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“What's that?” I asked as the old familiar dread snaked through me.

“That's a disease where the ovaries produce an egg, although it's not a mature egg usually, but the hormones
are imbalanced. So the egg never releases. The egg then becomes a cyst.” His concerned, aged eyes peered through his bifocals, assessing my reaction. He'd been my ob-gyn physician for several years now and knew every nuance of my maternity fixation.

“W-what happens then?”

“Well, eventually the ovaries become thick with cysts, enlarged and lumpy. I want to do a procedure on you called a laser wedge resection of the ovaries.”

“What does it involve?” I asked in a whispery voice, not wanting to hear more but knowing I had to know. I could not give up at this point.

“It's a surgery that will drain the cysts.” He made it sound so simple that I relaxed.

Everything was going to turn out right, after all.

As it turned out, the surgery “drained” more than sixty cysts. Because the operation left the entire surface of my ovaries without a
covering,
they
healed
by sticking to other parts of my insides. These were called adhesions, causing extreme scarring. I ended up with ovaries stuck or adhered to my urethra and abdominal wall. My fallopian tubes did not escape either, becoming scarred in the process. One even folded into itself like a crimped hose.

After I healed and still did not conceive, Dr. Wingo said, “I'm going to do a dye test on you, Deede, and see what's happening inside.”

By now, I'd become somewhat shell-shocked by all the battery of tests and procedures. Still — that maternal longing stirred strongly and deeply. So I managed to jerk myself up and buck up for whatever it would take.

Early in the a.m., blue dye was injected into me, showing both fallopian tubes completely blocked. “This prevents pregnancy even if you ovulate, Deede,” Dr. Wingo said kindly as I lay there in the hospital bed. “The egg has no way of getting through the tube and become fertilized to implant in the womb.”

I felt disappointment settle in me like cold cement. “So …?” I said through numb lips.

“So,” Dr. Wingo took my icy hand in his, his eyes pools of sympathy, “In summary … with the scars and blocked fallopian tubes, Deede, there is absolutely no way you can become pregnant.”

All hope. Gone.

I closed my eyes. It can't be, God
. Please don't let it be final.

One day, my phone rang. It was Lexie, my baby sister. “I'm pregnant, Deede,” she gushed. I could hear her excitement. “Can you believe it? Me and Adam, parents?”

The world seemed to tilt.

The words pierced my heart in an odd way. Oh, how I wanted to rejoice with her, but the deadness inside me refused to give way to life. “Hey, that's great,” I said, hearing the flatness in my voice and knowing that she, too, detected it
.

An awkward silence ensued. Stretched out. Still no celebratory words bubbled up and separated from my dark funk

“Well,” she sounded deflated, bewildered. “I'll let you go. Just wanted you to be one of the first to know.” I heard
the hurt in her words. Oh, how I hated that I'd shot her down. I felt despicable.

“I love you, Lexie,” I murmured, the knot in my throat growing bigger.

“Yeah,” the reply was weak. “Me, too. Bye.”

I shared the news with Dan. Huddled on our bed, we cried together and tried to sift our feelings. “It's not that I don't want
them to
know the joy of a child,” I sobbed against his shoulder. “It's just — just that I can't help but wonder, why can't it be us?”

“I know,” Dan held me close. “I know, honey.” His ragged words sounded as confused and desolate as mine did. It had nothing to do with Lexie and Adam. It had everything do with us. We were so raw and bleeding at the time that their glowing celebration of a new life made our own barrenness ring more dissonant and hollow than ever.

We burrowed even deeper into isolation. At Hope Memorial Church, where all our family clan attended, we avoided Lexie and Adam. We knew they were hurt, but in our vulnerability, we felt we had no choice.

Soon, Lexie and Adam left and joined another church. The disapproval of my parents smote me. They didn't understand, and I knew, in their zeal for family solidarity, they were deeply troubled over this schism.

“Say, you two haven't yet found out how it works, huh?” Priss' husband, Earl, teased us one Sunday as we were hugging their two girls after church. Earl's slightly Rockwell-ish features were pleasant beneath thinning, premature graying hair. His good humor matched Priss', a thing that first attracted her to him like bees to pollen.

“Shh,” Priss sternly shushed him, leaving poor Earl looking more than mildly befuddled and I realized — true
to character — Priss had not involved him in the current family dissonance.

