Epiphany

The sanctuary was quiet and nearly empty between services. "Thank you!" Reverend Sandye said to me as I walked past her lugging two giant boxes of diapers-- one under each arm-- and placed them on the enormous, fifteen foot wide, ever-expanding pile of diapers on the floor in front of the crèche's manger. "You're welcome," I said, "there's more in the car," and headed back outside for another armload.
"Well, we're very grateful," she said.
You don't know the half of it, I thought.

Years ago-- six and a half to be exact-- just after my son was born, I joined a mother's group. About twenty of us met every Tuesday at a little cafe downtown which looked like a refugee camp for the two hours each week that we took over. I was one of the few women who let her precious child crawl on the shoe-walkin'-food-droppin' floor-- thus inviting her son to square off with certain death. This was one sure fire way to separate the Tightly Wounds with the Loosie-Goosies-- and I eventually fell into an easy rapport with some of the other women who didn't inch their chairs away from me.

After about seven months of getting to know this revolving group of new mothers-- who came together for no other reason than we 'd all given birth within about four months of each other-- our little breakaway faction broke off. Six of us started to meet independently over wine, take-out, and no kids once a week; eventually sloughing the rest. We saw each other constantly, filling that great expanse of time that new mothers tend to meet with horror and disbelief. We set up play dates and babysitting swaps; met at libraries, IKEA and malls. We covered every possible playground and logged so many hours in each others' homes that after a while no one had to ask where the potholders were kept. And after about 18 months, when it was time for baby round two, I sounded the clarion call. At each of our weekly dinners for a while it seemed that someone announced that they were pregnant again, including me. Although I would soon miscarry, I quickly rebounded with the nonchalance of someone who had been pregnant before and would certainly be pregnant again.

We decided that in lieu of new clothes and plastic crap it turned out we didn't need, we would each give each other a giant $37.50 box of new diapers as a shower gift. My son had grown so fast that I had a third of a ping-pong table's worth of storage space crammed with the left over diapers from each baby phase. "Newborn," "Toddler," "Pull-Ups," and "Swimmies," they read and I kept them all under the ping-pong table because I knew that eventually my husband and I would have a second child, and being ever-mindful of waste-- as well as a granddaughter of the depression-- I hung on to them.

Months passed and as each bulbous belly popped out another bundle of joy, the rest of us loaded another box of diapers into the back of our cars. Four times I made the trip to Target for diapers, each time wondering when it would be my turn to open my trunk for the loading up and reap the benefits of good friends doing good deeds. I looked forward to the time when I would get to sit and nurse my second child while someone else led the older siblings in a round of Ring Around the Rosie, or separated the ones trying to wallop each other. I didn't mind setting out the bowls of mac 'n cheese or cleaning up the toys, really, because I knew that soon enough the tables would turn. "Oh, you'll do it for me," I used to say every time one of my girlfriends thanked me for running over to her diaper bag to grab another wipe, or for zipping back inside to refill the lemonade pitcher. "You stay there," I would say, "I'm happy to do it." And I was. I was beginning to get annoyed at myself, my physiology, my husband and my doctors for not getting pregnant, but I was happy to help my friends. It's what friends do.

One of the six of us asked that we not get her a big box of diapers. She reasoned that she didn't want to have to buy us all a box and so we shouldn't get her one. This proved to be prescient as she was the first to leave our little group in a torrent of drama and tears. Two would go back to work-- play dates replaced by full time daycare-- and another would drift away. Then, eventually, I would remove myself from the last with a final devastation the color and shape of a sudden, tragic death. The mother's group years, however invaluable for me and my son's first four were over. No one would be dropping off a boxes of diapers for me in the future, I reasoned, but that was okay, because I still had so many in the basement, waiting patiently under the ping-pong table.

During one of our usual arguments-- #612-- my husband implored me to get rid of the diapers. We had just closed out our third year of infertility treatments and I knew that even if nothing worked, we could still adopt, and so reasoned, would still need the diapers. I had pleaded with him to keep them as a harbinger of fertility triumph, optimistic in the same way one keeps a fallout shelter well stocked for nuclear survival. But we had bigger problems than nuclear fallout.

My husband eventually moved out and divorce loomed. Menacing clouds gathered but there was a clear bright side: now I could keep whatever I damn well wanted under the ping-pong table. I could store millions of styrofoam peanuts, hundreds of cans of cling peaches or a rubber band ball the size of a 4-H fair turnip there if I wanted to. I was the decider now. Hell, I could sleep on that soft bed of diapers, there under the ping-pong table in my very own basement lair if I so chose and I pictured myself in quiet repose, as if in a darkened, private couchette, the gentle rumble and roll of the train lulling me to sleep.

