by Delilah
I bought the house, and we packed up and moved down the street. I dug up the plants that I had just planted the year before, many that I had moved to Seattle from Boston.
With hardwood floors, a dry and mold-free basement, no trees in the yard, and daily medications, Shaylah’s health began to improve. Day by day her pale skin got a bit rosier and the nighttime asthma attacks got a little more manageable. Oh, but how my life had changed.
When Sonny was young and we were alone, I thought nothing of throwing a cast-iron skillet, an ice chest full of food, a large sleeping bag, and a tent in the back of my beat-up car and taking off for the mountains. We camped along creeks and streams, hiked the Olympic trail and slept under the stars if it was warm enough. We camped along the Washington and Oregon coast, and when we moved to Boston we camped nearly every weekend in the summer months. I bought a dirt bike and better hiking boots for Sonny, so we could explore the deciduous forests of Maine and Massachusetts, the White Mountains and Cape Cod. After I married Doug, he joined us on some of our camping excursions, but he never seemed to enjoy the outdoors as much as Sonny and I did. I even took Sonny and a neighbor camping when I was eight months pregnant with Shaylah.
Looking back I wonder how Sonny didn’t lose his mind when I married Doug. He had gone from being an only child who had no real rules and my 100 percent focus and adoration to living with a stepdad who didn’t quite understand our way of life and having a baby sister who was always sick.
Now that Shaylah had been diagnosed with asthma and allergies, it was almost as if we had to keep her in a bubble. She was allergic to changes in the weather! If the temperature varied more than ten to twenty degrees, if she went from a warm house to a freezing, snowy day, even if she were bundled up in a snowsuit and hat, her face would be covered with hives and her airways would shut down. Same if she was outside on a hot day and jumped or fell into a cold stream—her lungs would cease to work and her bronchial tubes would swell and close down.
She was so allergic to nuts, just sitting next to someone on a plane who opened a package of peanuts would cause her to vomit and start coughing. She was allergic to pollen from flowers and trees and grasses, so hiking in the woods was out of the question, as was swimming in a mountain stream. The few times I tried to take her to a ski lodge, it took twenty-four-hour vigilance just to keep her breathing. An hour bundled up playing in the snow and she would begin to cough and wheeze. Twenty minutes at a tree farm in December to get our Christmas tree led to an emergency room visit.
So without warning, without notice or any way to prepare, my life changed completely. Having a medically fragile child is living with the constant fear that today might be the last day God allows you to have them. “Fear is the unwelcome guest that rides on love’s new wings,” I wrote in a poem when Isaiah was born. But that fear is intensified a thousand times when love’s wings are fragile and must be held together with surgical tape and IV tubes.
Looking back, I now cherish those nights I had with Shaylah, holding her and telling her stories to encourage her to breathe the albuterol-laced air from her humming nebulizer. She would panic when she would get short of breath, and her beautiful blue eyes would fill with terror. I would hold her in one arm, hold the nebulizer mask in the other hand, and sing to her above the hum of the motor and the hiss of the medicated mist. Her tiny body would start to relax after a few minutes of the nebulizer, and although the albuterol would make her heart race and agitate her nervous system, the fact that she could breathe would help her to calm down.
I’d sing the same songs I sang to Sonny when we were sitting by a campfire or curled up in a sleeping bag under the stars. I’d make up the same silly “Mike the Mountain Monster” stories that I once shared with her big brother, only instead of a little boy with big brown eyes and soft brown skin being the star of the story, it was a little girl with big blue eyes and soft, soft skin who would go on adventures. When Sonny was small, Mike the Mountain Monster stories would be woven around a mountain hike that led to the lair of a dragon’s who was his secret friend. He and I would climb upon Mike’s back and soar above the world—oftentimes we would go to California to visit Sonny’s dad. Because he missed his father, I would weave stories of trips with his dad to Disneyland, Mike sitting atop Magic Mountain while Sonny and George rode the Disney train around the park. When Isaiah was an adult, a father to his own children, we planned a trip to a Disney park. While planning Isaiah asked how old he was when he went to Disney with his dad. I told him he was about ten months old, the summer my brother disappeared. We took Sonny and his stepsiblings to Disney just weeks before George moved out of our family home. “No,” he said. “I was older—I remember riding the train around the park with Dad.” As he described his memories with his father, I started to smile and then laugh.
