Door To The Divine

On the first day of preschool, my son gripped my hand. He peered into the classroom, his eyes wide. “Go ahead,” I said, squeezing my fingers out of his and nudging him forward. The teacher approached and crouched to his level, saying his name with a smile.  

“See you soon!” I waved, exaggerating my voice into a song. Then I turned and walked away biting my lip. In the parking lot just moments later my phone chirped. I grabbed it. Had my little guy, three-but-almost-four, collapsed in a pool of tears? Did he need his mommy? 

No. It was my mom. Her text asked how drop off had gone. 

I didn’t see any tears, I replied, but he was nervous.

It takes time, she wrote back. Be patient and prayerful. 

Be patient. 

And prayerful.

I didn’t respond. 

When it came to helping my son adjust to preschool, I was prepared to be patient. I attended a new-parent workshop the week before and knew clingy hands were expected. That morning, I’d heeded the advice of the school director: Sound happy and confident at drop off. Don’t linger. Don’t look back. These tips sounded reasonable, and they’d proven doable. So patient, yes. I could be patient. But prayerful? Should I have been praying for my son’s transition to preschool? 

I grew up attending church, received a Bible in third grade, got confirmed at fourteen. I knew the Lord’s Prayer. In high school, I was a junior counselor at church camp. The college I attended was founded on Christian ideals and required two semesters of religion class. I willingly participated in these activities, but I don’t remember doing so with deep conviction. I attended church because my family was going. Once there, I liked watching sunlight progress through the sanctuary’s stained glass windows, and I was always impressed by the floor-rumbling power of the pipe organ. I was Christian, not because I’d discovered any great comfort in being so, but because it was the culture in which I was raised. It wasn’t unusual for my mom to suggest I pray, so I wasn’t shocked when she texted that I should be “prayerful.” Instead, the reason I didn’t know how to respond to my mom’s text was that I don’t pray. Not anymore.

My husband and I were never able to conceive, and not for lack of trying. We met with a reproductive endocrinologist and submitted to every test she prescribed. The diagnosis came down to my eggs. They had expired before their time. The doctor put me on meds to stimulate my ovaries, to try and squeeze out any last good eggs. I started with pills, but they didn’t work. I tried an injectable. It didn’t work either. I tried a two-injection combo, which also didn’t work. This trial-and-error went on for months. When the doctor finally said I needed to stop thinking about getting pregnant with my own eggs and start thinking about getting pregnant with donor eggs, I sobbed so severely she pushed a box of tissues into my hands and the name of a therapist into my husband’s hands. Soon after this meeting, we quit fertility treatments. 

I prayed a lot during those months of fertility treatments. Some of these prayers I addressed to God and some I addressed to myself as a sort of pep talk. I prayed the drugs would work. I prayed I wouldn’t faint during my next blood draw. On the mornings my husband’s sperm was to be released inside me via a catheter threaded through my cervix, I prayed the nurse on duty would have a steady hand. I prayed my husband wouldn’t leave me for a younger woman with younger eggs. I prayed for courage. The courage to get out of my car and go into the clinic. The courage to learn how to properly load a syringe. The courage to attend family gatherings where relatives would ask me when I was going to have a baby. 

Almost all of these prayers were answered. I never fainted. My husband didn’t leave me. And I did find the courage I needed most of all—the courage to walk away from the fertility clinic. Thirteen months later, my husband and I traveled to China to adopt a two-year-old boy, a boy who is curious, happy, silly, and—after a handful of clingy mornings—well-adjusted to preschool. 

From the outside, perhaps, it appears my troubled path to motherhood had a tidy ending, that fertility treatments and the adoption process were just blips on the timeline of my life, that now I have a son and everything that led to his arrival is closed and done. And maybe this is my fault, my appearance of “all-rightness.” Maybe I’ve perfected a veneer that isn’t serving me well, a veneer I’ve been using to present myself to the church-going people who comprise my family and a portion of my friends as a person who believes the same things she believed before fertility treatments entered her life. The truth is, however, that infertility and the adoption process altered my understanding of the world, of things that are tangible and things that are not. Some might say I lost my faith, but I’m not convinced that’s true. Instead, my faith shifted. 

