by Sam Harris
I spoke with her almost daily for a few weeks and we scheduled the trip to meet her in person. When I called Radis to tell him of our plans, he informed me that she’d already chosen the other couple. Apparently, she hadn’t wanted to give up the attention we were pouring on her: the calls, the care, the packages of prenatal vitamins and chocolates and belly cream. It was a mind-blowing, gut-crushing hurt. That hollow, absent aching place like when a death happens.
We told ourselves that our baby would come to us when our baby was ready.
Three months after the first meeting with Radis, we got another call from a potential birth mother. Danny was out of town, so I spoke to her by myself. She was due in six weeks. She also lived out of state but didn’t have an arrest record and was free to travel unescorted by a G-man. She asked if we were sure we wanted a child and I told her, “Yes, more than anything in the world. This child will be the most important thing in our lives, above all else, forever.” She told me no one had said that before.
I FedExed the “book of our life” with a personal letter. Radis faxed over a photo she’d included in her profile. She was beautiful. Dazzling, in fact: high, round cheekbones, dark, expressive eyes and a crooked, dimpled smile that I hoped was inheritable. Danny and I had told ourselves that looks didn’t matter. That anyone who chose us and was properly vetted would be the woman who “grew our child.” We hoped only for health and intelligence and a sense of humor—the vital elements that make for a good life. But the fact that she was beautiful was a plus and we admitted it. Pretty never hurts.
The next morning I was at my publicist’s office talking about me me me and my phone rang. I had already put this woman’s number in my iPhone and recognized it. I nervously ran into a private office and after a trepidatious “Hello,” I heard the words: “I choose you and Danny to be the parents of this baby.”
And so it really began.
• • •
The adoption agency and the adoption attorney told us about the legal aspects. They recommended rules and boundaries. They told a few horror stories and a few sob stories, but most of the stories had happy endings. Still, no one could possibly have prepared us for the most intense, emotional, trusting, mistrusting, thrilling, terrifying, volatile, roller-coaster relationship of our lives. Strangers one day, forever tied the next, we entered into an alliance more profound than we’d ever known. Would she betray us? Did she make the right choice for herself? Would she keep the child after all, or decide that an aunt or grandmother might do a better job?
She left everything familiar and traveled to Los Angeles in the care of two nervous daddy-wannabe outsiders and was put in a hotel. They say teeth are the window to overall health and I found myself sneaking glimpses at her incisors and molars as if she were a filly. The next day, we escorted her to a series of meetings with our attorney and social worker, who grilled and prodded to ferret out lies and inconsistencies and red flags, albeit with respect and etiquette. It was like waterboarding with fine linen and Pellegrino. They pried into her personal life about her sexual conduct, her drug history, her personal habits, her philosophies, her religion, her family. She answered each question with an easy honesty that belied her age.
At the next stop, our obstetrician examined her, also with worthy respect. Her tummy was jellied and the sonogram wand was rolled gently across her. Danny and I gaped at the monitor, glued to each other as we saw, for the first time, the tiny living being, shmushed and somehow levitating—all in vivid black and white.
Our child. It had long fingers and ample lips and a nose and everything.
“Looks perfect and healthy,” our OB reported. He turned to our birth mother and asked, “Would you like to know the sex or should I tell Sam and Danny privately?”
“I can know,” she murmured.
Danny grabbed my hand. We held our breath and waited in an interminable pause reminiscent of key moments on reality shows. I could feel the camera cut from me to Danny to me to Danny to the doctor to me to Danny to her to me to the doctor to Danny. I heard anticipatory underscoring and feared we would go to commercial. Then the doctor looked to Danny and me and said, “Gentlemen, you’re having a boy.”
And so it really, really began.
• • •
We wanted our birth mother to come to Los Angeles for the remainder of the pregnancy so we could care for her and bond with her. Also, statistics showed that women who left their homes were more likely to follow through with their decision.
She asked if she could bring her family with her.