“Do you remember how you got to California to be with your dad?” I asked. He pondered and searched his memory, and when he came up blank, I told him the only trips he made with his dad were to Oregon. The trips to Disney, to Knott’s Berry Farm, to the North Pole, and to the mountaintops that he took with his dad were flying on the back of Mike the Mountain Monster.
Shaylah loved the stories as much as her brother did. But hers were told for a different reason. I wove together stories for Sonny to help him feel connected to a father who was too wrapped up in his career and too impaired by his alcoholism to stay connected to his son. For Shaylah, those stories took her out of her bedroom or her hospital bed, away from the humming machines and the IV drips, away from welts and rashes, away from the fear of her throat closing down and out into the world that she was unable to enjoy. I signed her up for swimming lessons as a child, but the chlorine in the pool was too strong and caused her to have an asthma attack. I signed her up for ballet lessons, but the chalk dust in the studio was choking. Hiking, camping, dirt biking were out of the question.
When Shaylah was about four, she started to develop round sores that would not heal on her arms and legs. More trips to the asthma and allergy specialist, more tests, and the doctors decided she was basically allergic to her own body. She would scratch her skin while she was sleeping, and the sores would become infected. Antibiotics and steroids were prescribed to heal the sores, but the antibiotics would make her resistant to medication when she would get pneumonia. Which happened nearly every winter.
Now I realize that my carefree years with Sonny were a gift, and my endless nights holding Shaylah were a gift as well. Had she not prepared me to take care of medically fragile children and to face the reality of the possibility of death, I could not have faced the challenges of most of my adoptive children. Most are medically fragile or have been mentally and physically abused, or all of the above. I certainly could not have adopted kids that I knew were chronically ill, and I never would have fought to bring my son Sammy home.
In 1984, I started a “love songs and requests” show called Lights Out from Seattle, Washington. The show was incredibly successful and I enjoyed number-one ratings for a few years before I was fired, again. Seattle was, at the time, the thirteenth-ranked city in America for radio. I dreamed of being like Wolfman Jack or Larry King, syndicated radio personalities broadcasting across the country.
In 1990 my son, Isaiah, and I moved to Boston, ranked number six for radio in the nation. There my special format became simply The Delilah Show, where I took phone calls and dedications and spun sappy love songs and shared advice at night. Again we had amazing ratings. I constantly talked to the management about syndicating my show, but their focus was on the Boston market, and they didn’t own stations in but two other cities. In 1992 Greater Media, a bigger broadcast company, offered me the opportunity to move to Philadelphia. At the time Philly was the fourth-largest radio market, behind New York, LA, and Dallas. I was eager to continue growing my success, and damn, I loved Philly cheesesteaks!
From 1992 to 1994, the show did well. I got married to my husband Doug, and I bought a small home in a wonderful neighborhood on th
e Main Line in Radnor Township. Sonny loved it; it came with six other boys his age in the neighborhood and a soccer field at the end of our street. While in my seventh month of pregnancy carrying Shaylah, I flew back to Philly from a visit to Seattle. It was my husband’s twenty-sixth birthday, July 11, 1994.
My friend Judy met me at the airport, and after a long, awkward hug that felt like someone had died and a comment about my swollen ankles, Judy schlepped my bags to her car. Judy is Jewish, and very funny. Normally she would be cracking herself up with a dozen one-liners, but on this afternoon she was oddly quiet.
