I breathed deep, fussed with my hair, shot a quick prayer up: Please be here with us.
I knocked softly and then opened the door.
Abby was leaning against the desk across the room with one leg propped up on a chair, barefoot. She was wearing a charcoal T-shirt, sky-blue jeans, and a necklace that looked like dog tags.
My first thought: There she is. That’s my person.
She’d later tell me that her first thought had been: There she is. That’s my wife.
She smiled. It was not a casual smile. It was a smile that said: There you are and here we are, finally. She stood up and walked toward me. I let the door shut behind me, my bags still out in the hallway. She wrapped her arms around me. We melted, my head into her chest, her heart beating through her T-shirt onto my skin. She was shaking and I was shaking, and we both, for a long while, stood there and breathed each other in and held each other and shook together.
Then she pulled away and looked into my eyes. That was the moment we locked.
Then
The kiss.
The wall.
The bed.
White dress on the floor.
Naked, unafraid.
The original plan.
On Earth as it is in heaven.
I never looked away from her. Not once.
The longer we’ve been together, the more naked and unafraid I’ve become. I don’t act anymore. I just want.
Fifteen years ago, when I got pregnant with my second child, I decided to wait to find out the biological sex of the baby.
I learned the sex of my firstborn before his birth, but now I was a parenting veteran, so I was vastly more mature and disciplined. At what would have been the reveal sonogram, I lay on the examination table and looked back and forth between the small green screen and the technician’s face. Both were indecipherable. When the technician left and the doctor arrived, I had to trust what she told me—that there was, in fact, a human being inside me and that this being seemed, in her words, “Fine, so far.”
A fine, so far human being was exactly what I’d been hoping for. A fine, so far human being is what I have continued hoping for throughout my parenting career.
With that news—and only that news—I left the doctor’s office. When I got home, I sat on the family room couch, stared at the wall, and thought about how far I’d come from the controlling, dramatic, first-time mother I used to be.
Look at me, I thought, patiently letting the universe unfold as it should.
Then I picked up the phone and called the doctor’s office. When the receptionist answered I said, “Hello. This is Glennon. I was just there.”
“Oh. Did you leave something here?”
“Yes. I left extremely important information there. Let’s just say, hypothetically, that I changed my mind. Could I still find out the sex of my baby?”
She said, “Hold on, please.”
I held on please. She came back and said, “It’s a girl. You’re having a girl.”
One of my favorite words is selah.
Selah is found in the Hebrew Bible seventy-four times. Scholars believe that when it appears in the text, it is a direction to the reader to stop reading and be still for a moment, because the previous idea is important enough to consider deeply. The poetry in scripture is meant to transform, and the scribes knew that change begins through reading but can be completed only in quiet contemplation. Selah appears in Hebrew music, too. It’s believed to be a signal to the music director to silence the choir for a long moment, to hold space between notes. The silence, of course, is when the music sinks in.
Selah is the holy silence when the recipient of transformational words, music, and sketchily acquired information from radiology receptionists pauses long enough to be changed forever.
Selah is the nothingness just before the big bang of a woman exploding into a new universe.
You’re having a girl. My eyes widened like a camera lens adjusting to a blast of light. I sat on the couch, phone still in hand, wordless, motionless.
“Thank you,” I finally said to the receptionist. “Thank you. I love you. Bye.”
I hung up and called my sister.
“Sister, we’re having a girl. We are having a girl.”
“Wait,” she said. “What? How did you find out? Did they accidentally tell you?”
“Yes. After I accidentally asked.”
She said, “Holy shit. This is the best day of our lives. Another one of us. We are going to have a third. A third sister.”
“I know. Do not ever tell Craig that I called you first.”
“Obviously,” she said.
Just then I heard my two-year-old son, Chase, waking up from his nap, hollering from his crib his usual announcement, “I AWAKE GWENNON!”
I hung up, climbed the stairs, and opened Chase’s door. He sat up in bed and smiled. For the first time I saw him as my daughter’s big brother. She’s so lucky, I thought. I kissed his silk cheeks, and he followed me downstairs, holding the railing, one careful step at a time. I wrapped him up in a puffy jacket, scarf, and hat and took him for a walk on the path around the tiny pond in our neighborhood. I needed to get outside. I needed more space surrounding this gigantic news. I needed sky.
I remember that Chase and I were chilly. I remember that the air was crisp and the sky was clear. I remember that halfway around the pond, when our little town house had become tiny in the distance, a goose crossed the path in front of us and Chase laughed. I remember that the goose got a little too close, so I picked up Chase and I walked the rest of the way around the pond with him in my arms, his legs wrapped around my waist, my nose nestled in his neck. All these years later, I can still smell his neck: powder and toddler sweat. I can still remember thinking: I’m carrying both of my children. All by myself. My son’s head resting on my shoulder, my daughter’s heart beating in my body. I have everything.
We decided to name our daughter Patricia, after my mother. We’d call her Tish. She’d be wrapped in the same olive skin, black hair, and Japanese features her older brother inherited from his dad. I dreamt of her all day, every day. I could not wait for Tish to be born. In fact, when I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, I got in the bathtub and told Craig that I would not come out until he found a way to schedule an induction. He found a way. A few days later, I was holding my daughter. When the nurse placed her in my arms, I whispered, “Hi, angel”—and then took a good look at her. I was surprised. She was pink, with light skin, hair, eyes. She and I matched.
Along with his looks, Tish’s older brother inherited his father’s easy-breezy, accommodating temperament. I’d made the rookie mistake of attributing Chase’s easiness to my masterful parenting. When my friends complained about how hard parenting was, I’d agree outwardly and think: Suckers. What’s so hard about this? Then Tish was born, and I suddenly understood what was so hard about this.
Tish was born concerned. As an infant, she cried constantly. As a toddler, her default was set at displeased. For the first few years of her life, I spent all day, every day, trying to make her happy. By the time she was six, I’d given up on happy. Each morning, I’d sit on the floor outside her bedroom door holding a whiteboard that said, “Good morning, Tish! We will be pleasant today!” When she came out scowling, I’d point to the board and explain that “pleasant” meant: Act happy. Just pretend. This is our social contract with the world, kid: ACT HAPPY. Suffer silently like the rest of us, for the love of God.