I passed through many dark nights of the soul on my path to motherhood. Several times, in the midst of fertility treatments and the waiting for our son, I cried in my sleep. I’d jolt awake by a rack of sobs, the way one might wake at a clap of thunder, to find my face wet with tears, my pillow damp, my husband pulling me close. It’s because of these nights, because of everything that fed into them, that I struggle now with trite expressions of faith. 

I cannot thank God for unanswered prayers, even though my unanswered prayer—that the fertility drugs would work—resulted in the creation of the family I now treasure. I might smile when somebody tells me, while trying to express their happiness for me, that my son is the answer to a prayer, but inside I cringe. Which prayer, prayed by whom, I want to ask, is he an answer to? If somebody tells me, as many have told me while watching my son wiggle and leap nearby, that everything happens for a reason and God has a plan, I nod. I understand the speaker is trying to express a sense of closure they feel about my story, or imagines I feel about my story. But I don’t feel closure. And I don’t think God has a plan. 

Too many hurts had to happen in order for my son to become my son—my infertility least among them. I survived, but what about the other woman? Somewhere in China is a woman who faced a heartbreaking choice: What should she do with a baby that needed a surgery she could never afford? And what happened to her baby? My baby. My baby, who didn’t ask to be born with an ongoing health need. Will that baby, when he is old enough to digest the hard reality of how his life began, will that baby—my son—will my son thrive? And is she thriving? His birthmother? Has she been able, after surrendering her baby, to create a life that satisfies? Am I willing to believe that a higher power orchestrated any of these hurts, which are all big hurts, just so my little family could come into being? 

I’m not.  

And yet…

I’m not ready to shut the door on a divine. After all, here is this boy, this little boy who calls me mom. And I don’t know where he came from. I don’t know the names of the man and woman responsible for his creation. I don’t have their photos. I don’t have a hospital account of his birth. Instead, my son was delivered to my hotel room. A knock on the door, and there he was, looking every bit like the 11 photos I’d been previously sent of him, pictures that—for months—I’d inspected with a detective’s precision. There was no question: This boy was the one in the photos. He was ushered into the room by an orphanage worker, a man I’d never met and whom I’ll never see again. And even though my son came with a letter detailing his morning—when he woke, what he ate, the time he boarded the bus to me—still, his arrival seemed to defy logic. He simply appeared.

I wish I could quiet my own internal conflict about how my son became part of my life, that my mind could draw an emotionless, cause-and-effect line from event A to event B, and so on, until we were put together in that Chinese hotel room, but I have not been able to make this happen. Instead, the creation of my family feels like one of those choose-your-own adventure books I read as a kid. At so many junctions along the way, the end I’m now living could have fallen apart. Each one of those junctions, I sense, was a space in time in which I prayed, or could have prayed and chose not to, or didn’t even contemplate praying, as is the case these days. 

These days, I question prayer. I don’t understand to what entity, if any, I’m supposed to pray, what type of request is acceptable, and what, if anything, is reasonable to expect in return. My lack of prayer, however, doesn’t mean I’m left with a dark place inside. On the contrary, I feel a deep sense of wonder about chance, and love, and nature. I feel religious when I’m watching ants march across the sidewalk, my son’s breath catching in my ear as he stoops next to me. Or when, together, we inspect the bark of a tree, his small hand moving along the knobby ridges. Or when we stand in the backyard, my husband, my son and me, digging a hole for the dead rabbit we found on our walk and I hear him say, this small boy of mine, “It’s okay, Bunny. You’re part of our family now.” 

Mostly, I find myself believing in people. I believe in my son, who has tackled every challenge set before him in his short life, in his utter openness to being loved and giving love. I believe in my husband who has journeyed this path with me. I believe in a Chinese woman I’ve never met. I believe she had pure intensions for her child. I believe in orphanage staffers who care for children they cannot take home. I believe in social workers who shepherd clients through red tape. I believe in government workers who enter data, translate papers, and stamp documents. I believe in my extended family, who were never asked if they wanted to adopt, but who all adopted just the same, just like my mom and my dad, who waited eager and anxious at international arrivals, their hearts open wide, a little toy truck in their hands.

-Kelly Westhoff

Kelly Westhoff writes essays and haiku and is currently seeking a publishing home for her memoir about infertility and adoption. She’s been a public school teacher, an indie bookstore employee, and a freelance writer. She lives in Minnesota with her husband, her son, and her poodle. Visit her website KellyWesthoff.com and follow her haiku obsession on Instagram @KellyWesthoffWrites.