“It's okay,” Dan said weakly, trying to look nonchalant.

“Yeh. We know.” He left it at that and we promptly departed as Priss, who'd by now lent me her shoulder to cry on more than once, informed Earl of his blunder. She was my only family confidante and only recently so. I'd asked her not to tell anybody of my pain, feeling somehow that if no one knew, things would eventually turn out right.

The teasing from well-meaners was coming more frequently lately, and it stung.

“Y'know,” I told Dan as we drove home that day. “If it were anyone else acting as we are, I'd call them incredibly self-absorbed.”

“Yeh.” Dan huffed a sad laugh. “Me, too.”

All we knew at that time was that our emotions were grief-charged, like those of bereaved parents, and we had no idea how to resolve them. “Did Shakespeare write ‘it's better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all?'” I asked Dan at one point.

“That's us, Dan. We've never even had a child to love.”

Months later, one last ditch effort wavered before us: In vitro fertilization: a test tube baby. As we awaited the results of this last procedure, mom called and told us Lexie's baby, a nephew named Jensen, had been born.

I could hear the appeal in Mom's sweet voice, but Dan and I were so immersed in our own battle that we had nothing left over to give.

Lexie and Adam's time of joy became the day of our worst defeat: we learned none of the test-tube embryos
survived. We were devastated. We retreated further, hoping for a Divine mercy visit inside our desolate lair.

All hope — gone. We would never have a child.

I could not bring myself to call or see my sister and her baby. I told myself it wasn't jealousy that caused my reticence. I don't truly believe it was that simple. It was so soul-deep, the grief and hunger, that just the sight of a baby could set off the old familiar anguish.

One night mom called. We'd always had an incredible relationship. I adored her.

“Deede,” she said gently, “you need to reach out to Lexie more. She's hurting, honey. She feels you're rejecting not only her but little Jensen, as well.”

The world crashed in upon me. I quickly hung up and burst into tears.

When it rang again, I let it ring, sobbing for the pain I felt and also for the hurt I was unintentionally inflicting upon my loved ones. Mine and Dan's was a perpetual, consuming sorrow. An emptiness no one, save our Creator, seemed to understand. So we prayed much to Him.

And then … somewhere in the darkness, a tiny spark ignited.

A few weeks later, Dan said, “How would you feel about adopting?”

I tensed up. Then I realized how futile worry had been in the past. It had become a blasted habit. I was a wreck, reacting to anything to do with procreation and parenthood.

Did I believe in adoption?

I sighed. “I don't know.” Then my palm slapped my forehead. “
Of course,
I believe in adoption.
Duh
. Look at
me!” He didn't laugh and neither did I. I shrugged limply and sighed. “I don't know, Dan.”

“Let's pray about it. Think on it, y'know?”

I nodded. And in coming weeks, we prayed together. I began to relax about the whole thing.

Slowly, I began to realize I could now accept adoption as an option. After all, look at Priss and myself. And what joy little Lexie had brought into our family when she was adopted. I still loved her as my own.

With adoption possibilities, I could chill out. Bide my time. I was still young so there was no rush.

“Let's wait for just a while,” I suggested to Dan. “Maybe for a few months. Let's enjoy each other, just the two of us, for a while longer.” I didn't know why — it just seemed the right thing to do at that moment.

Dan grabbed me, and we fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and fierce embracing. I pulled his face to mine and beneath my hands, felt the solid beat of his heart and it touched me profoundly, that declaration of his life. It spoke of his being. It spoke of his energy and drive. It spoke of how precious he was to me.

“Let's just, for a time, think of us,” I murmured against his lips. “We have each other, Dan.”

“And in the end, that's what counts,” he whispered and kissed me soundly. Which led to more kisses that made me feel warm and languid, dulling some of the sad, awful memories of recent days. We were
alive and together, Dan and I.

Then for the first time in years, we made love simply for the pleasure of it. And I thought of how much we had missed. Our coupling was as passionately rampant as in our early days of marriage. And in the aftermath, with Dan holding me closely in his arms, bliss stole over me,
contentment unlike any I'd ever known. The warm sensations still trickled through me, now gentle and soothing. It was the last thing I felt as I drifted off to sleep.