“Grace” can be defined as a state of blessedness or an acute awareness of the divine.  There have been times when I have been in the presence of grace.  There are the times when I have witnessed the grace of basic human kindness: a person buys food for a stranger or gives change to pay a person’s fare on the bus.  Sometimes, the kindness is as simple as listening to the story of a stressful day.  

I have another definition of grace.  I call it a gift.  I received the gift of grace, one stressful December evening, when I was twenty-two.  I was in Albert Einstein Hospital in New York, in the maternity ward.  I had arrived after the birth of my ex-girlfriend’s baby.  I wasn’t alone.  My mother and godbrother accompanied me.  I needed moral support and there was a genuine question as to the paternity of the baby.  I figured, my mother knew what I looked like when I was born.  Perhaps, she’d be able to glean some answer to paternity just by looking at the baby.  

The time leading up to the baby’s birth had been acrimonious.  When my ex told me that I was the father, I was joyful.  When I learned there was another candidate, I was hurt and stunned.  When she confessed to me that she didn’t know who the father might be, I was disgusted.  I had never experienced wrath until that moment.  I’d been angry before, but wrath was a whole other animal.  I plumbed depths of self control I never suspected I possessed.  My hands remained by my sides by supreme force of will.  

We walked through the hallway until we came to her room.  I walked through the door first.  Candidate number two was standing by her bed, her mother stood by the foot of the bed.  Half-raised in the bed, and in obvious pain, her agitation was apparent at my arrival.  She stammered, “How…?”  “Did I know?” I finished.  “I called the hospital and they told me that you delivered the baby and that you’re scheduled to leave tomorrow.”  Her mother walked closer to her daughter and yelled at me, “You shouldn’t even be here!”  

“If your daughter knew how to keep her legs closed, he’s the one who wouldn’t be here.”  I moved closer to the bed and asked, “Where’s the baby?”  She rolled her eyes and said, “In the nursery.  But you can’t see her!”  I leaned forward on the bed’s metal framed until it screamed.  “Of course, I can.  I’m the father.”  Candidate number two said, “I can stop you from seeing her.”  I reached across the bed and grabbed him, “Oh, really?  You can stop me?  You’re not even from this country.  This is not about the baby, it’s about a Green card for you.  You can’t stop me from doing a damn thing.”  I felt my wrath rising.   My mother and godbrother got between us.  The three of them looked at me as if they were seeing me for the first time.  

We walked to the nursery and stood in front of the glass.  I could see my reflection.  My eyes scanned the faces and names of the new born babies.  It didn’t take long.  She’d given the baby her last name.  I was angry.  It seemed clear that she was already trying to edge me out of the baby’s life.  I asked my mother, “Does anything look familiar?” She stared for a while, but no was the answer that came back.  

I stood staring at this baby girl and felt as if the world had fallen away.  I committed her little face and body to memory.  She was five pounds and five ounces, with black curly hair and the darkest brown eyes I had ever seen.  She was nineteen inches long. Her delicate fingers wrapped around the bright blue blanket keeping her warm.  I moved closer to the glass.  She looked at me; my heart stopped.  It was the strangest feeling.  I felt as if something radiated from me toward the baby.  I felt it lifting up out of myself.  I looked in to her eyes and I felt powerful.  I felt capable.  I was light-headed.  She looked away, returned to myself, I could breathe again.  

I knew with total certainty that I would fight for that child; knew that I would fight to find the truth, whatever that truth might be.  I had a moment I didn’t expect or believe possible.  There was no plan, only what I just experienced.  I wasn’t the man I was before, or even, the man who arrived at the hospital.  I knew what I would fight for, what I had to fight for.  I knew that I had everything I needed for what I would have to endure.  

I walked away from the glass without looking back.  I wanted that one image to hold.  Instinctively, I knew one image could sustain me and something more prolonged with her would undermine me.  We returned to her room.  “I am taking you to court.”  Her mother jumped up from her chair screaming, “You can’t take her to court.  You’re not even the father!”  I stood silent.  I faced them and said, pointing to her mother, “You don’t get to yell at me.  You don’t get to be upset.  If anybody should be upset, it’s me!”  “She,” I said, pointing to her daughter, “doesn’t even know who the father is.   Do you?”  She looked at her mother with tears rolling down her cheeks and said, “No.”  Her mother was stunned.  I pointed to her mother and candidate number two and said, “You two, can go to hell.”  “You,” I said, pointing to her, “I’ll see in court.”  

It would take more than a year of court postponements and refusals on her part to comply with court orders, before I was ruled out as the father of the baby.  One might think that I was devastated to discover the child wasn’t mine.  One would be right.  I was devastated, but I gained more than I lost.  I had a transcendent experience.  I understood what it was to feel one life reaching out toward another; to know-- know that you would do anything for that little person staring back at you.  I felt as if I had been filled up and that any idea of love that I held prior, paled in comparison to this.  

Every day of that year, I held on to the image and the feeling of that night. It sustained me.  That night taught me that love is a language.  And, if any word passed between that baby and me, it was the word: Believe.  Believe enough in what you feel to follow it through, no matter where it leads.  I didn’t expect to find out the truth concerning the baby.  The truth was too big.  I suspected that I would find out many truths about myself.  

The gift I took from that night and carry still is that love can be so deep.  That event wasn’t just about paternity, but the totality of the experience.  I can love deeply because a place was made for it inside of me.  I learned that this paternity situation wasn’t about me.  It was about this child.  I knew that if I kept it about her and not about me, I could do whatever I was called upon to do.  If it were about her, I could be the father and the man I needed to be.  

You can’t talk about grace and not talk about God.  Was it God’s presence I felt or the hand of God?  I don’t know.  I only know that I felt seized by a fire to prevail in this thing.  I know that in an instant my will went from nervous and cautious to adamantine.  It has been almost twelve years, and I am still moved by what occurred that night.  

It was in the courthouse that I saw the baby, now one year old, for the last time.  The judgment decided, we stood by the elevators.  “Did he take the blood test,” I asked.  “No.  But his name is on the birth certificate.  That’s all that matters.”  I got on the elevator.  She decided to wait for the next one.   Once outside, I let out a long sigh.  I felt as if I’d been holding my breath forever. Walking away from the courthouse, I remembered a line from the Bible: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Author's Biography

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