Chapter 6

I don't know whose will it was, but we were married two months later in the Southwestern Chapel, a Gothic oddity in the middle of Central Texas in Georgetown. The wedding was perfect, everyone cried, every one danced and only a few of my old friends got drunk. Although people made an effort not to let me hear Lorelei's name, I heard people talk about her several times, and it had no effect at all! It was a GREAT day.

The night was even better... if I'd ever had any reservation about ministers and sex, I certainly lost it when Cindy showed me a unique use for her "flying fickled finger of fate."

We bought a house in one of the older subdivisions near Hatboro, and settled down into domestic tranquility. Does that sound dull? It was heaven. Cindy knew how to have fun. You've heard the expression "When Momma ain't happy, ain't no one happy?" Well when Cindy had fun, everyone had fun. I tried to analyze it, but it was just a gift, a gift of Joy.

Cindy went into Philadelphia on Tuesdays and Thursdays to teach two classes at Lutheran. She served as a rotating chaplain at a couple of hospitals and filled in for sick or vacationing ministers on Sundays. I was doing pretty well in sales. I was doing incredibly well in sales and if Cindy had had any other sort of job I would have insisted she stay home.

Life changed on our first anniversary. It was such a little thing to be so life changing. We didn't have a party, we went off to a little country inn and barely left our room. It might not be listed with the other fruits of love in the Bible, but Cindy taught me that good sex was a gift of love. It was when we got home that we found our gift from Sandy. It was nothing much, just an appointment card for the fertility clinic!

I don't know how much you know about in vitro, but it is a miracle. The day I'd met Cindy she'd had her ovum harvested. At that time it was a minor outpatient surgery, although new techniques with ultra-sound make it even easier... and reduce the need for fertility drugs.

Without getting too technical, the ovum and about 75,000 certified active swimmers are combined in the lab and the child is implanted about three days later. The process of doing all this is hideously expensive and typically you have several ovum prepared at the same time because the implanting process is fairly straight forward. In our case, we ended up with four embryos. Two of those were implanted in Sandy but in three cases out of four, only one survives.

From a personal standpoint, my part was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, not that I wouldn't go through it a million times for our kids. Cindy had already "done her bit," but I had to go into a little room, by myself, to "provide a sample." We'd had to abstain for five days before hand -- I can't believe I used that word -- to insure a viable sample. I suppose that made it easier, but knowing that everyone was outside waiting for me to "take care of business," was not the way I'd ever thought about creating children.