Arrive Magazine - January/February, 2013

She was holding out her right hand in
the space between us, an expectation of
fingertips touching.
I knew she wanted me to want it, and
it made me a little sad because it would
never be that way. She wanted what that
little princess wants, the prince, the cas-
tle, the whole thing. Dreams are great. But
that one, especially, seldom works out.
And especially not in our case.
“I know you want that,” I said to her.
It was dawning on me that I could not
let her hold on to the notion that I might
come around. She had to move on and just
be happy with what she was getting.
“I can’t give you what you want,” I said.
“I wish I could want a baby, and want it
with you. All I can give you is a promise
that I will be there with you and take
care of the kid and raise the kid. If it were
strictly up to me, we wouldn’t have a kid.”
Her face got long and she started to cry
a little.
“You know, honey,” I said. “It’s not
a perfect world, and our situation is
not perfect, and it never was even close
to perfect. If it was, I would be near
your age, and I would not have had kids
before. But we went into this thing [by
that I meant the marriage] knowing all
that. It was either break up and go our
separate ways or accept it and celebrate
that it wasn’t perfect.
“I really hope that can be enough. I
really hope you can live with that and be
happy for what there is and not unhappy
for what there isn’t.”
In an instant, I felt something change
in her.
A quietness settled on the room,
an exhale, the dry breeze after a sum-
mer rain. She was easy now, calm. A sip
of wine. She nodded. What I said had
clicked. It spread on her face like a
new idea.
“Can you live with that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I can.”

After trying other methods, Greg and Liz went through in vitro fertilization with her eggs and his frozen sperm, and she became pregnant in early 2011. On Nov. 14, Samantha Grace was born. Greg was 58. When they got home from the hospital, Greg insisted she sleep between him and Liz, unable to bear the thought of her alone in her crib.