A Life More Complete

---Epilogue----

That first year with Page was the hardest year of my life. I was forced back to work long before I was ready. I sobbed my eyes out from the minute I closed the car door. I understand that many people would have given their right arm to be in my shoes, but it still didn’t make it any easier. I hired a nanny, a manny, actually. A friend of Bob’s named Will who, like Bob, was totally gay in addition to being the greatest caregiver since Mary Poppins. Still didn’t make the task of returning to work any less daunting. I had the financial stability my job afforded me to keep Page home and happy. Regardless of the cost, I would have gone into the poor house to make sure she had the best care.

I had been told by anyone who ever bore children that the months fly by, to cherish every minute I had with Page, but I didn’t need a group of mothers to force their vast knowledge on me. My relationship with Page was different. I loved her so much my chest ached. It was years of lost affection and the need for genuine love that fueled what bloomed inside me every time I looked at her.

I slept in bed with Page cuddled next to me, nursing her every time she woke, the two of us only sleeping through the night when the three of us shared a bed. The man who would come to be known as her daddy would snuggle next to her, kiss her head, let her hold his finger all night, in turn getting the worst night’s sleep of his life. We’d float through our days sleep deprived but genuinely happy.

I sobbed uncontrollably after Will sent me a video of Page saying Mama when she was nine months old. He was crouched in front of her holding a picture of me, asking, “Page-y-Pooh who is this?” accentuating each word in an adorable sing song voice that she was eating up. Banging on the floor in front of her with a big open mouth grin, her two tiny bottom teeth poking through she yelled, “Mama.” I crumbled in Ellie’s office and scared her half to death, one because I was crying and two, because we were about to pitch a portfolio to a huge new client and I looked like I’d gone two rounds with Holyfield. After the pitch she granted me four day work weeks. Off on Mondays made it easier and I owed Ellie big time.

I know it could have been easier. I didn’t have to do it alone financially or emotionally, but I chose to. I chose Page over my own love life and considering my past I thought it might be best to lay low for a while. Rushing never got me anywhere, so I made the conscious decision to take it slow.

It’s funny how your heart can deceive you. Follow your heart, people say, but they never tell you that sometimes it makes the wrong choice. The heart doesn’t just deceive you once and then grow smarter. Well, at least not mine. Mine did it many times and I fell in love too easily, even when it wasn’t right. I had been in love three times in my life and one of them was Page. That time my heart didn’t lead me astray but the other two, those were much harder.

No matter the situation or the exhaustion, the crabbiness and crying, he stuck by me. I loved him from a distance. He understood the past and knew there would come a time when we would be a family. The trust factor needing to be rebuilt over time. Trust, it’s a funny thing; so hard to earn, but so easy to lose. I just couldn’t go in head first like I had done before. There was another life, another heart to think about and my choices ultimately affected her life, too.

He’d come by after work bringing dinner and afterward he’d bathe Page and sing to her while she smiled up at him. Her little hands exploring his face as he made up songs inserting her name into them. He was smitten. She had him wrapped around her little finger for life. She called him Dada one night as he fed her a jar of mashed carrots. The jar hit the floor, splattering bright orange mush on everything within its firing range. Page laughed and we cried. She was about ten months old at that point and seeing the look on his face, I knew it would be nearly impossible to get him to leave. I’d listen to him read her The Belly Button Book, singing the song, making her giggle and every time it would bring tears of joy to my eyes. He didn’t have to do these things, his obligations to Page and to me were something I never bargained for. His whole life changed in just a few days, but he was never resentful. The best part wasn’t that he loved Page; it was that he loved me, too. Loving Page was non-negotiable, but loving me was never a requirement. He would have been in her life regardless because after he showed up at the hospital there was no chance I was getting rid of him.

Rachel and Maizey loved her to excess, too much, I felt at times, Rachel especially. When Page was six months old, Rachel began telling her that God made her look just like her Aunt Rachel because he knew she would never have children. Page’s big blue eyes and bright blonde Shirley Temple curls did resemble Rachel, but I couldn’t bear to break Rachel’s heart and remind her of what Page’s father looked like. Same toe-head blonde curls, unruly and disheveled. It took bottles of “No More Tangles” just to run a brush through it, but it never mattered to me that she resembled him. I loved him through her. I had no other choice. People would stop me on the street and comment on her hair. Pushing her in the stroller as she smiled up at the strangers cooing in her face and patting her messy, tousled hair. They’d ask, “Where did she get those beautiful blonde curls?” and all I could say was, “her father.” These people would look at the man standing next to me and smile. That’s really all they could do.

The year wasn’t only hard because of my return to work but because of my divorce. My divorce from Tyler was made final just one month following Page’s first birthday. I stood in court alone even though Ben insisted he join me. I needed to go it alone, but when I reviewed the amended divorce decree and under the section labeled Legal Minor Child, Tyler had checked the box that said “Wavier of Parental Rights”. I leaned over and threw up in the wastebasket that sat next to the small round table I was sitting at with my lawyer. I didn’t understand how he could hate her. He didn’t even know her. I signed the paperwork; the judge stamped it and that was the end. He was out of our lives for good. Part of me always thought he would come to his senses, maybe grow up enough to realize what he was missing out on, but it obviously never happened.

I crossed paths with him once when Page was about three years old. We were rushing through downtown Los Angeles, on the way to a music class I had signed her up for. I parked in a parking garage a few blocks from the storefront that housed the music class, which I had forgotten was also the street where Tyler’s office was still located. Tossing her in the stroller, I walked quickly out onto the sidewalk, my hair whipped into a messy pile on the top of my head, a headband holding back the loose strands. I was wearing a pair of cut-offs and a fitted tank stretched across my pregnant belly as I nearly ran him down with the stroller. I remember apologizing, but after taking in his face I brushed past without a second look. He was dressed in a suit and had a cigarette hanging from the right side of his mouth. He never looked down at the little girl in the stroller and I’m not sure how I would’ve responded if he had. I didn’t give him a chance to speak nor do I think he would have. He should’ve been embarrassed by his easy out, but knowing Tyler he saw it as a strategic move. Trini bailed on him shortly after I filed for divorce, leaving him heart broken and devastated according to the tabloids. I found that hard to believe because he’s incapable of feeling.

I married Ben when Page was two and we went on to have three boys. Our life was crazy, but I was crazy in love with him. I quit my job shortly after Page turned two and went to work for Ben. His company was now my company, which would become our children’s one day. Looking back on it now, as cliché as it sounds, I wouldn’t change a thing knowing this is where I ended up. Everyone says I should hate Tyler, but I don’t. I got the best thing from him—Page. I know one day there will come a time when she’ll ask about him and I want to be able to tell her that I loved him. That she was conceived out of love and was never a mistake or an accident in my eyes. And that she has a father who loves her more than his other three children, something he’ll never admit to, but everyone knows is true. I don’t want either of them hurt in this process of self-discovery that will one day take place. I never hid it from Page that Ben adopted her, but I also wasn’t entirely forthcoming with the information I shared. My heart aches for her and for what is to come in the future. It may be premature for me to worry about what may come, but I’m a mother and that’s what I do. Until then, I have to have faith that I made the right choice. I chose to love deeply. I chose to follow those words that somehow failed me in the past. Love makes a family.