But I didn't do that. I kept my son's old fisherprice Howard Johnson's under there. I stored his bouncy chair, his doorway swing and his wooden play-sushi set there. And I kept the diapers. Because now that I was a single mom, no one was going to stop me from adopting, not even my future-former husband who threw a final match into the marriage when he told me he didn't want to adopt. It wasn't the whole ball game (trust me), but it was enough to signal the beginning of the end and so my dream of a second child, so recently squashed, was ignited anew.

Now I could fulfill my destiny. "Imagine," I told people who questioned my desire, "that you opened a restaurant and found that you loved it. The business thrived, everyone was happy, and you were ready to open a second location but were foiled at every turn; the cosmos literally fell in line to stop you from reaching your goal. Imagine you were an advertising agency allowed only one client, a doctor forbidden to see more than one patient, or a teacher with a single student. You were ready for more, had room for more, even ached for more, but fate said no more."

I put in a breathy, excited call to my domestic adoption attorney and she assured me that there are mothers who would give up their baby to a single, divorced, unemployed mother-of-one. Sure, my world was crumbling and my support system had flown the coop, but I was euphoric with the exhilarated optimism of a bi-polar simpleton. Woo-hoo, I thought, I'm gonna do this thing! And then I would ask my son if he still had enough love in his heart for a sibling. "Yes, Mommy," he would say, "when is he coming?" "In a while, I hope," I would answer and then I would look into the mirror as I wrapped my arms around my son, imagining the space that one more would occupy in our new family photos.

But I was crying a lot and losing weight and doing all the cliché things that women do to and with themselves when they have to totally re-invent their selves, lives and futures while under emotional duress. I would think to myself on a more rational day, I need to get my bearings. I need to hammer out the custody arrangements, find health insurance and take over the house finances first. I need to be a little less weepy and a lot more assured and then I'll adopt. But already, I could feel the other one slipping away.

Then the economy fell out of a tree and I had to put off adopting indefinitely. Who would hire me? Could I stay in my house? Then my dad died suddenly and I had to find a job, fill out divorce paperwork, keep and eye on Mom and my finances, sell a car and mourn my dad. Sadly, in more-or-less that order. And each day my phantom second child got further and further away from me like a camera trick in a ghost movie. I groped toward him with a little less intensity and daydreamed about us with a little less clarity. I doubted my ability to do it alone. I questioned my capacity to love. My son, now 5 1/2, finally stopped asking me, "When we were going to adopt my brother?" and "Are you sure you can't get pregnant again?" and why. Still, I continued to wash and fold the clothes he out grew and nestle them into labeled bins in the attic for his brother. And I couldn't shake the diapers under the pin-pong table.

I cried in therapy whenever I mentioned them, which wasn't often, but they were the 600 lb. gorilla in my mind that my mother had long since grown impatient hearing about and that I was too embarrassed to trouble anyone else with. "Get over it," the world seemed to say even though my therapist gave me permission to keep the diapers there for as long as I damn well pleased. The twisting knives and sharp pokes of complaining mothers-- too insensitive to realize that telling me how "lucky" I am that I "only have one", when they're "sooooo exhausted" from the demands of more-- also began to dull and fade.

I even found myself feeling more at ease taking up the sunny four-top booth with my son at the diner, (as long as there wasn't a waiting line). We were a bona fide family now and I finally felt worthy after a good year and a half of shrinking and saying, "only two" or "just two" when asked by the hostess, "how many?" Now I could say "two" on it's own and went from having to convince myself of it whenever I said it out loud-- awkwardly, like some homework assignment from a self-actualization retreat-- to saying it with a sub-surface elation because it had come out sounding natural and unapologetic. ("Do you have more children?" is still one of my most feared and loathed questions, but I can answer and move on now in seconds flat-- thanks to the modern miracle of telling myself to get over it.)


