May 2007

Back in 2002, my husband Noel and I were having what became our last quiet, non-hurried evening out to eat. We were at a place in Fredericksburg known as Sammi T’s. Sammi T’s had this great combination of vegan food and a smoking section. That’s Fredericksburg — full of denial and pretense, like the tobacco store with the TV ads that said “One visit, and you’ll be hooked for life.” Fredericksburg: The Town of the Blissfully Unconscious.

After our smoky, vegan dinner, we got home, just down the street from the restaurant, and I went upstairs to get into my pajamas. The phone rang. It was Bill D., in Erie PA, Blake’s maternal birth grandfather. He told us that Blake was being born right now! Six weeks early (we had planned for the end of June), and ready to go.

What ensued was something out of the I Love Lucy episode where little Ricky is born, but I was Ricky, Sr. (completely nuts) and Noel was Lucy (calm and collected). I remember dumping drawers of clothes into suitcases, getting into street clothes, tearing through the few things we had bought at that point for the baby (impractical things like dress-up outfits and little footballs), worrying about whether the baby would be healthy, wondering whether I could live through an 8-hour drive to Erie starting at 10 pm.

Then, the phone rang again. Apparently, poor Jenny, Blake’s young birthmother, had a bladder infection that made it feel like she was in labor. So, Blake was NOT being born, Jenny was admitted to the hospital for antibiotics and observation, and I got back into my bathrobe, alternately relieved and disappointed.

Settling into the sofa to read the New York Times from that morning, the phone rang again. Blake was born. Apparently, Jenny had gotten up to go the the bathroom, and Blake just decided to come on out and say hi when she stood up. Luckily, he landed on the bed, his birth father Darilo was there and got him, and he was healthy as a horse. 20.5 inches long, 5 pounds 10 oz. Perfect, beautiful Blake took his first breath in a fit of presumptuous, self-forgetting, spontaneous life-joy that would become the hallmark of his personality to this day.

My street clothes back on, the car already packed, we took off, our hearts beating so fast it was a wonder we didn’t need to go to the hospital ourselves.

Forty cups of coffee, a couple of rest stops, and 7 hours later, we were nearly out of gas somewhere between Pittsburgh and Erie. It was the wee hours, and there was nary a gas station in sight. Nearing E, with the little glowing gas tank, we pulled off to an ancient truck stop which was a good mile away from the highway. But, although the highly scary-looking “restaurant” was opened, the gas tanks were off, and no one knew when the gas tank person would be arriving.

We went back to the highway, hoping that this diversion would not have burned enough gas to strand us. A mile later, uphill, hearts pounding, sun rising, our unseen, blessed son somewhere off in the distance, we spotted a gas station at the crest of a hill. We got off the highway, and it was just opening.

The owner, a kind soft-spoken man, said that something told him to open early that day. We told him where we were going. His eyes lit up. “I was adopted as a baby,” he told us. It was one of those miraculous things that happen in those cockamamie books by people like Thomas Moore and F. Scott Peck. But, we were in it, sold, hook line and sinker, genuine serendipity of the highest order. The “sign” that life gives you when you are on the right road.

The right road, indeed, opened up then. We cranked up the air conditioning with our full tank, and sped towards Erie. We ran into the lobby where we were supposed to meet Blake’s grandmother, Andrea. Jenny was Andrea’s daughter by adoption following her first 2 years of abuse at the hands of her birthmother.

Andrea was late. We were frantic. We were wondering if they all changed their minds. But, about 10 minutes later, she arrived, excited for us to see how beautiful he was. Andrea loved this baby, you could tell.

We went up to the NICU where we were allowed to wash our hands, don our gowns, and see our son for the first time. There he was, curled up in a green crocheted blanket with a matching hat and booties, all golden brown, with a beatiful round upper lip and a fist in its characteristic kung fu grip. Our Blake was here, I was speechless, gazing down at the future that I would now embrace with my whole being.

5 years later, and I love that boy more than my own life. He is simply the greatest blessing there is. He is the light of my life.

To anyone, anywhere, bemoaning infertility, I’m telling you, don’t despair. This miracle is simply too good to ignore. It’s the love we all craved during those days of progesterone shots and daily blood tests. It’s not the fertility of the body that makes a human. It’s the utter fertility of the heart, the perpetual ability for the heart to show us truths of a higher order. Deeper satisfactions than the biological, deeper beauties than my own features staring up at me from the cradle. Humanity itself asking to be loved, independently of my DNA. What a trip.

My wonderful Blake, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me a new life, and a higher purpose. You are a miracle. Our son, our heart, and the soul of our little family.

Epilogue to UVA Commencement:

Noel graduated With Highest Distinction (in other words, Summa Cum Laude).

He has such potential — if only he applied himself

We love you Noel!

My smarty-pants husband will be graduating from UVA today with a BS in Cognitive Science, concentrating in Neuroscience. I am immensely proud of him for his persistence and hard work. He will immediately be continuing his work towards a doctorate in Neuroscience at UVA, and we get to stay in Charlottesville!

Noel is a singularly talented, intelligent, and unique person. He was an actor when he was younger (a real, paid, no kidding, tv and movie actor), went on to run a successful graphic design business, and then got bit by the academic bug. He’s also an unbelievable father. And did I mention that he looks like Johnny Depp? Yea, I hit the husband lotto, so back off!

