Amelia UNDER THE SOUTHERN SKY

THE DAY MY BROTHER RAN into the makeshift Southern Coast office in what had once been the ballroom of Dogwood but that now held our staff of twelve—who had, in my humble opinion, made magic of a dying magazine—and handed me two newspapers, something extraordinary happened. My past and my future merged, became a seamless, undeniably right present.

The front page of the Cape Carolina Chronicle boasted, “Saxton Wins Mayor in Landslide Victory.”

The Life Styles section of the New York Times proclaimed, “Modern Motherhood with Amelia Saxton Thaysden.”

I smiled up at my brother. “Banner day for the Saxtons, huh?”

It wasn’t lost on me that giving birth to two beautiful babies had made the gap I had worried would form between my brother and me—after my mother told me the truth about Tilley being his biological mother—nonexistent. I understood now that it wasn’t my truth to tell. It was my mother’s and Tilley’s.

“I think it was you standing out there with one baby on your front and one on your back all day and handing out rulers to voters that put me over the edge.” He winked at me.

Yeah. My brother had received 1,274 of the total 1,709 votes because of me in an overstressed BabyBjörn with two cranky infants. But whatever. It wasn’t November if I wasn’t standing in front of Cape Carolina High’s gymnasium, our town’s polling place.

I hadn’t let Parker read the column before it had gone to print. I said I wanted it to be a surprise, but really, I didn’t want his input. I loved and cherished him, but this was my side of the story. I couldn’t think about it through his eyes. I needed part of this journey to be mine and mine alone. Almost two years after I walked into that fertility clinic for the very first time, I had finally managed to write the story I had started that day. Only, when it came time to put it on paper, it felt like a different story. Yes, I’ll use those facts one day. The interviews, too. But, for now, a column seemed like the way to go. A Modern Love column, in fact.

This time, I didn’t have to run home from work to show my husband the story I had written about him. He eagerly grabbed it from me the minute he saw it. I looked over his shoulder as he read.

When I was fourteen years old, I cheated on a test. It was wrong. I knew it then, and I know it now. I’m sure if I had gotten caught the teacher would have said I was only cheating myself, but I think we all know that isn’t true. I was cheating off Parker Thaysden, who, even though he was three years younger, was the smartest guy in my math class. I told myself I hadn’t meant to look over and see his answer, that it was simply a coincidence that the problem I was stuck on was one that happened to be right in my view. But, deep down, I knew the truth.

Eight days later, I found out I could never have children, that I had primary ovarian insufficiency syndrome.

I thought it was because I’d cheated on my math test.

Twenty-ish years later, I still can’t explain the exact laws of karma (or, as might be obvious, the laws of exponents), but what I do know is that fate very rarely delivers upon that straight of a line. Maybe I did something—or a whole string of things—right, because, despite the odds, despite the truth I had long known, I did end up with babies. A perfect, matching set of them, in fact. They came from the journalist and philanthropist Greer McCann Thaysden’s gorgeous eggs.

I was always better in science than I was in math, thank goodness. Maybe that’s what drew me to investigate what people do with their extra frozen embryos. Maybe that’s what led me uncover that Greer’s embryos had been deemed abandoned.

The day in eighth grade I told Parker Thaysden I’d copied off his paper, I didn’t know what was going to happen. In fact, I had stayed up half the night worried and wondering. Would he tell the teacher? The principal? Would I get expelled? None of that happened. He said, “Who cares, Amelia? I had the answer, and you didn’t.”

That rings true now, as I hold this beautiful pair of babies in my arms. My ladybug and four-leaf clover. That’s what Greer had nicknamed them; that was what they looked like under a microscope. Who knew they would turn out to be my lucky charms? Who knew that what I didn’t have, Greer would end up giving me?

I would eventually pay Parker Thaysden back by writing a biology essay for him. On mitosis, in fact. The cell division that results in two child cells having the same number and kind of chromosome as the parent.

No, these babies don’t have the exact number and kind of chromosome as Parker. Only half. Half-Parker, half-Greer. But when they kicked inside of me, when the doctor laid their warm, tiny bodies on my chest, they became mine, too.

I never expected to fall in love with the boy next door, with the one whose paper I’d cheated off of. I never expected to get pregnant with his babies. And I never, ever imagined that doing each of those things would heal what was broken inside of me, what had been broken, in fact, since that day I sat on a cold doctor’s office table in a thin gown, receiving the hardest news of my life. I never expected that thirteen pounds, eight ounces of babies could connect Parker and me to his late wife in such an inextricable way, while also giving us both permission to truly release her.

But maybe Parker did. In fact, his childhood voice rings in my ears now, as I place my babies side by side in their crib overlooking a mesmerizing stretch of sound that is always the same and yet never the same. I had the answer, and you didn’t.

It isn’t math; it most certainly is science. And, at first, I thought that, surely, it was modern love.

Generations of Saxtons and Thaysdens have welcomed their children home to this tiny peninsula, this singular spot in one of the world’s most beautiful forgotten corners. I watched the way my babies turned toward each other, by instinct, the way they fussed and then, their eyes fixing on me, their mother, settled. And I finally realized that, this love? It wasn’t as modern as I once believed. Quite the opposite, in fact.

This was a love as old as time.

In a lot of ways, the day this column published was the same as the day the last one did. Tears were shed. Indelible memories were made. But, this time, the life I had carefully cultivated didn’t fall apart. In fact, I’m proud to say, my life isn’t cultivated in the least. It’s messy. It’s busy. It’s happy. It’s exhausting. And, most of all, it’s real.

I went upstairs, saying I had to check on the babies. But instead of turning right toward the nursery, I turned left toward my childhood bedroom. I pulled that tiny pink-and-purple notebook out from underneath my mattress and sat down on the bed, looking out the window. I flipped through until I found the entry from that fateful day. Pen in hand, I put a big check mark next to Become editor in chief of a magazine.

Then I read Find a man that loves me and doesn’t care that I can’t have children. I crossed it out and rewrote, Find a man that loves me for exactly who I am. Because that had been what I was asking for, really, hadn’t it? Now, with time and a grown-up dose of rationality, I realized it wasn’t having those gorgeous, perfect babies that healed me. It was realizing that no matter how my life played out, I was who I was born to be. I was enough.

I thought of Parker, downstairs, and I smiled. I picked up the pen again. Find a man who loves me for exactly who I am. Check.

Life, I have realized, ebbs and flows like the tide outside my old bedroom window. Some days the wind is too strong, and sometimes you are carried along on a gentle breeze. The hurricanes come; the landscapes change. Any expert seaman will tell you that, in the roughest seas, it’s best not to fight the tide. It’s better to let it lead you where it wants to, to let it lead you where, maybe, you were supposed to be all along.

All those years I was planning and plotting my course, controlling my every move, I wasn’t controlling anything at all. Now I’ve given in to the pull of the moon, to the song of the sea, to the magical divinity that exists under the Southern sky. It will fill up your heart and never let you go, I realized as I walked down the hall to the nursery, to gaze over my sleeping babies. It will never stop its quest to bring you back where you belong.

And somehow, if you’re really lucky, you’ll do what I did: you’ll find your way back home.