“Please, Let Me Stay Home!”

Remember when I rejoiced at being able to retire my broken monocled ventriloquist doll Willy into our attic? I mentioned that the only more celebratory moment at that time in my life was when my parentally mandated pro-life bracelet took a quasi-accidental voyage down the toilet pipes into the sewer. This is that story.

When my sister Julie and I were young, we accompanied our parents to pro-life rallies. I use "accompanied" lightly, as we were never really given a choice (teehee) as to whether we attended or stayed home. I would have done just about anything to be able to boycott those rallies. I even entertained telling my Mom I would become a nun if she would let me stay home, but I had a goal to be the first female priest, and becoming a nun would totally foil that plan. Instead, Julie and I, under duress, piled into the station wagon with our little arms donning uncomfortable and poorly made metal anti-Roe v. Wade bracelets.

Thankfully there was enough room in the middle seat so that we didn't have to share real estate with the "save the embryo" posters stacked dozens high in the far back seat of our vehicle. After my first pro-life rally, I refused to ever again look at any sign stapled to a one-by-two board. I was always afraid they would depict some grotesque horror intended to scare the living hell out of anyone who thought abortion was a good idea.  I'd witnessed my fill of dismembered fetuses splayed upon aluminum surgical trays, or images of in-utero babies floating innocently in amniotic fluid, on whose nameless little faces while someone had used a permanent marker to draw a sad face and small tear. Those signs were gross and surreal and gave me indescribably horrible feelings (not to mention nightmares).

Thankfully, my parents' signs were not hideous. They heralded messages of compassion and hope, but the post-traumatic stress of seeing those other, sickening signs made me swear off ever peering beneath the stack in the backseat that taunted me like Pandora's box.

I was always confused at how people with empathy for unborn persons found it okay, and even somewhat imperative, to be so incredibly cruel to living persons. Pro-lifers in those days tended to shout obscenities into the faces of people whose opinions (both scientific and religious) differed from theirs. It was as confusing to me as overhearing Mom and Dad argue about religion. It never made sense that the one and only thing I ever witnessed my parents disagree on was the very first institution set up around a man they both loved and called their lord. It confounded my sister Julie and me, and witnessing the seething debates between pro-lifers and pro-choicers fostered the same strange feeling that would well up inside me at hearing a heated conversation between my parents about their varied views on church matters.

My dad, as we all know, is impassioned about many things. Saving the lives of souls transported within an unborn embryo or fetus is absolutely no exception. My most memorable story to convey Dad's passion and belief about the sanctity of the unborn took place Christmas of 2010, when Mr. & Mrs. Gladbach greeted us in the back of church after Christmas Eve Mass at our family parish.

We share greetings full of typical holiday cheer as the Gladbachs eyeball the 16 members of my immediate family, and we somehow all avoid answering the awkward inquiry as to why Gene Arthur's oldest daughter has never settled down and married– a question most folks, including Jim Gladbach in this moment, ask in the third person as if I'm not standing only feet away from them. Seeing that this question is met with under-our-breath utterances of things such as the laws having to change, or Jenée hasn't yet met the right wom.. uh, er, um...person, Mr. Gladbach proceeds to ask a question that is more benign and less awkward for everyone.  Or so we think.

"Gene, how many grandchildren do you have now?"

Dad beams with pride as he puts his arm around his oldest grandson, Nicholaus. "I have 9 beautiful grandchildren, Jim. Joyce and I are very blessed."

There is a moment of general confusion amongst me and my siblings as we look at one another with WTF? gazes, and then finally shake our heads and roll our eyes. It's apparent that we are all resigned to the fact that spelling is not Dad's only weakness, but that math may also be one of his less fortified skills. We all turn and give Jim and Sandy Gladbach polite smiles and partial head nods as we look sideways at each other, and I begin a headcount of my nieces and nephews.

After we hug these two people whom we will likely not see again until next year's Christmas Mass, the four of us kids whip around and humorously berate my father for miscounting the grandchildren with whom he and Mom have been blessed. We all laugh that sarcastic, at-someone-else's-expense Arthur laugh, and I grab Dad's arm and say something about him being a piece of work.

As we all turn to leave the church for our convoy to the tradition of meat pie madness awaiting us, Dad stops abruptly,  turns to us, and says with certainty, "I do have nine grandchildren." He proceeds to the church exit.

My siblings and I immediately reply in unison (accompanied by his eight, not nine, grandchildren), "Um, no you don't. You have eight grandchildren, Dad" at which point someone begins to name them out loud.

Dad stops again, turns to us and says matter-of-factly, "I have nine grandchildren. What about Finn?"

We are all expecting some sort of punch line, and when it isn't delivered, my brother says, "Who the eff is Finn?"

"My precious grandson who was miscarried," Dad responds.

I'm not sure if someone has actually punched me in the throat, or if I have somehow instantly grown an Adam's apple. A huge knot wells up in my esophagus and I freeze, unable to speak and not quite sure I want to say anyway. I try to anticipate what on earth could possibly happen after I am able to get my body to finally exhale.