We put them in a house near our own, and for the next six weeks, our single purpose was to keep this woman healthy and happy. We broke nearly every rule and crossed nearly every line in the process. We said yes to anything and everything she wanted or needed and tried to pick up on clues to furnish her with whatever whim, gift, surprise, or treat she might crave. If she tugged at her blouse, we went shopping for new maternity wear. If she glanced at a Pizza Hut from the car window, we turned around and got takeout. I made mountains of mac ’n’ cheese and baked brownies and gave foot massages and rubbed belly butter on her swollen tummy.
I will admit that some of our indulgence was out of fear that she would change her mind or sneak away in the middle of the night. But mostly it was out of gratitude. During one of our weaker moments near the end, when the hoops were getting drastically higher and we were frayed and drained and scared and complaining of the emotional slavery of our situation, a friend pointed out, “This is your labor.” It became our mantra.
Our son was due the second week of April. At the beginning of the month, the phone rang in the early evening. “This is it!” she said. “I’m having really painful contractions and we need to go now!”
We had rehearsed this moment a dozen times, which involved neighbors and multiple cars and family and friends to call and suitcases to grab and lists to bring. We arrived at her house in less than three minutes. We burst in the door but she was nowhere to be seen. The TV was blaring from the next room and we rushed in, calling out her name. She was lying back comfortably on the bed, noshing from a bag of chips and slurping a milk shake, grinning from ear to ear, dimples dimped.
“April Fool’s!” she screamed, and the jumble of her upswept hair danced with her naughty laugh.
The depth of my patience and the ability to stuff my feelings suddenly reached a new magnitude.
I tasted blood in my mouth and realized I’d bitten the inside of my cheek and was still clenching. Danny and I glanced at each other, smiling through the impact. My heart pounded and I knew I was going to cry. Instead, I offered a toothy, bloodstained grin, fought to regulate my breath, and said, “Ohhhh, that’s good. You really got us! Ha! You are so funny!”
This is your labor. This is your labor. This is your freaking-fucking labor . . .
As the next days ticked away, psychobiology kicked in and I found myself waking every three hours at night, subconsciously preparing for a feeding schedule. I reorganized drawers and scrubbed floors at two o’clock in the morning. I sanitized every surface of every thing at every time. UPS and FedEx were daily visitors, bearing uncountable gifts, like Christmas for a prince. I decorated the border of the nursery with hand-dabbed stencils of jungle animals caravanning in an endless parade. Hand-painted monkeys hung from trees on an archway that framed his crib area. Martha Stewart would have been proud—envious in fact. I got a P-touch labeler and labeled everything: places for diapers, bibs, onesies, pants, socks, crib sheets, binkies, pack ’n’ play sheets, baby wipes, changing table covers . . . Everything has a place, and that place was going to have a goddamn label on it.
Danny and I were more in love than ever. Like soldiers lost in the deepest forest, with only each other to rely upon, steadying ourselves for the unpredictable, and we began to honor each other in a new way. We really listened. Egos were put aside. Competition was not an option. Our child came first. Our child. The words alone changed us. And we fought. God, how we fought. If t
here was shit to work out, this was the time. Just like the cabinet door that needed repairing and the car that needed to be replaced.
People still asked stupid questions:
“Is it Chinese?” (The concept of a gay couple adopting an American child seemed impossible and even wrong to some.)
“What is she?” (Translation: Is the birth mother white?)
“Is she healthy?” (Translation: Is she a crack whore?)
“What’s the biological father like? I only ask because I saw a movie where the father came back four years later and took the child.” (Translation: Tell me every sordid detail you know about the situation.)
We found two good answers when anything personal about the birth parents was asked—no matter how concerned people claimed to be:
“And why do you need to know?” and “That is our son’s story. He will know everything about his biological history, and when he chooses to tell is up to him.”
But the worst thing people would say left me angry and dumbfounded:
“You wonder how could a woman give up her child?”
I had never felt anything more clearly than the realization that when a woman comes to the understanding that she cannot keep her baby without severely compromising and even damaging the life, health, and future of that baby as well as that of any already existing children, the choice to place the child through adoption is the single most noble act I could possibly imagine.
She could have terminated the pregnancy. She could have remained in her own city and delivered at a county hospital, leaving the state to deal with it and putting the infant in care of the system. She could have secretly popped him out at home and dropped him at a fire station or in an alleyway dumpster. But this woman chose another path that would require strength and selflessness beyond measure.
