Conception

"He who profits by a crime commits it” - Seneca

Approximately twenty years and nine months ago today, two young lovers embraced on the shores of a lake in upstate New York. They had spent the day with friends, swimming, camping, talking, laughing.

A stranger would have easily seen the loved they shared. Those that knew them well would see it too but they would also see something else. A tension, something a bit out of sorts.

As the evening wore on, the lovers left the campsite and wandered alone through the woods, towards the lake. They found a tree. They sat beneath the tree. Moonlight reflected off the lake in front of them. Stars, what seemed to be billions of them, shone brightly from the darkened sky above.

The girl knew the boy was anxious to be intimate. Sex.

She was apprehensive. Outside? Here? People might see. And besides….

A kiss. A caress. A warm embrace.

How she loved him! How he loved her! She knew this. She always had. He clung to her like she was one of his vital organs. She could feel his desire. His intensity. He wanted her. Needed her.

But something inside her held back.

They hadn’t been together for sometime. There had been awkwardness in the air today. Unspoken words. An air of confusion, uncertainty.

He pulled her close.

As the passion rose, she watched the stars. Him above her, kissing her, holding her. The stars were exceptionally bright. She had never seen so many stars. It seemed she could reach out and grab a handful. They twinkled magically around his head, above his shoulders.

“Are you still on the pill?”, he asked.

She paused.

“Yes”, she whispered.

They made love beneath the stars that night. The fifth time they had ever had sex. He was content. He held her close even still. Smiling, comfortable, happy, he exhaled deeply. She saw his breath in the cold evening air.

While he rested peacefully, her heart and mind filled with anxiety and guilt.

She had lied to him.

She was not on the pill.

She gambled. She played the odds.

A stranger, an outsider, might be quick to judge her now. Label her. Cast her out. Criticize her.

Yet others might understand.

She needed him. She had to keep him happy. She had to hold onto him. If she was a vital organ sustaining his life, he WAS her life. LIke generations of women before her, she traded sex for love.

He was the only person that loved her. The only person that had ever been nice to her in the eighteen years she had walked the earth. She loved him. Needed him. Could not bear the thought of living life without him in it.

What if she had told him the truth? What if she had denied him the physically intimacy he craved? What would he have done? What would he have said? Would he have been angry? Left her?

Perish the thought.

He might leave. He wanted her. He loved her. No one else did. She could not risk losing him. Denying him sex could put the only love she ever felt in serious jeopardy.

It would be okay, right?

Depends on your point of view.

The girl saw a shooting star that night. Brighter than anything imaginable, it shot across the sky.

The hand of god reaching down from the heavens and right towards her. To her womb.

A child was conceived that night. A child, a baby girl, would be born nearly nine months later over a thousand miles from that lake.

A religious person would judge the girl. She would be cast out for having unprotected sex. For having sex out of wedlock. Her family would be shamed.

But her child would be born.

What is her crime? What is her shame?

Loving the only person that ever loved her? Probably not.

Being too insecure to risk losing that love? Possibly.

Having sex? Depends on your beliefs.

Lying about the birth control? Perhaps.

Seneca says, "Those that profit from the crime commit it". The lovers and the child did not profit. They lost.

Twenty years later, we see the product of that love. A beautiful, brilliant, talented young woman. If the loving act that produced her was a crime, than what is she? If the mother is dirty and full of shame, what is the child?

No. These are not crimes. Love surrounded that child the day she was concieved and has never left her. The lovers, the child have nothing to hide. No reason to feel shame.

Those that took the child from the mother can bear it all.