Judy said she had directions to take me to a nice restaurant on the Main Line to have dinner with the management from my station. I argued with her and insisted she take me straight to the station. I had less than an hour to prepare for my show and had lots to catch up on with my producer/roommate, Janey. Again, Judy said she had to take me to the restaurant and again I argued… her face was pale and drawn, and she looked at me and said, “I can’t say anything more.” I reached up and switched on her radio to my station. As God would have it a sweeper ran, a prerecorded message with zings and swooshes and a booming radio-style voice saying, “The all-new WMGK, all seventies hits, all the time,” swish, bam into the Hall and Oates hit “She’s Gone.” In that instant I knew why Janey hadn’t returned my many calls the day before and why Judy avoided eye contact in the terminal.
All seventies, all the time. Overnight they had switched to a disco format and the entire staff was let go.
Judy drove me to the restaurant in silence and said she’d take my bags home. I waddled into the cool air of the well-appointed restaurant, greeted by a lovely, thin girl who looked as though she had never sweated a day in her life, wearing a crisp, straight black dress. My feet were so swollen I was wearing jellies, cheap plastic shoes that stretched. My waterlogged, fleshy feet pushed through the plastic webs, making my enormous feet look like they had been scored with a butter knife. I was wearing a turquoise maternity sundress, shaped like a beach tent you’d sit under at the Jersey Shore. My fingers, too, were swollen beyond recognition, from the pregnancy, the oppressive heat, scraping wallpaper, painting walls, and the altitude of the plane.
I arrived first and took my place at the quiet table in the corner my bosses had reserved. I saw them pull up in separate cars. I quickly hid behind the large menu and acted as if I were unaware of the two suited men standing before me. Julian, surprised that I had seated myself and already started to order, cleared his throat and pulled up a chair. Sitting down, he said, “Delilah, um, what are you doing?”
Without hesitating I said, “I’m looking for the most expensive items on this menu, because I have the feeling this is my last free meal.” They laughed, I laughed, and the awkward moment passed. I ordered steak, lobster, and two virgin strawberry daiquiris.
When I got home, I found my producer Janey, heartsick and scared for me. Julian had called her to find out my flight schedule and told her she could not tell me I was being fired. In his haste, he forgot she worked as my producer. After he told her she could not tell me about the format change, she cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me, are you forgetting I work for you, too?”
“Oh yes,” he shot back, “we’re letting you go, too,” and hung up.
When I called Doug to share the bad news, his only comment was, “Thanks for the birthday present.”
On September 28, 1994, my girlfriend Brenda, who had lived with me in Boston, and her husband, Billy, stopped in to visit and spend the night with us on their way to see her family in DC. Brenda was a sweet girl, with long, thick hair, a natural beauty that reminded me of the models who sold Dove soap on TV in the seventies. She had sparkly eyes and a broad, open face. She wore little makeup but was radiantly beautiful and had a laugh that was almost musical. When we were roomies, we worked together for a time at the radio station. She was a salesperson and I was on the air. She worked days and I worked nights, so she helped watch Sonny while I did the show. We would get into long philosophical discussions late into the night when I’d get off the air. She had been raised a Christian but insisted any path was a good path to enlightenment. I was a fairly new Christian, had made my commitment to God four years prior, and was on fire to evangelize the world. I may have been a bit heavy-handed back then and probably did more harm than good in my arguments of theology. But for some reason, Brenda listened and let my words challenge her. Later on, she had an experience that touched her on a profound level, and apart from our friendship, she gave her heart to Christ.
So in God’s perfect timing, Brenda arrived in Philly on the twenty-eighth of September, planning to leave the next day. We talked late into the night and went to bed. The next morning when I woke up to shower, I found I was lying in a pool of water. My water had broken.
Brenda and Janey excitedly helped me pack, and Doug frantically drove us to the birthing center. I walked around the floor, and we sang praise songs and talked. Janey walked with me, then Brenda, then both girls. Doug took a turn or two, and then the girls took over. From noon till seven or eight we walked and sang and I ate cheese balls. An entire can of cheese balls. My legs were exhausted, my contractions weren’t doing much, and I felt like my baby was never going to arrive. I sat down to watch a Disney movie and, finally, the contractions started doing their job.
At 11:47 my baby girl entered the world, fist first! Janey assisted, Brenda sang songs and prayed, a wonderful delivery room nurse named Jane coached, encouraged, and joined us in prayer, and the most beautiful angel I had ever seen became my joy.