In addition to the ongoing physical and psychological drama of being a young pregnant woman, moody and hormonal, hot and cold and uncomfortable, stripped of her surroundings, friends, everything familiar, emotionally in turmoil, and in the care of strangers, at the end of it all, she was going to hand her baby to someone else—a family of her choice—in the hope that the baby would have a better life than she could provide. It would be the last and most important decision she could make for this child’s welfare. Mother’s love at its zenith. She was a heroine and I resented any implication that she or women like her were anything otherwise.
• • •
We had all decided in advance that Danny and I would be in the delivery room and cut the umbilical cord.
On April 7, 2008, we stood by her side as she pushed, focused and present, throughout the delivery. When our son was lifted into the air, covered in vernix and blood, screaming and gasping his way into this strange new world, our entire relationship with our birth mother had culminated in, and was defined by, this single instant of polar opposites. At the exact same moment that we wanted to jump through the roof in celebration, she stared silently at the ceiling in mourning. Our greatest gift was her greatest loss. In the same room. At the same time. Respect was paid to both. That is what the entire six weeks had been—a balance of respect.
She had requested that the baby be placed on her chest so that she could have a private moment with him. We left the room and stood in the hallway. It was cold and white and a thousand miles away. I asked Danny how long we should wait before going back in. Every second in which mother and child could potentially bond was an eternity. Danny took my hands and wisely said, “We will have our son forever and we should give her as much time as she needs.”
A minute or so later, a faint “okay” came from inside and we walked back into the room. She was holding our son. Her son. Our son. Gazing at him as a mother does.
Then she took a deep breath and looked up and out, at nothing in particular. Her jaw clenched as we watched her attempt to disengage. Her dark eyes darted to mine for a split second and I knew that it was time. Danny and I walked to her bedside and she lifted our little baby boy ever so slightly to meet my arms, her stare remaining fixed ahead. I cradled his tiny, swaddled body against my chest, and Danny and I backed out of the room, facing our birth mother, whispering “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
A single tear tracked down her cheek as we left the room.
Danny and I and Cooper Atticus Harris-Jacobsen spent our first night together at the hospital. The Atticus was for Atticus Finch, my favorite literary character—our attempt to imbue him with a sense of moral obligation. But the four-name name sounded more like a law firm. Some of our closest friends came to welcome him, and Cooper’s godfather, Bruce, swears that upon meeting him, Cooper actually lifted his face, all puffy and puckered like a wet knuckle, and spoke the words “Uncle Brew-w-w.” It might have happened. Miracles abounded everywhere.
Our birth mother was moved to a nonmaternity floor so that she would not hear the cries of newborn babies.
The next morning, she and her family boarded a plane.
• • •
In the following days and weeks, everyone in our families, except the born-again dip lovers, visited to welcome our son.
My parents were more joyous than I’d ever seen them. And there was a bond between us that hadn’t, couldn’t have existed heretofore. One late night, when Cooper was sleeping between feedings and the house was uncommonly quiet, I found my father on the balcony, weeping.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He said, “I never knew.”
“Never knew what?”
“I watch you and Danny and the way you look at Cooper and the way you are with him. Feeding him and changing him and being up all night. The way you hold him. And I know what’s coming and how fast it goes . . . and I missed it. I wasn’t there for you or your brother or your mother. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t there. You’re a good person. A good man. And you’re going to be a good father. A better father than I was.”
I held him close, as if, for a moment, I was the father and he was the son. Then he took my face in his hands and kissed me on the forehead long and hard. I remembered a conversation I’d had with my friend Frank Langella, who’d said that so many of us who are wildly driven to succeed in approval-based professions were victims of “the first kiss syndrome.”
“It’s when our fathers gave us one kiss when we were very young,” Frank said. “One crumb of clear encouragement without qualification”—he took an all-too-personal sigh—“and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get the second kiss. From our fathers, then friends, lovers, audiences . . .”
