My “annunciation” came on a rainy night while I was bussing tables at the local pub. It was the only job I could find as a girl of 17 with no car. The unexpected visitor was a guy friend I had first met in high school during religion class. A talkative fellow who had transferred to our school in the third quarter, I am sure our teacher placed Tim next to me to keep him out of trouble. Instead, after a few days of sitting next to Tim, I was the one getting into trouble — reprimanded for talking during class, for the first time in my life.
Tim was moved up to the front row, but we kept on talking, on and off over the months, which stretched into years. He was the only one who could break through my quiet reserve. I guess that was one of the reasons I fell in love with him. I could tell he cared for me, but he had a long-time girlfriend from his neighborhood, and I intuitively knew they were sexually active. A “good Catholic girl” like me could not compete. When he transferred schools once again, we barely kept in touch. But whenever I thought he was gone for good, he would make another appearance in my life. And when he showed up at my work that rainy night, he had a message for me I would never forget.
“She’s pregnant,” he blurted out.
I felt my girlish hopes and dreams slowly fall around me like deflated balloons. As they gently touched down on the floors of my heart, I reached out and put my arms around him, meaning to show him kindness and support. But as I felt the cold drops of rain on his jacket brush against my bare arms, I realized I was also saying goodbye. There was clearly no future for Tim and me. At least, not the kind I expected.
The true Annunciation also came unexpectedly to a young virgin girl, who might have been carrying out mundane work on a quiet evening. The news was shared by an angel, but it was no less disruptive to the life she had begun to imagine for herself — quite possibly a very normal life with a hardworking husband, healthy children, and a safe home — we can only imagine what young Mary dreamed. Whatever ordinary plans she had for her future, she released them and reached out to receive the extraordinary life God offered her instead.
My entrance into motherhood
I still held on to a handful of ordinary hopes and dreams about 10 years later, when Tim and I were standing before the Marian altar at church, blithely determined to create our own Holy Family. Catholic newlyweds often take a moment to ask the Blessed Mother to intercede for them at this time, but I needed some extra motherly aid because my new vocation was complicated. I called up my little maid of honor, a slight wisp of a girl with flowers in her hair and a violet satin dress. Abandoned by her biological mother years ago, Kylie had already started to call me “Mom” without prompting. I confirmed her choice of me, took a naive leap of faith, and promised before God and the assembly that I would be her mother forever.
That is how, in a strange and wondrous way, I became a “virgin mother” at age 28.
I was also a “new mother” and a “stepmother,” and it happened all at once. Tim was so young when Kylie was born, that we soon found ourselves in a life where we always seemed out of place. Most of her classmates had parents who were at least 10 years older than us.
Meanwhile, the newlyweds across the street were having babies. It was a tough start to what would become a very difficult motherhood journey.
In the church where we often attended Mass during those years, there is a window that shows Mary on a donkey, the Holy Infant in her arms, and Joseph, tired but determined, as he leads his family on the flight to Egypt. I may have been a mother, but I usually felt much more like Joseph in those days, guiding my fledgling family through unfamiliar territory into a future that felt very uncertain. In that stained glass image of Joseph’s strength, I borrowed some courage to carry my heavy burden.
Motherhood found me again a few years after the wedding when I became pregnant with my first baby. We practiced Natural Family Planning (NFP) and had been often open to life, despite my deep misgivings. Tim and I were both having different problems at work, money was tight, and Kylie was now a surly teenager, who seemed to be directing all her adolescent angst against me. Scared as I was, I embraced the little life growing inside me. At age 31, I was about to become a somewhat “normal” mother!
But that moment quickly came to an end. Our little one died unseen inside me, and with him, it seemed, my short-lived hope to be a normal mother also withered away into darkness. While sorrow like a sword pierced our hearts, my husband chose to name him Simeon John, and we presented him to God in the dark temple of our grief.
A ‘visitation’
Three more years had passed when Peggy, my dear older friend at the office, brought a cup of coffee to me at my desk, and my stomach lurched unexpectedly at the mere whiff of my beloved beverage. “Oh,” I whispered. “I’m afraid I’m pregnant.”
“Congratulations!” she replied, smiling broadly.
It was a “visitation” of sorts, a mother who was older than me, giving me the courage to embrace life a third time. With three children older than my Kylie, and two unborn children who had died, Peggy understood the joys and the sorrows of a mother’s journey. While her young adult children switched majors, weathered breakups, and battled illnesses, there was also a struggle for life going on inside of me. Despite being years apart, we were not that different, and we supported each other amid the mess, as did Mary and Elizabeth in the days of their visitation.
At that time in my life, the only thing more frightening than bringing a baby into my chaotic world was the sickening fear of another miscarriage. After several years of practice in NFP, however, I knew exactly what to do. My charting showed that my hormone levels had long been teetering just below normal. I needed progesterone, and I needed it quickly. Fortunately, I found a Catholic doctor who already understood NFP, and she prescribed it without question.
No time for regrets
Because I was turning 35, mine was already considered a “geriatric” pregnancy. The “babies” across the street were now starting grade school, and my Kylie was halfway through high school. It seemed that “normal” motherhood would forever elude me. Nevertheless, when eight-pound Evangeline Grace came roaring into our life with the power and brilliance of a once-in-a-lifetime comet, I wasted no time on regrets; I embraced the burning wonder with both hands. I had suffered too much not to love her with abandon. As her name reveals, I offered her up to God on the altar of my heart, a wisdom which may have saved her from being spoiled completely.
Now my hair is streaked with gray. I have one daughter on the verge of her 30s, another on the threshold of middle school, and a son who often shows up as a yellow butterfly, a signal to remind me that his life is safe in God. I know enough to realize this is not necessarily the last chapter of my strange motherhood story. The new gynecologist wrinkles her brow with worry when she learns I am not using artificial birth control. But getting pregnant at midlife would seem almost mundane at this point. In whatever ways I might be called to be a mother in the future, I have a feeling it would come in a surprising way, at an unexpected time. Whatever may come, I beg God to give me the strength to bear it.
So if you were to ask me, when is the best time of life to become a mother, how would I answer you?
The best time to become a mother is the time God gives you.
Comments