Which brings me to this morning. Epiphany Sunday is the day that church folk celebrate the actual day that the wise men arrived at the manger with their blessings and generous-- however impracticable-- treats of gold, frankincense and myrrh (a word I love to spell almost as much as I love to say). My reverend, nothing if not practical, asked that her congregants bring diapers to set at the foot of the crèche, explaining that Mary, all of twelve, probably could have really used some at the time, what with having to tend to her newborn in a friggin' barn. (Those are my words, not hers.) I became territorial and defensive about my diapers, predictably, but without the accompanying anxiety that I had last year. I hypothesized that if I gave them up they would end up at a charitable home for mothers who would actually use them on their actual babies, probably within the week. I knew this last year, too, but this year something shifted which led to a crack in the fortress under my ping-pong table and so I considered the inevitable (formerly unimaginable) as I drove home after the 8am service alone-- Jimmy was at his father's for the weekend.

Driving the short distance home, I let out a particular sort of gender-neutral, Cro-Magnon moan slash sob. Because I've done so much crying in the last two years, I found myself classifying these cries as an Eskimo classifies snow, even as the sounds were escaping. It was an old, familiar cry, like the kind I cried when I realized I had to end my marriage, had lost my best friend, and once I understood my dad was dying in two days. The pitches flew high and loose, pushing sounds out of me like a punk rocker taking a crack at a mournful Tibetan ballad (aren't they all?) And I didn't reach out or call anyone because I've recently learned it's best to ford these moments alone. I knew that this force of energy had to leave me in whatever way it needed to in the same way I understand that storms have to whip and whirl until they eventually subside. And so, I waited it out.

Within minutes of arriving home my crying downgraded into a more easy-going rhythmic sob, so I got to work. I cried as I knelt next to the ping-pong table, combing though the detritus like an obstinate squirrel, and carried the boxes up from the basement. I cried as I loaded them into the car. The act of lifting the trunk's hatch and putting those big boxes into the car reminded me of our mother's group pact years ago and of the diapers that would never get loaded into anyone's trunk on my behalf, but it was just a thought and then it was gone along with all the others. If I could have said, "That's life, pal," and slapped myself on the back I would have.

Driving back down to the church, I allowed myself one last hurrah like a sleepy toddler wailing against the inevitability of nap time; one last ditch attempt at changing the course of my destiny with the sheer force of my shrieks before packing it in and getting on with the business of the day. All that crying had not gotten me pregnant nor had it landed a baby at my front door, so there was nothing more for me to do. I saw my crying now for what it was; a healthy release, an exorcism, a private moment, a tussle.

My eyes were bleary and stung like hell. It took me four trips to unload the car when you count the giant bag of plastic bottles and when I was done I crossed back through the sanctuary to the pew where my reverend was just now standing to finish up a chat. The one hundred and fifty year old church would not be empty for a while. There was an early-bird family claiming their seats for the next service and a puttering alter-guy re-setting things like a well-rehearsed background extra. I knew this was my only chance and so jumped.

I walked right up tot he good reverend.
"Those were the diapers I was saving for my second child," I said.
"I know," she said slowly, boring her eyes into my wretched, weary soul.
I looked back at her then past her to the font, not sure how to word what I wanted to say.
"Do you think I could get a little, um, would you mind if. Could you-- I just--"

She reached up with her hand and squeezed me on the shoulder right at the neck. This was no namby-pampy pat but a real grasp, like the kind a coach gives a key player before the big game. I closed my eyes and listened as she summoned the strength of the ages on my behalf. Not one to mince words, she was so strong and spoke with such authority that there was a part of me that wondered if she was about to part the Red Sea, right there under the marble floor, from the very spot where we stood, in New Jersey. I nodded as she told me to let this dream go in order to make room for other dreams to be fulfilled. In fact, she pretty much ordered me to let this dream go and not to look back. This was not a helpful suggestion or a piece of advice for me to consider; I was to follow her directive so I nodded. She told me that it was very, very brave of me to do what I had done today and that I should use that strength and resolve to serve myself in the future. Then, she said that she was proud of me-- something my dad used to say; a phrase I now had to tell myself. But again, she said, let it go. "Only by letting go will you allow the space to be filled by some other dream." Yeah, I know, I thought. I knew she was right. I thanked her and hugged her quickly before scampering out the back door before anyone could see me well up. Again.

Back at home, I splashed my face then opened my computer to write this story. My son was safe and happy with his father and I had no other plans for the long stretch of the day. I turned on the radio-- Eileen Farrell was singing, "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues" -- ha!--, burrowed into my favorite couch and warmed my whole self in the sun. It was a purely joyful moment. Not my ultimate My Moment in the Sun, I hope, but pretty damn nice as far as simple moments go. The diapers were gone. The ping-pong table was bare. And the clothes in the attic never crossed my mind.