My father was now a different man than I’d known growing up. The man whose ever-evident disapproval and disappointment had both crippled me and driven me to dance harder—the man who never played catch, or taught me to shave, or tie a tie, who believed his role as a father was to provide hoops of expectation to be jumped through, who couldn’t spare a compliment without a camouflaged insult to obliterate it, who told me life was a “bowl-a shit” when I was five years old—was gone. Before me stood a man, human and good, with a loving and heavy heart; a man who had struggled so hard. So. Hard. Whose unforeseen circumstances had made him a boat against the current of his time, his culture, everything he thought he knew, to find peace with himself, with me, at last. If I had spent my life looking for the next kisses, I was being smothered in them now.
And I had changed too.
I accepted them.
• • •
A month later, when the last visitors had departed and the last baby gifts had been received and Danny and I were attempting to settle into our new life, Cooper was given the pediatric thumbs-up to go into public places. It was time to make my fantasy a memory. With an excitement that exceeded any preshow buzz I’d ever known, I dressed in my Bermuda shorts, porkpie hat, sandals, and aviator sunglasses, rolled up my sleeves enough to certify tattoos, and our brand-new threesome headed to the neighborhood farmers’ market.
The summer sky was blue and uncomplicated. The air spoke of recently plucked rosemary a
nd the clean, yeasty scent of freshly baked brioche. I shifted the diaper bag on my shoulder as we entered the thoroughfare, pushing Cooper in his hybrid stroller, but leaving his face completely visible so awestruck onlookers wouldn’t have to rubberneck. As usual, underscoring accompanied the event in my head. This time it was the majestic theme from To Kill a Mockingbird. We strutted slowly and deliberately as I feigned casual, but I nearly bestowed a royal wave when the strings entered.
Only no one gave us a second look. Not a single glance.
My great fantasy was shattered in an instant.
But in the next, I realized that what was actually happening was much more breathtaking and historical than any fantasy.
Two dads pushing their child in a stroller at a market on a Saturday morning was simply no big deal.
And so it really, really, really began.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I must thank the godfather of this manuscript, Frank Langella, who told me to write write write, without result in mind. His mentorship, encouragement, and constant friendship were the birth of this effort. Thank you to David Elzer, who planted the seed years before I put fingers to keys. Also to the friends who read and listened to stories and ideas: Joel Brooks, Karen Newberg, Todd Schroeder, David Kaufman, Diann Duthie, Matt Harris, Nancy Berglass, and Bridget Moynahan. And to those who loyally read again and again: Michelle Zabel, Laura Brugnoni, and especially Sarah Rutan, who was my insightful touchstone throughout the entire process. I am most grateful to Bruce Newberg, who could not be a more stalwart, inspiring, and gifted friend, who asks the right questions and always, always makes me be better. Thanks to Ed Razzano for the business of songs. Thanks to Michael Agostino for his web magic and tireless inventive dedication. Thanks to Liza Minnelli, who also encouraged me to write write write and gave her blessing to put forth my truth in stories which included personal accounts of our long friendship. I owe thanks to the citizens of Sand Springs, who did not always understand me, but ultimately embraced me nonetheless. To my parents, who were endlessly asked to rattle their memories for odd facts and time lines, and who trusted and supported my perspective without question. Thanks to David Forrer, whose contribution to this effort surpassed that of any agent: he is an editor, advisor, challenger, enthusiast, and friend. To Mitchell Ivers at Gallery Books, my dream editor, who shepherded, nurtured, and waved a banner for Ham before it was fully cooked—and then supplied spices and cut fat and brought it to the table. To Louise Burke and Jen Bergstrom for their unparalleled enthusiasm, intelligence, and rare sense of joy, and the fiercely dedicated angels at Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, especially Mary McCue, Ellen Chen, Liz Psaltis, John Paul Jones, Natalie Ebel, and Natasha Simons. To Sandi Mendelson, Judy Hilsinger, and Cathy Gruhn for the ballyhoo. And finally, to my husband, Danny Jacobsen—my mainstay, and the very essence of partnership, who inspires and colors my days. I’d thank our son, Cooper, but he doesn’t yet read and has the attention span of a gnat and interrupted my writing every ten minutes for the length of the project. And yet, he is somehow the inspiration for . . . everything.
