacation in May.
Every day, after my quiet time, I prayed.
“If it is only fear that is keeping me from carrying our baby, please take it,” I said to the Universe, the Great Mother, whomever or whatever might be listening and available for help. “Please give me the clarity and courage to do whatever is for me to do.”
I thought about surrogacy during our time in Mexico. Once, a few months after the twins died, a woman from my meditation class had said, “I wish I could carry your baby for you.” She was a beautiful young mother of three children. I daydreamed about calling her up.
When we returned home, happier and relaxed, rejuvenated by the lapping waves of the Caribbean Sea, Bill said he felt differently and was open to the idea of surrogacy.
“I don’t think I’ve been hearing you,” he said. “I wanted you to want to carry our baby. I wanted you to say you’re ready to go again. I hear now that you’re concerned. I hear that you aren’t sure that you’re able.”
I told Bill I wanted to feel confident in carrying a baby, too. “We won’t do anything until the fall, anyway,” I said. “Either of us could feel differently. All options are still on the table.”
I came home the following week from a meeting to find Bill storming around his office. “Do you know what it would cost us to have a surrogate?” he asked. He whacked a pile of papers down on the desk. “Well, I do. I did a little research after my conference call ended with our not getting a new client. A whole IVF cycle plus $30,000 to $50,000. That doesn’t include legal fees and extra medical expenses for the surrogate,” Bill said. “We are getting tapped out.”
“We could see if any of our parents want to contribute,” I said. “You mentioned Roger—”
“We’re not asking our fucking parents for money,” Bill said. “I just turned forty years old, for Christ’s sake. I have my own business. You have a business. We have to figure this out.”
“Maybe we can adopt, then,” I said, feeling responsible and panicked. I’d been bringing in only $30,000 to $50,000 a year since we’d moved to Chicago from London.
“Adoption’s expensive, too,” he said. “And it can take years. I don’t want to be in my seventies when our children graduate from college.”
“It will be expensive to do more IVF,” I said.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do more of that, either,” Bill said.
Bill was able to move past what he called his “financial freak-out,” and by Memorial Day we were imagining hilarious surrogacy scenarios where some friend or one of my sisters would say she wanted to carry the baby and we’d do insemination at home using a turkey baster. “I still don’t like the idea of a stranger surrogate,” Bill said. “I just wish it could be someone we know.”
Even if one of our siblings had wanted to volunteer, none of them would have been accepted candidates. Bill had one brother. My sisters were both younger and hadn’t had children yet. Doctors typically required a woman to have had previous successful pregnancies to be a surrogate.
My mother called to ask if we were free the third weekend in June. “Your father found a mediation conference in Chicago. We’d love to stay with you.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “While Dad’s at the conference, we can go for a long walk by the lake.”
“Maybe I’ll have better luck finding my passion in Chicago,” my mother said despondently. “I’m not having any success at my rock.”
“I hear you, Mom,” I said.
I picked up my parents at the airport, joyful to see them. Their flight arrived on time, and the sky was a cloudless blue when they landed. “Look at this five-star treatment,” my dad said, as I jumped from the car and hauled their bags into the trunk.
“Did you get my letter?” my mother asked when we arrived at our house and planted ourselves in the kitchen. Bill was on a conference call in his office. My mother seemed jumpy. She walked around the kitchen, touching the leaves on a plant, inspecting the new coffeemaker on the counter.
“I didn’t check the mail yesterday,” I said. “Bill probably brought it in.” I walked over to the bookshelf where we kept the mail and sifted through a short pile of bank statements, catalogs, and coupon books. To
ward the bottom of the stack, I pulled out a small white envelope with my mother’s familiar, slanted handwriting. “This one?” I asked, as if she sent me letters every day. My father sent thank-you cards, and Bill’s stepfather sent us weekly packets full of “articles of interest,” but I could not recall the last time my mother had sent a letter through the mail.
“That’s it. You haven’t read it?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Shall I open it now?”
