Connections

5:56 pm -

This weekend, the most amazing event in over 20 years happened.

I located my son's father.

It is a very long story, dating back over 26 years and almost 10,000 miles. It involved not having the chance to tell this person I was pregnant with his child before I left Germany (and the Army). It took place when I was very young, far from home, living in a somewhat hostile environment, and nursing a broken heart. It was complicated by confusion about when I became pregnant, because I had broken up with my then-boyfriend/not-yet husband. He had no sooner asked me to marry him when he decided he'd like to date someone else. I was horrified and livid.

I don't know if it was retaliatory, out of loneliness, or simply because I met someone who was attractive and compassionate, but I started seeing this person while Michael sowed his wild oats.

At the time, the farthest thing from my mind was the notion that the year to follow would be unlike any I’d ever known. By the end of 1981, I would have a child, be married to Michael, living in Georgia, and my second child would have just been conceived.

To say it was a mistake to marry Michael a little over a year later would effectively be wishing my beautiful daughter out of existence, so I can't harbor true regrets.

But I need to back up, because I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

I was surprised to learn I was pregnant one morning in late August, 1980, even though I’d been feeling distinctly different for the previous few weeks.

After I got the news, my mind raced. Almost in a blur, I found myself being examined by a military doctor.

A few weeks later, I would have my orders which allowed me to return home.

It was during my first checkup that I was "large for dates". This meant that the doctor, comparing the measurement of my uterus to the averages for the same gestational age, it was a few centimeters larger, or at least higher up in my pelvis.

This happened not once, but THREE times. In essence, I literally did not have a seventh month of pregnancy. I was advanced right on into month eight, which, if correct, meant that Michael was the baby's father.

I had serious questions about the whole notion, but I was not the doctor.

Things took another interesting turn when my son was born "a month late".

According to the doctors, I was due to deliver sometime between St. Patrick’s Day and March 23.

Sean was born April 20.

My baby was not a month overdue; he was, by my original (and correct) calculations, one day early. By then Michael was very much caught up with becoming a father, and I was living in a state of very mixed emotions. To say it was confusing is an understatement.

Michael was possessive of me. Possessiveness in and of itself isn’t particularly unusual, especially if one takes into account that we were engaged to be married.

Looking back on things I really wasn’t afforded an opportunity to give an extensive amount of thought to my son's paternity, to have some time to figure out who his biological father was. There was no way to conduct any research into this quandary.

I also felt too self-conscious to approach my doctor with—what seemed at the time to be-- very touchy questions about when I got pregnant.

All I knew was that Sean did not fit the description of a postmature baby in any way, and it was a good thing that labor was not induced three weeks earlier.

The information that we take for granted today just wasn’t available to me in 1981. I was in the hospital. There was a birth certificate to be filled out, and I didn't have weeks or even days to think it over. There was Michael, wanting very much to have this child with me, and there was my son, who deserved the chance to have two parents. There was also Bruce, still stationed in Germany, who knew nothing of what was going on.

You see, when the obstetricians, with their calipers and measuring tapes and ultrasound machines started bumping my due date--and consequently the date of conception--further and further back, things went from me telling Michael in no uncertain terms that I did not think he was the father of my unborn child...to telling him that I guess I was mistaken.

Doctors and their tests are not always infallible, however, and compared to the current state of the art, sonograms were not very reliable. Add to that the possibility that maybe this child's head circumference was just a few millimeters larger (which it was), or that perhaps he was lying in an unusual position (which he was) and suddenly all bets are off.

Sure, I heard stories of babies born early but being normal size, or being born late, but having nothing wrong with them, but in the vast majority of those cases, it was actually a matter of bending the truth a little bit to spare embarrassment over speculation that it might have been a "shotgun wedding".

Single parenthood was viewed much differently in 1981.

I found myself going along with what everyone else wanted.

And Michael wanted me to have nothing to do with Bruce, ever again. In fact, he made a few rather derogatory remarks about this person, and claimed that he didn't know whatever happened to him.

In other words, Bruce, for all intents and purposes, simply vanished from the face of the earth.

And this is how things would remain until only a few days ago--26 years and six months, to be exact--after my son was conceived.

During the interim, I married Michael. I became pregnant again almost immediately afterward: Sean was nine months old when I discovered I was pregnant with my daughter.

