mary van milligen

Sometimes we’re drawn to things without explanation. We sense an urgency to be close to something or someone. For me, I can’t resist my adoration for the one and only Fox Mulder, the handsome special agent character from The X Files. My magnetic energy towards this fictional hero occurs for some obvious reasons, the actor, David Duchovny, projects an ostentatious sex appeal and I find his quick wit and philosophical intellect irresistible, but I don’t fall for him for these particular reasons, I find his character simpatico with my spirit. Like Fox, I want to believe.

Fox represents a part of the universe that I adore, the submission of acknowledging that we have yet to attain even a small sense of our existence. The vulnerability of accepting something that appears to be unfathomable. The hunt in the attempt to find an answer to a question we may never solve. Fox, my crush with great hair, battles with something that we all combat, our commitment to our faith.

One of the largest doubts I had with my faith occurred when I was pregnant with my second daughter. I was placed in a predicament that tested my will. My spiritual compass spiraled; I had no sense of direction, and my mind traveled to solutions that I never thought I’d summon. I had to submit. I had to believe.

So, if I met Fox and shared my story, he would believe. And who doesn’t find a man sexy when he admits that he could be wrong?

My faith journey inspired my book, The Glimpse Gift. I’m sharing my first chapter with you. Enjoy!

Chapter 1

My heart voraciously pumps; I have one second to get it right.  Without another thought, I move my hand.  The light’s intensity pierces everything.  I can’t take my eyes off him.  It can’t be real. I don’t want to have to live without him…but I don’t have a choice.  Death decides and its permanence and the grief it creates always takes residence in us. Is this what I was born to see?

Every child is a miracle, and every person has a story filled with rare circumstances; moments of conflict filled with minds that choose to run and fall into chaos, minds that seek some tiny sliver of quiet in the noise, and minds that guide their guts to bleed.  All of these events finally lead to a fateful closure.  As a small character in the universe, my plot has always dipped its toe into all sorts of unusual moments that fall into all of the above.  From weeks after my conception, I began my first unusual story twist.

My mother told me that her pregnancy with me was the hardest challenge of her life.  Unfortunately, she had several specialists tell her that I wasn’t meant to be.  At 19 weeks gestation, the first specialist told her that I was a girl, that I was measuring a little small, that her amniotic fluid was low, and he suspected that I could potentially have a mental disorder called Dandy Walker. Unfortunately for her, the scan wasn’t strong enough to notice my superhero like invincible strong will, and the spot on Mona Lisa smile I’d been working on in her uterus for weeks.

He continued to add more harsh ingredients to his perinatologist mixing bowl when he added a teaspoon of potential markers for Down’s syndrome and a dash of likelihood for Trisomy 13, which hosts a high percentage of not being compatible with life.  My mother became terrified with this extra, extra, read all about it front page news.   She felt the weight of anxiety limit her movement and vigorously and voraciously step to the plate and take a bat to her mind.  The slow motion time that followed froze her.

As the days went by, she struggled the most in the morning hours, and every evening she felt calm because she had conquered one more day.  But when the lines of light peeked through her bedroom blinds at sunrise, my mother had to face her uncertain reality that she may miscarry at any time, that she may never get to hold me in her arms, that she may lose the chance to have another child. And as we all clearly know now, she would have never known the value and level of hilarity that I would bring to her family. I was rockin’ knock knock jokes by the time I was three, and I had prodigy levels of sarcasm by seven.

Two weeks after the first brutal appointment, my mother and father would go and see another maternal fetal specialist.  This visit was like witnessing the lighting of a match for dynamite, and this forthright, lack of bedside manner doctor’s menu consisted of nothing but morbidity.  He said, sharply and insincerely as he spent more time looking at his watch and not looking at my mother, that this type of pregnancy is “serendipitous to nature” and “the baby won’t survive”. And this line, this line is my favorite “and don’t worry, this will all be over in a couple of weeks.” Spoken like a true imbecile that didn’t possess a uterus or a humanistic approach.  He swiftly headed out of the examining room before briefly assuring my mother that she could have healthy pregnancies in the future.   “But this one” he said. “This one looks like a textbook case.”  I always wished my Mom would have taken me back to the hospital when I was a toddler, have me hobble up to him as I held my little Care Bear, say hello sweetly and then proceed to flip him off for his incorrect diagnosis.

After my mother and father left that examination room, she began to wait for my approaching death. This painstaking time of life for my mother became a get out of jail free card for me.  Any time I would frustrate her, like when I accidentally backed the one family car into the other one or when I lied and told  my mom that I wasn’t going into the city and decided to go anyway, I would simply remind her and yell “ Don’t forget. I almost died.”

After leaving the Dr. Gloom and Doom room all those years ago, my mother remembered all of the women sitting behind the large reception area. Some stared at her, and some whispered softly to others.  They all had small, forced grins and some even had tears in their eyes.  Doctor/patient confidentiality doesn’t happen when the mother to be looks like she can’t go on. The cape of empathy in that office should have made my mother feel consolation, but the reaction made my mother feel even more destroyed by her grief. Once the doctor’s office door closed and my parents headed towards the elevator to leave the building, my mother forced words through the lump in her throat and uttered to my father.

“This is horrible.”

“I know.” He said softly.

“Why?” she began to softly let it out, nestling her head into his chest and cried “Why?”

My father placed his arm around her waist and let her nudge her head in between his neck and shoulder. He then began to cry and emphatically told my mother “you just need to talk to her every day that she is inside of you.  Every day that she is here.  You make sure she knows that we love her, and we want to meet her and know her so badly.”  He wanted to say more, but then another unusual moment occurred.

The elevator door dinged, and they got inside and pressed the G for ground level.  Right before the door was about to close, a young, Hispanic man dressed in white overalls stained with fresh, taupe paint appeared. He wore an old/ratty baseball hat and was working in the east wing for renovations.  He entered the elevator and brightly smiled at my parents, completely unresponsive to the noticeably dreadful faces they both possessed, and pressed the two for the second floor.  Then, ignoring all cultural norms regarding customary elevator behavior, he turned completely around and looked at my parents.  With a positively boisterous and energetic voice,  the man said, “Look at you two holding hands.”  He then added “ ya know there really isn’t anything more powerful in this world than a strong love between two people.  It’s a beautiful thing.  And not everyone in this world gets to feel it.”  Abruptly after this man interrupted my parent’s program with this important message, the elevator stopped at the second floor and then he tilted his cap towards my mother and father and said “Love. It is the answer.  It is the hope for all that matters. Esperar.”   And just like that, the didactic stranger disappeared.  Years later, my mother would think of this man and realize his brief encounter was more than likely not a coincidence, especially when she found out that esperar meant to wait, to hope.  All of the prayers did something.  They did more than most would expect.