“Um, probably later,” she said. She extended her hand to reach for it and then pulled back, letting her hand drop to the counter.
“Let’s go out for our walk,” she suggested.
My father said he’d stay at the house to keep Bill company once he finished working.
We headed east. “This will take us all the way to the lake if you’re up for a longer walk,” I said.
“Maybe I should have brought the letter,” she said. I slowed my stride to try to get a look at my mother’s face. Her hair was cropped short in its usual style. Her arms and legs were brown and lean from long bike rides she’d begun doing around D.C. She kept stopping and starting, looking in front and then to the sides of the street, as if to ensure we weren’t being watched.
“What is going on, Mom?” I said. “Have you had an inspiration?”
“I don’t know whether to tell you or have you read it first.”
We’d walked only five blocks. I started to suggest that we walk to the lake and then circle back for the letter, but the full walk would take over an hour and my mother was acting like a firework with a lit fuse.
We turned around and doubled back to my street. On the way, I tried to guess what she’d thought of for her vision.
“Microloans in Africa?” I asked, remembering our call a few months earlier.
“Nope.”
“Starting an online random-acts-of-kindness group?”
My mother shook her head. “Read the letter,” she said.
My heart pounded as I walked with the letter to my bedroom. I didn’t know why I was choosing to read it upstairs, instead of in my office or out on the deck. I could hear Bill talking on the phone as I shut the bedroom door. I sat in front of the picture of Quin Yin, where I’d spent all those months grieving on the floor. I couldn’t make sense of my nervousness; this was my mother’s vision, not mine.
I peeled back the flap of the envelope with care and unfolded the three sheets of unlined paper. I read, and when I had finished, my heart thumped like a fist in my chest. I walked into Bill’s office and handed the letter to him. “I’ll stay here while you read it,” I said. I didn’t take a breath while he read. His eyes grew wide as he turned the pages.
“Is this even possible?” Bill asked.
“Do you want to find out?” I asked. Bill nodded.
We found my mother sitting on the deck, under the green umbrella. “Pretty crazy, right?” she said.
I replayed phrases from the letter in my head: Postmenopausal women have given birth . . . I’m pretty good at this . . . reason I’ve been able to get into great shape, have such great health . . . The happiest moments of my life were being pregnant and having you three girls.
I began to cry. Bill squeezed my hand.
“That you would even consider this,” I said. “That you would even think to.”
“It’s my ostrich,” my mother said.
“And you seriously would do this?” Bill said. “I mean, if it’s possible.”
“I would,” my mother said. Her face was serene. I thought of a female preacher I’d seen, who had introduced herself as a “woman of power.”
My mother looked the way that woman had that day. She was offering to be our surrogate.
Chapter 7
In light of what my mother had just offered, we decided to spend the evening at home. My father had been notably absent during the revealing of my mother’s proposition, and now I set out to find him.
“I can’t wait to hear what he thinks of this,” Bill said.
I assumed he was in the guest room. I folded the pages of the letter back into the envelope, tucked it into my bra strap, and ran up the stairs.
I found my dad in Bill’s office, reading one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditation books.
“That apple didn’t fall far,” Bill said when we returned to the kitchen and my father set the meditation book on the counter. I smiled at my dad. Our shared interest in spirituality reunited us. More than an olive branch, it had become a lifeline. That day after the phone call in which I’d disclosed the traumas of my youth, he had confessed that he had experienced emotional trauma as a child and had grown up feeling marginalized in his family, too. Since then, he’d sent me articles and books he thought I would like, and had introduced me to Buddhist teachings. Through our discussions, I saw that we were both on a path of healing. I had always admired my father; now I felt closeness and love.
We all looked around at each other; everyone seemed uncertain how to begin. Suddenly, we were all busy helping to prepare dinner, having decided somehow that the conversation would wait until we were seated at the table.
My mother helped Bill wash vegetables and season a pork tenderloin for dinner. My father let our dog out into the front yard. I lit votive candles in a row and laid out white linen napkins. My heart continued to hammer. Was this a real possibility? And if it was, would we, as a family, be able to do it? Our bond still felt nascent. We were talking about an intimacy here that surpassed anything I’d ever heard of.
