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Before we move forward, we need to look back.

 

The very first time Jodi got pregnant she called me at my studio.

“When will you be home,” she asked with a smile in her voice.

“Whenever,” I said, absorbed in a piece.

“Well, come home soon.”

“I’m really in a groove on this painting. I’ll be home in a bit.”

I added some flourishes to the piece then locked up nonchalantly, and as I was walking down the dock she called again.

“Where are you?”

“I’ll be right there. Jeez Louise.”

As soon as I walked in she had me sit at the kitchen table and presented me with a small box. I opened it and slowly unwrapped what I thought was some kind of electric toothbrush. It wasn’t till I saw the little blue plus sign that I realized it was her pregnancy tester stick. BOOM! I must have looked like every guy ever told on every TV show. Surprised and elated. Overcome with a kind of warmth. At 42, for the first time, I had impregnated a woman and our child was a cluster of rapidly dividing cells inside her. What a truly beautiful concept and moment.

We lost that baby at nine weeks. And that beautiful moment evaporated into a dull disappointment.

We got preggers again quickly and the abstract idea of fatherhood again wrapped itself around me like cashmere. I relished the idea and was glad to be back on the train. I was out of town when Jodi learned we’d lost that baby at seven weeks. She was alone, feeling her body was too old, past its prime, broken.

We were pregnant again within a few months. And this time it stuck. Each day became a nerve wracking dance with the Fates. We passed the first trimester without incident, though the joy of pregnancy was gone, replaced by angst.

At eighteen weeks we were buoyed by a glowing report at our checkup. Jodi’s risk factors, at age 38, were those of a twenty year old they told us.

We were thrilled to learn it was a boy and all systems were go.

Congratulations, they told us as we left. At a potluck dinner party on South Forty dock that night I remember Jodi using the boy’s name we’d chosen.

“I don’t think we should use the name yet, just in case,” I told her.

“There is no doubt in my mind. I can feel that this is happening,” she said.

Five days later I flew out of town on business to the stunning Wasatch Mountains north of Salt Lake City. It was 11:00am and I was driving around looking at apartment buildings when I received the worst phone call of my life.

“THERE’S NO HEARTBEAT!” Jodi wailed.

“What?”

“There’s no heartbeat. It’s gone.”

 

There were no answers, no reasons, no medical explanations. Just a dirty hole where our dreams had been. It was just over. At nineteen weeks…when it’s all supposed to be smooth sailing we hit the reef…and sank. And Jodi had to spend the next four days with a dead baby inside her.

We did our best to keep the lights on in our eyes and in our hearts. But our world was dark and primitive and pathetic. We needed quiet. To ache together that first week. We asked our friends not to contact us so we’d not have to explain and repeat the agony. We sobbed under hot showers together. On the phone. On the couch. In bed. We both hate the idea of being the people that others feel sorry for. But that was exactly who we were. I never expected to have any trouble having kids. Who does? Every goddamned junkie and slacker in the world has kids without trying. Yet we’re striking out in late innings? Why? A wise man once said: “Nothing turns out as we expect. It never does. Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect. We take what we get and are thankful it is no worse than it is.”

For quite a while Jodi was inconsolable. Just too disappointed. Bleak and poisoned. I was deeply wounded but, being the man and far removed from the physical agony of the experience, my optimism crept back sooner. Jodi resented the fact that I was inclined to start to seek pleasure again. To have dinner with friends, go to parties, etc. But that is how I cope and heal.

So I slowly got back to our life…and eventually…she joined me.

 

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