Before Brenda left she put me in touch with Ken Spitzer, her former boss at the station we had worked at together. He left a few weeks before I had arrived. Ken was with a new broadcast company, and Brenda shared how badly I wanted to be syndicated.
Over the next few weeks, I nursed my baby and reconciled with my mom, whom I had stopped talking to a few years before, then welcomed her with open arms to my home in Philly. She came for a week and stayed for a month. Mom was a big woman, over six feet tall, and she had a big personality. She had somehow mellowed and whether it was her new granddaughter or something else, she was more sentimental and supportive, less controlling. We had the best time of our lives as mom and daughter. I had been gone from home sixteen years already. I had bought four houses and half a dozen cars, given birth to a son and a daughter, started a street ministry, worked at nine radio stations, and been married three times. But before that visit, Mom always treated me like I was a knucklehead, incapable of paying a bill or driving a car. Or at least that was my perception of how she treated me.
When my mom arrived in Philly, her energy was different. She loved Janey, and she was eager to hear about Point Hope and the homeless folks we met. She was eager to relax and be spoiled; she let me take her first to DC for a day of sightseeing and then later to New York City. She didn’t hijack the trips and insert her own agenda, she didn’t snark at me about my weird friends or my bad parenting, she just had fun and laughed with me each night. In DC she laughed when I walked barefoot, nursing my newborn daughter, through the White House and the Capitol building. In New York she laughed at the crazy tour guide Maryanne who slid around the pole on the front of the double-decker tour bus like an aging stripper and greeted us with, “It’s Fri-dayyy, welcome to Manhattan, the smallest but tallest borough of New York.” Her heavy Bronx accent was delightful as she pointed out where Bogie and Bacall had their love nest, and where Frank Sinatra and his Italian friends went for drinks.
She agreed to go with me to the church at Times Square, a very enthusiastic church in a refurbished theater in Times Square. Mom had been adamantly against first my brother Matt’s conversion to Christianity, then mine and my younger brother Tim’s. I braced myself for her criticism of the evangelical church, but instead she tapped her foot then stood and clapped her hands while recording artist Larnelle Harris led us in worship for nearly an hour. I was shocked, Janey was shocked, Shaylah kept throwing up, and So
nny slept through most of the service.
Mostly Mom adored Shaylah, held her and stared at her for hours, marveling over her dainty hands and her tiny, slim fingers. As a newborn Shay had an air of feminine loveliness about her, the way she held her delicate hands and waved them as if she were a ballet dancer. Sonny adored his baby sister as well and rushed home from school to cuddle and hold her. My heart was full and content during that fall, and driving Mom to the airport as the last brilliant colors of autumn fell in the Philly wind and rain was the hardest thing I had ever done. I sobbed, she bawled, and we clung to each other at the gate. I watched her get on the plane and nearly collapsed with grief. Janey kept saying, “She’s coming back, she said she’d be back in the spring,” but I had the most ominous premonition, and a haunting, hollow loneliness.
Before Mom left she had heard me talking to Ken Spitzer and believed that maybe I wasn’t so crazy for pursuing my radio dreams. Ken had a lot of friends in broadcasting and even more in the financial world, and was fairly certain he could help me get syndicated.
If she were alive today, my mom would probably have a fit at all the kids I’ve adopted and all the projects I am involved in, but she would fiercely defend me to anyone who tried to stand in my path or stop me. I honestly believe the reason my show went into syndication when it did—five months after her passing—was because she was in heaven nagging God to give me a break. I know the Lord could not resist those green eyes and that broad smile, and I suspect she said something like, “Listen, Lord, Sis has worked hard, and You know she loves what she does. I tried to talk her into getting a real job, but she refused to listen. God, can You just move a few mountains and let this syndication dream come true for her?”
Mom left us in the fall of ’95, but before she died she sent a card to my roommate and producer for the past twenty-five years, Janey, and in it she wrote, “I will see you in the spring, when God makes all things new again.” In the spring of ’96, our show finally went into syndication.