My parents helped Bill carry the food to the table. Outside, the sun had dropped and filled the sky with an unusual orange light. My eye moved to the Chinese table where we kept the twins’ urns and our collection of Y-shaped branches. I traced my fingers around the shape of the letter under my shirt. If we had a child this way, it would blow my mind.
At eight o’clock, we sat down. The candle flames made dancing shadows on the walls. Crickets chirped through the open windows. Below the hum, I could hear the low tick of the grandfather clock Bill’s mother had given us several years ago. The paper of the envelope scratched against the surface of my skin. I glanced at my mother, waiting for her to speak, but my father spoke first. He set his knife and fork across his plate and smoothed his napkin in his lap.
“This is all Lissa’s fault.”
Lissa was a close friend of my mother’s, also recently retired, and also a core member of the daily walking militia my mother and her friends had started to help each other lose weight. To keep themselves entertained, they shared book recommendations, recipes, the comings and goings of their children, and interesting stories they’d seen in the news.
My mother interjected to tell us how, three weeks ago, Lissa had told the group about a story she’d seen online about a postmenopausal woman who got pregnant and carried a baby to term.
“Do you think we should be concerned?” The members of the group had laughed, poking each other’s arms. “Maybe we need to start using birth control!”
After the walk, my mother went online to find out more about the story. “I found stories about women in their fifties doing IVF to become pregnant,” she said. “It didn’t seem these women were getting pregnant by accident, though, so I was able to report back to the group the next day that we probably didn’t need to be concerned about birth control.”
My mother laughed and took a bite of her pork. “This is really good, Bill,” she said. Bill and I had set our forks on our plates, not even pretending to eat.
“So?” I said.
“Well, I wasn’t thinking any more about it. But then later that week I was doing a meditation in my room. I lay back in the window seat and looked up at my vision board. Your father came in from playing tennis, and I heard him go into the bathroom to take a shower. I could hear the water running as I looked up at the ostrich and the healthy food and the sign WOMEN AFTER MENOPAUSE HAVE A CHOICE. Then, all of a sudden, it was like the images began to move—just the tiniest bit, barely perceptibly. The skin on my arms
and neck raised; I think my body knew before I did. I stared at the board and I started to weep.”
I urged myself to remain calm. I considered that Bill and I might have taken more time to talk more just the two of us, before dinner. Just because postmenopausal surrogacy had been done, it was obviously rare, and we had no idea of the risks involved. I looked at Bill, trying to get a read on his thoughts.
My mother watched our faces and halted. “I may have gotten a little carried away,” she said. Her hands fell to her lap, and she looked hesitant.
“There are so many options. I understand if you don’t want to pursue this.”
Bill interrupted before my mother could go further. “What you are offering is the most selfless, the most incredible . . . I really don’t have words.” His voice broke and he blinked to clear his eyes. I reached under the table and squeezed his hand. I ran around from my seat and wrapped my arms around my mother over the back of her chair.
“Mom! As far as I’m concerned, if we can find a doctor who will do this—if there is a way for you to safely be our surrogate—I would do it today.”
I felt self-conscious, draped over her shoulders. Aside from the period just after the twins died, our only physical contact had been a hug hello or goodbye. The closeness felt strange and good. My mother’s arm, with its pattern of freckles in a cluster near her wrist, looked so like my own.
My father was watching my mother. I thought I detected pride in his gaze. Then he turned to Bill and me. “I have feelings about this, and concerns, to be sure,” he said. “But your mother has supported me in my pursuits throughout our marriage. I’ve come to believe, without doubt, that this ‘vision’—to use your word, Sara—comes from your mother’s soul. I would never stand in the way of her or of this. If you can find a doctor willing to do this, I support you.”
“I’ll call Dr. Colaum in the morning,” I said, struggling to believe this conversation was happening. Out of nowhere, we had a new option where there had been none.