"Did you put Mom's picture in my bag?"
My father stared at the road before him as we drove home from the hospital.
"Yes," he replied. "I thought it would cheer you up."
My father had a knack of doing things that could be interpreted either way. Since the discovery of the picture coincided with my dream of her, I interpreted it as a postive sign. But had I not seen and heard her message that scary night in the hospital, I would have felt worse looking at a picture of my mother with a child in her arms, who happened to be me, staring back into the camera lens, adoringly.
I had hugged the nurses goodbye and opened the drawer to look at The Bible one last time. Strange that this one book gave me solace during my ordeal at the hospital but when I flipped through the pages and read many passages, there were many similarities to the Koran. These passages calmed me down and made me ponder about my situation.
Three weeks and my wedding day would be here. My fiancee had booked our flight to Spain. We did not book with a tour or an all inclusive package. Ironically, we decided to only book three hotels in the first three cities we would be staying in and then travel south by train for the rest of the trip. The honeymoon journey mimicked reality: we were about to embark on a route less travelled--winging it all the way.
Our voicemail machine was flooded with calls. I had a dozen messages strictly from Yvonne inquiring about my health. She told me that the final exam was brutal and that she had problems concentrating while worrying about me. My exam was deferred until early October--they would not let me write it now while the material was still fresh in my mind. Instead, I would have to return after marriage to get my credit.
She began asking a million questions about the wedding--what to expect, what to wear and wedding gift ideas. She was over-the-moon excited to be invited. In total, I had 15 work colleagues and schoolmates attending the wedding and they were all anticipating an exotic event. All I cared about was being so nervous as to hurl at the head table in front of 450 guests. Yes, 450 people.
Did I know all of them? No? Did I want to know who was invited? No. All I cared about was getting through the ceremony and the reception afterwards. Without interruption, without being physically sick, without wedding crashers, and without anyone finding out about my secret. Sad but true.
Every call, every conversation with him ended up with me revealing nothing. Don't get me wrong. I certainly tried. But without us knowing much about each other to begin with, broaching the subject of my ovaries was not going to be easy.
August 1991 was particularily a hard month. No job or school to keep me busy. Most of my friends were vacationing or working. Everyone was busy.
And I had no one to confide in...until one interesting day.
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