In all things, Noel has excelled, and he is simply amazing.

I also want to congratulate me and Blake for being there for Noel, and for our role in his success. Our family is proof that individual accomplishment in this complex world is an oxymoron. Even Thoreau had his mother and sister do his laundry. But that is not to take away from the very hard work that Noel has done to keep focused on his studies, attain a 3.9+ cumulative average (he got one A- along the way, and it’s a thorn in his side!), be named Phi Beta Kappa, and graduate from one of the most prestigious universities in the country, and get accepted by that same university into one of the most competitive doctoral programs that there is. But, that’s Noel. He does nothing halfway.

Congratulations, Noel! We are so proud of you!

I had one of those “what the heck have I done with my life” feelings in Bible study this morning. Even admitting to myself that I regularly attend Bible study is weird. If my friends in Brooklyn knew, I don’t know what they’d think. Of course, they thought that pretty much every choice I made was a bad one, so they’d probably be just as supportive of my current spiritual life as they were of everything else.

At any rate, we’re talking about John 17 in a rather boring and canned conversation about the meaning of the text. The leader of the class states, as though it were absolute truth, that Satan rules the earthly world, and that it says so in the scripture. He is seconded in this opinion by another in the group. The minister cites the scripture where it states this. Ephesians, and of course, Revelations (my personal least favorite part of the Bible, followed closely by Leviticus). Then, another person in the group thirds this — she also assumes that the devil is using the earth as his unfettered playground.

The whole duality of earth/spirit, with the implicit “evil/good” essence of these respectively is a most un-useful way of looking at the world. To be sure, aspects of physical existence are vexing to me, but does this necessarily render these earthly gifts as “bad” while matters of the mind, heart, and soul are therefore “good.”

Ever seen a child be born? Fresh flowers budding on the first real spring day? Your child sleeping? The list of corporeal and sensual beauties in this physical world does not comprise a list of curses and temptations. God is in all of them.

I must say, I see a lot of Greek/Aristotelian duality in the book of John, and for some reason, it is this book (and not the more historical narratives of the other three) that seems to be most closely quoted by evangelical Christians. The writer of John definitely has an ax to grind, and he grinds it from beginning to end. I walk away from it with the feeling of a Christ that was impatient and angry, desperate to be believed in as divine. I also walk away feeling like the author’s voice drowns out the voice of Christ, who (I would like to imagine), didn’t leave folks feeling reprimanded and made to feel foolish. The Christ of the Book of John seems to belittle people for sport, and it leaves me feeling a little punched in the gut.

It does not surprise me that American Christians would want to grab on to this particular gospel as proof that they are in the right faith. The words are so definitive (John 1:14, John 14:16, to name a couple). Interpretations of it, as presented to me by my more fundamentalist friends, tend to lean towards the “thank God I’m on the right team and not going to Hell” kind of thinking. John is comforting if you’re batting for the right team.

The other thing that I’m surprised to find is that, apparently, evangelicals believe by and large that John of the Book of John is the same person as John the Divine, who wrote the Revelations. It never even occurred to me that this would be possible since most scholars pretty much accept that the two writers were distinct, and that the latter book was written in the second century C.E. But, taken as a piece from the same writer, I can see how a certain mindset, looking for affirmation that they are on the right path, would take comfort in both of these texts, the upshot of which is punishment for being a non-believer.

I don’t believe in a personified evil. I believe evil is the product of bad choices made by humans, and that humans made bad choices when they turn from Love to Fear. My Christianity comes in my belief that Christ was the epitome of God’s love on earth, a most perfect gift of which none of us is really inherently worthy. But, I just don’t believe the other mumbo jumbo about devils and virgins giving birth and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Sorry, don’t believe it.

I refused to be scared into faith. As a matter of fact, I would argue that true faith, and fear of mortality, cannot co-exist. It’s only when we let go of that fear that we allow our humanity to shine as brightly as it was meant to when each of us was born. Some would argue that followers of Jesus do not fear mortality since he showed us that life is indeed eternal when lived in faith. The irony is, many folks who profess faith in eternal life read things like the “Left Behind” series. If you truly believe, why do you need to re-scare yourself into this notion of a painful mortality which is not, afterall, real if you have faith.

Eternal life is right now, and right now is what it needs to be. Eternal life after I take my final human breath is God’s business. My faith is that Christ transcended this human existence, showed that there is something more eternal than human life, but that human life is not just a test, but a joyous and painful opportunity to cultivate our faith in the absence of visible “proof” of God’s existence.

Sometimes I think that God’s consciousness was in its infancy when the world began. Maybe he, as the earliest manifestation of consciousness at all, needed to learn about how to love when the object of love was so finite, so human. Maybe he sent his son to apologize for the pain of the world, to show us that he’ll take the worst we can dish out, and still love us.

Christ literally turned the wrath around and pointed it towards God himself. That’s pretty darned amazing for a God to do, if you ask me.

God walked on this earth, and brought people to him through love. How can a world where that happened, and continues to happen every day, be ruled by some silly Satan person? People will always do stupid stuff. It’s what makes them people. But, apologies to Flip Wilson, the devil did NOT make us do it.

We did.