Unfortunately, with the same speed that event were unfolding, my marriage to Michael began to crumble. I found myself living in a tiny trailer (yes, trailer!) in Hepzibah, Georgia, with a man who was prone to angry outbursts alternating with sullen periods of feeling guilty or worthless. There were days when he simply did not go to work. This is something one cannot do in the military. There’s got to be a legitimate reason, and this needs to be communicated immediately.

The increasing alcohol consumption did nothing to help the situation, and the situation was not a good one.

By the time I was six months pregnant with my daughter, things had gotten to the point where I asked Michaels' commanding officer to please order him to stay in the barracks, and that I would see him in marriage counseling. Otherwise, I needed to be left alone, because the environment was beginning to take its toll on me, and I had an unborn baby to consider.

At first I was hopeful, but after only two counseling sessions, Michael dropped out, leaving me to go there by myself, the only husband-less wife in group therapy. Finally, the therapist sat me down and told me that I was wasting my time by attending alone.

One morning, I received a call from Michael’s company commander. He informed me that he could no longer legally prevent Michael from coming home. He was trying to warn me that my husband was on his way there.

Michael was very irritable when he came storming in. He headed straight for the washing machine and threw open the lid.

"What's this shit?" he boomed.

“It’s called ‘laundry’” I responded, holding my ground.

I could handle the situation. I was not afraid of this man.

What happened next, however, changed the course of events forever.

Michael went into Sean's room, where he lay napping in his crib. He had just turned a year old. Michael awakened Sean, and then, rather than to pick him up and hold him, he began to walk away. Sean started to cry.

Then I heard it: A smacking sound, followed by very, very distressed crying.

I became a lioness.

I practically ran back to Sean’s bedroom. My eyes must have been on fire.

"What the hell was that?" I asked, gritting my teeth.

"I wanted him to quiet down", was Michael's reply.

"So you HIT him?", I nearly screamed.

"I just smacked him on the wrist", he said, a combination of defensiveness and hostility in his voice.

"You do NOT slap or smack a baby to quiet him down", I growled. “What are you thinking? What’s wrong with you?”

Sean was still crying, so I pushed Michael aside to grab up my son.

"That does it!" I told him. "It's over. You keep away from my child and keep away from me!"

At that moment, the subject we never really got around to discussing was out. Up to this point it felt more as if we tiptoed around as if avoiding broken glass.

Now it was audible, and it was palpable. Unfortunately, the circumstances couldn’t have been much worse than those in which the matter was brought out of hiding.

"Yeah? Well you can’t tell me to do that. He's my kid, too!", Michael yelled.

"Oh, no he isn't!" I replied.

There was a moment of silence, and then I turned around and carried Sean to the kitchen, where I prepared a bottle.

Finally, it was spoken, and there was no turning back I'd listened to the assorted little jabs Michael made about Sean, such as, "Isn't it too bad he's got blonde hair and not brown like mine?"

"He's beautiful just the way he is." I told him, feeling very protective of my son just then.

Michael went back and forth from hot to cold, either gushing about Sean's traits, and how they ran in his family...or else he was making comments that suggested that this baby just somehow didn't make the grade.

An undercurrent of tension ran beneath what sometimes sounded like even the most casual comments. This is a very difficult thing to explain, but it is something I sensed in my gut...and my gut is never wrong.

I called an attorney.

I could not get a restraining order to keep Michael awayI was told that I'd have to file for a divorce before I could obtain a restraining order.

I had no money. I was pregnant, at home, caring for a baby, while Michael was driving my car back and forth to the Army base.

In desperation, I phoned my parents at home, and told them what was going on. My father sent a credit card in the mail so that I could purchase gasoline in order to drive home...and home was 2,500 miles away. He also offered to pay to have movers pick up my belongings as well as the baby's, and have them shipped back to my home town.

The day I left is one I cannot forget. Michael brought a friend to the trailer to "witness" the move. As things started making their way to the moving van, I watched, while Michael glared and said nothing. Not once did he ask me to stay. I stopped by a friend’s house to tell her goodbye, and then went back to pick up the last of my things, packing them into the trunk of my car.

As Michael and his friend stood there, I got into the car, started it, and rolled down the window.

"I'm going now", I said.

Nothing.

"I said, I'm going now". This time I spoke a little bit louder.
Silence.

Sean was buckled into his car seat, and I shifted into reverse. As I turned and began to drive away, I glanced into the rear-view mirror.

Michael and his friend were walking up the steps.

Then the door closed.