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Melinda and I locked eyes, and that’s when I knew. It was like we were speaking telepathically.
“Mary Louise,” we said at the same time.
A hush went over the room. Mary Louise. I felt certain about it when I looked at the bundle of joy in Melinda’s arms.
“It’s perfect,” Andrew said.
“A more beautiful name I have never heard,” Tristan said. He had tears in his eyes again!
“But are you sure?” Andrew asked me. “For her to be named after both of our mothers, but not yours…”
“I don’t care,” I said, speaking from the heart. With these three, I didn’t need to think about what I was going to say. “Things don’t have to be perfectly fair in all things with us. There are times when I’ll hog more of the baby, and other times when you both will. Just like we’ve done with Melinda.”
I reached down and took the baby from Melinda. As I did so, her eyes fluttered open for a few moments. They looked like my eyes, I decided. That was enough for me.
“Welcome to the world, Mary Louise Norris,” I said.
The next day was a blur of nurses, lectures, and information. They helped Melinda breastfeed. They gave us all tips on how to hold her, how to care for her, what to expect for the next few days, weeks, and months. We were bombarded with information. It was all so overwhelming.
And then, before we knew it, we were leaving the hospital. We stopped by Norris Marketing to show off the new baby to all of Melinda’s employees—there were almost two dozen of them now, many of whom were scooped up after New England Digital Marketing’s sweeping layoffs. Then we got in the helicopter to return to the Bellerophon, where we had agreed to raise Mary Louise for the first month.
“Do they even make car seats for helicopters?” Melinda asked as we got in. She had our daughter wrapped to her chest in one of those cloth wrap carriers.
“I’m sure a regular car seat would work in one of these seats,” Andrew said. “I’ll start looking into it.”
“Some day, all of this will be yours,” I whispered to the baby when we were over the water. “This helicopter, and that boat out in the distance. All the light touches.”
“Are you doing a Lion King bit?” Melinda asked. “Stop it.”
“Just be glad I’m not holding her out the open door,” I replied. “Like Mufasa and Simba on the rock.”
Melinda covered the baby and leaned away from me. “Don’t even joke about that!”
“Sorry, dear.” I put an arm around her and kissed her head, then did the same to Mary Louise. But I knew exactly what she meant. Suddenly, nothing in my life mattered except this little bundle of love. Even joking about putting her in danger raised my heart rate.
It was a funny thing, now that I thought about it. I’d spent my early years playing competitive sports, and was elite at the high school and college levels. I’d conquered the business world, earning more money than anyone had a right to possess. If life was a game, and wealth was a scoreboard, I had surely won.
Yet none of that compared to the satisfaction of holding my daughter in my arms. Everything else was so petty compared to her.
“I love you so much,” I said to Mary Louise. Then I turned to Melinda. “And I love you so much.”
“Good thing you picked me out of the surrogacy catalog, huh?” she smiled.
“We had a say in that,” Andrew said in the seat across from us.
“Indeed, it was a group effort,” Tristan added.
We smiled. It was a group effort, and would continue to be so.
We were all so, so lucky.
