A Cup of Emotion

Another exercise: Time travel back in your life and choose an emotionally charged moment. Write about this cup of emotion. This cup may be a seed for a later longer work. Here goes.

I was a postdoctoral fellow in a yeast genetics lab in Albany. My new husband was a medical student across the street at Albany Med. It was the fourth week of May 2001. I was working as quickly and efficiently as I could, because I wanted desperately to get out of lab early. It was awards day. Brian would be graduating on Saturday and today he would get several awards. His parents were coming, my parents were coming and I had to be there! As I worked and fretted and tried to make sure I didn’t miss any loose ends, the phone rang. Someone else answered and yelled for me.

“Cathy, Telephone.”

“What? I don’t have time for a phone call. Can you take a message? I’ve gotta get out of here,” I shouted.

They grinned. “It’s a southern accent!”

“What? A southern accent? Oh my God! It’s Texas.” I don’t know whether I said it out loud or thought it, but my heart started to race as I lunged for the phone.

“Hello?” I gasped.

“Hello.” Said the slow, lilting voice. “Is this Mrs. Wilcox?” Southern, very southern.

“Yes. This is she.” It was difficult to hold my breath and talk at the same time, but I was almost doing it. The air felt charged.

“Well how are you today? This is blah blah at the Gladney Center.”

‘Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s them. It’s Texas,’ I thought. ‘Why are they calling? I wish she’d get on with it.’ “I’m fine,” I blurted as my mind and heart raced.

“Are you doin’ anything special this weekend, Mrs. Wilcox?”

“Oh, not much,” I chuckled nervously. “My husband’s graduating from medical school and our parents are in town.”

“Well that’s great! They can help you get ready.”

“Ready? For what?” I thought or said. She was grinning on the other end of the phone line. I could hear it in her voice.

“We have a baby boy we thought you might be interested in. Would you like me to tell you about him?”

BOOM. There it was. My deepest desire and my greatest fear all rolled into one. They had a baby for us. Oh My God!! Today? Today of all days?! The words and emotions shot though my mind. I felt electrically charged, vibrating, numb, sweaty palms, dry mouth, the whole nine yards. My fight or flight response was kicking in with gusto.

“Ha! Sure,” I said. She proceeded to tell me that he had been born on May 17^th. His birthmother and he were positive for cocaine, but he was very healthy and hadn’t shown any signs of withdrawal. He was being cared for by a nice lady who watched over a lot of Gladney babies until their adoptive parents could arrive. The birthmother was Caucasian and the birthfather African American and he was just the most handsome baby she’d ever seen. “So, do you think you’re interested Mrs. Wilcox? Would you be able to come out and get him this weekend?”

It’s hard to describe the thoughts and emotions that rolled through me one after the other. The thoughts were something like ‘This weekend? What? Was she crazy? We had plans! Brian was graduating from medical school! Didn’t she realize that we lived in New York? Didn’t she know how hard it would be to get a flight at such late notice, not to mention the cost! They had a baby? Finally? The day had finally arrived?’ The emotions were just as confused: excitement, anticipation, elation, fear, nervousness, uncertainty, confusion.

“Well, I think we’ll probably be interested, but I’ll have to talk to my husband and give you a call back,’ I said.

“Very good, Mrs. Wilcox,” she said. “I’ll be waiting for your call.” and that was that.

I hung up the phone, looked around at everyone, my mouth hanging open and said, ”We got a baby.” Then, I thought about where I was and my heart sank. ‘How’m I gonna tell Steve?’ I thought.

Steve was my boss, my wonderful boss and mentor. He was the Principal Investigator of the lab, the PI for short. He wrote the grants, he advised us, the graduate students and I. I’d gotten my PhD in 1998 and had been working in Steve’s lab for almost three years. They had been wonderful years. We had just published a beautiful, groundbreaking paper in EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization Journal. I was good at research and loved it and I loved working with Steve. He was intelligent, creative, hardworking and honest. We had our disagreements, but that was OK. We understood and respected each other. I had told him two years before, after Brian and I had failed to get pregnant, that we were trying to adopt.

“One day, out of the blue, we’ll get a phone call that they have a baby for us and that will be it. I’ll have to leave the lab and go home and be a mommy,” I’d explained.

“How much notice will you be able to give me?” he’d asked.

“A day or two,” I’d said.

“What? You’ll just leave?”

“I’ll have a baby to take care of. I can’t work and leave the baby at home!”

“But what about your project?” The look on his face was one of disbelief. I could see that he thought I was being unreasonable. Until the conversation had started, I hadn’t thought about it from his perspective. I just knew that once we had a baby, I’d be a mommy and I’d have to stay home. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Oh, don’t worry, you’ll find someone else to work on it!” I said. “You’ve got a technician and three students!” I tried to sound light and confident.

“But they have work to do already!” he retorted, looking very unhappy.

“I’m sorry, Steve. That’s why I’m telling you now. I don’t know what more I can do. This is just the way it works. You fill out the stack of papers, you wait and then, one day, they call. It’s usually about two years later, they said. We’ll just have to hope that my project is more or less wrapped up in two years.”

I felt frustrated, like I’d done something wrong. It wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t get pregnant and that I had this biological urge to reproduce. The mommy urge had been plaguing me since I was 25, for goodness sake. I loved the lab and my work, but my mother had always told me that being a mother was the most wonderful thing in the world, the best job you could ever have.

So, the day had finally arrived. They had a baby for us.