I look over at my sister and wonder How are her eyelids blinking that fast? I peer at my brothers and their wives; they both resemble the mannequins used to stage those 1970s nuclear bomb preparedness videos. You know, the frozen, smiling fiberglass models  standing lifeless in a serene domestic setting before the simulated bomb obliterates them into dust.

My brother, Jerrod, is the only one who musters the courage to say anything, while I'm frankly just fine with having been momentarily struck deaf and dumb. "Geez, Dad, really?!  What the hell?"

I suddenly realize this "ninth grand baby" Dad refers to belonged to my dear brother, Jerrod. If he and my sister-in-law had had another boy, they would have named the baby Finnegan and called him "Finn." This adds to the poignancy of the moment. Jerrod turns and walks away.

I can't breathe, mostly because I can't imagine how my little brother is feeling, and because I know my dad is serious. He believes this–that he has nine grandchildren– and though something about this is astonishing and unsettling to all of us, there is something that is equally fascinating about it, touching us all in an indescribable way. His unwavering faith and belief that a human soul perished in utero before becoming a member of his family (the family that is the pride and the joy and very reason for his existence) causes tears to well in Dad's eyes as he takes a moment to reflect. Without defensiveness or justification, my father inhales, turns from us, takes my mother's hand, begins to walk to the church exit, and says over his shoulder, "I pray for Finn every day, and I can't wait to meet him in heaven."

That damned knot expands in my throat, and now it feels as though someone has kicked me in the stomach.

I swallow hard, look into the church sanctuary at the Blessed Sacrament and recall the conversation I had with Dad when I was a little girl. He encouraged me to always be the one believer in a room full of non-believers. He imparted this wisdom not only regarding faith within those "Sodom and Gomorrah moments" of life, but in terms of remaining steadfast in my own individual beliefs, while standing up for what is true and right and just (especially when the weak and innocent are unable to do so for themselves).

I close my eyes and finally exhale, hoping that my brother is okay and that my dad will someday soon stop carrying the weight of Jesus's cross on his own back. As if on auto-pilot, I send a prayerful nod to Finn to please remind his grandfather that everything happens for a reason.

As we walk in solemnity (and awkward confusion) to our cars, I'm reminded of a poem I wrote to Mom on Mother's Day years ago, a couple of stanzas acknowledging the joy I must have felt when I chose to be born to her. My choice, I thought again. Of course, I don't really remember this pre-Earthen moment of selection, but what if I, and all of us, had a choice to come into the world the way we want and to whom we want? I mean, if the very Source from which we all come is all-encompassing, with no beginning and no end, aren't we? What if we all have a choice before we enter the biological material known as human bodies? It would certainly put an end to both sides of the debate about who, when, what and where a human begins and ends. If we are all truly souls, then as the Tibetan monks remind us, we never die, and we've always been. We just go on to something else and, hopefully, something more.

Sure, it obliterates the strong stands everyone on either side of this and any other aisle of polarity we can conjure, but what if it's true? If I had a choice about to whom I was born, maybe Finn decided at the last minute that he wanted to be somewhere else, or that my brother and sister-in-law's lives would be more rich and full for experiencing the momentary loss of him, or that his grandfather would one day make a statement on Christmas Eve that would rock the worlds of his four children, and give his eight living grandchildren something more to ponder. I have no clue. Anyone who says they do is full of shit. We don't know anything. We can only have faith that something is true or not true, and that faith is often directly related to what we want to believe.

I realize as I pass the glass doors of the church's sanctuary, that I don't know anything. I don't know anything except that I have a father whom I dearly love and whose unapologetic faith means that he remains committed to fighting for unborn persons. Though my life entails a path and a belief that differs from his, since I feel everyone should be able to make their own choices about what is real and true for them (something my daddy actually taught me), I am finally at peace with our difference about this issue. I understand my dad more in this moment, and as I look back with a "Cat’s in the Cradle" perspective on our seething arguments about religion and the beliefs that surround it, I can finally breathe again.

I walk to catch up with Mom and Dad, take my dad's other hand and say to him, "I love you, Dad. Merry Christmas."

Dad smiles and clasps my hand tighter. Mom keeps walking forward without looking at either of us. I know this is because she is about to cry.

"Hey, guys. Remember that time you blamed Teri (my cousin) for stopping up the toilet by flushing a tampon? Well, I was actually the one who stopped it up."

They both look at me in confusion, as I was only about 10 years old, and both of them know I wasn't yet menstruating.

"Not with a tampon. I purposely flushed my pro-life bracelet down the toilet. I kind of hated it, and it turned my wrist green," I say with the innocence of a 10-year old.

Dad looks down at me, pulls me and Mom closer to him and keeps walking. He could give a rat's ass about a toilet clog from over 30 years ago, or that damn metal bracelet. We have meat pies to consume and it is the Christmas season; a time of year when we are reminded about the important things in life. This particular Christmas, I am reminded that differing beliefs don't matter as long as everyone is kind and loving and open-minded about it all.

Later that night, it dawns on me that the 60+ head count of my closest relatives in this room could be slightly skewed to over 70 if we, like my father, acknowledged all the "Finns" of our family.

This overwhelms my mind for a moment.

As one of my cousin's kids shrieks, I take a deep breath and ponder the idea that maybe Finn decided crowds weren't really his thing.