When our family first got our puppy, naturally, we started going for a lot of walks. We live in a rural home—nestled halfway up a mountain—with no sidewalks or paved surfaces in sight. So in order to walk Archie, a Goldendoodle, my family of three would make the bumpy quarter-mile descent down our gravel driveway, cross the winding country road, and head a mile farther on the decomposed granite path that snakes along a nearby golf course.

Sometimes I’d walk Archie by myself, sometimes my husband Jesse would. But the best times were when we’d all go together.

“Girls in front, boys in back!” announced our daughter, Vera, who was five and bounced down the first stretch of the driveway in her neon rainbow sneakers and backwards baseball hat. With spunk in her step, she slipped her hand in mine; Jesse and our fluffy fur ball followed close behind—two-by-two, like animals anticipating the ark.

***

When I was twenty-five, I worked at a magazine in Southern California. Technically, I had a dream job—traveling to places like Switzerland, Jamaica, Chilé, and Maui—but I was longing for something more. Something with purpose. After scouring one too many job boards online, I caved to the nudge begging me to type in my church’s website. I skimmed through the volunteer opportunities and an upcoming mission trip caught my eye. I inquired about it immediately and eagerly showed up to the next planning meeting. A month later, I was on a plane with six middle-aged men from my church, headed for South Africa.

When I got home from that two-week trip, I quit my job at the magazine and went back to Africa for a year to work for the ministry I’d just visited.

In my quest for independence—ten thousand miles from home—I found Jesus, yet again, who’d graciously been waiting for me like an old friend. It’s also where I found and fell in love with Jesse, who lived only fifteen minutes from me back home in California.

What were the chances?

***

“Mama, look!” Vera exclaimed, pointing ahead. A white golf ball sat waiting for us—beckoning us—in the middle of the path just a few quick steps away. Minutes later, we spotted another, just beyond the low, wooden fence. On our way home, a neon yellow one popped up across the street. We looked both ways—gripping each other’s hands and giggling from the adrenaline—then crossed the country road, scooped up the treasure, and hurried back to show the boys. Four, five, six golf balls.

We laced up our tennies, summer night after night. As the sun dipped behind the shrub-covered hills in front of us, our family walks became everyday Easter egg hunts.

Our faces lit up every single time we snagged another dimpled ball and zipped it into the black nylon fanny pack I wore around my waist.

***

Jesse and I were practically engaged by the time we left South Africa and came back to San Diego. I was twenty-seven when we said “I do” under the most beautiful, gigantic golden tree with leaves the size of our hopes for the future.

We honeymooned in Costa Rica, but a couple days into our fairytale, I had an ovarian cyst rupture. I lay in agony in a hotel room bed next to a towel folded into a swan. We already knew about the cysts and the endometriosis. Months earlier, we had heard the doctor’s concerns, “Chances are, it might be hard for you to conceive.” But we weren’t ready for kids yet. So, I pushed the pain—and the warnings—aside as best I could, and we adventured in Central American jungles, swimming beneath waterfalls, and laughing at the squirrel monkeys chattering in treetops.

***

One morning in September—just a couple months after we discovered our newfound joy in hunting for golf balls—the boys walked through the front door after a walk. Archie was panting from the rising heat of the day, Jesse was beaming. He reached in his pockets and held his hands together like an offering cupped before us. Vera counted them carefully.

Ten, eleven, twelve golf balls!

Vera leapt into my arms squealing with delight and then plucked each golf ball gingerly—as though they were made of glass—from Jesse’s hands and added them to the oversized wicker basket next to the couch.

Somehow those golf balls made anything feel possible.

***

A few years into unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, I had a distinct dream where Jesse and I were walking down the sidewalk of a beach town holding the hands of a little girl with squishy cheeks and straight, dark bangs. The sun shone and cirrus clouds passed by. There we were: a family. The trio that didn’t exist yet, but God knew would, someday.

More than three years after that dream, we got what we refer to as The Call.

A week into our communication with the adoption agency, we received an email from China with updated photos of our baby girl. Lo and behold, when I scrolled through them, straight, dark bangs smiled back at me—and my breath left my body.

***

On one Sunday evening walk—not long after Jesse came home with twelve golf balls—we had barely started our usual route with the pup when we spied one, two, and then three white balls. It must have been a good day for some not-so-good golfers because more and more dots appeared with every step we took.

About a quarter of the way through our walk, we began to have hope for a new record. Turning the possibility into a challenge, we searched in places we hadn’t before. Vera and I ran across the street and tip-toed through tall weeds and long grass. We reached under the fence with arms, legs, long sticks—anything to get a ball. We scavenged through low pine branches, behind boulders, and they just kept showing up, like glowing stars against an ink-black sky.

Gems of all colors, these round, dimpled jewels. We snatched them up and filled any remaining space in the black fanny pack, the last ones needing to be stockpiled in Jesse’s pockets.

We floated effortlessly up the usually grueling steep grade to our house. We slipped off our tennies, opened the door, and grabbed the basket where we’d been adding to our collection all summer.

One, two, three, four …

Vera got to twelve—all of our brown eyes as wide as the late summer sky—and kept counting.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen!

Delirious, the three of us high-fived and cheered in amazement, our optimism soaring as high as the red-tailed hawk outside.

***

Jesse and I left the house before the sun came up. My mom was watching Vera for thirteen hours—the longest we had been away from our three-year-old. I was nervous but excited and checked my phone seven times before we made it to the freeway. It was early January of 2020, and driving to the mountains to ski felt like the perfect way to start the year together.

I figured I should at least wait until the Starbucks stop. I wanted to play it cool. Be the girl he met in Africa. The girl he used to ride beach cruisers with on the boardwalk, as her free spirit and wild hair whipped in the wind. I made it all the way to the winding mountain roads—more than an hour and a half from home—before I brought it up.

“Have you thought about another baby at all?” I asked him, drinking my chai and attempting nonchalance.

He said it hadn’t really been on his mind, and I let it be. Instead of talking about babies that day, we skied for hours and sipped steaming hot cocoa at the chalet. And on our last ride up the mountain—our tired legs and skis dangling from the lift—we laughed about how free we felt, as sparkling rays bounced off the packed snow below.

Three days later, I finally confessed, “I feel like God is telling me we should try to get pregnant.”

Two years after that—on the verge of turning forty—I begged God for the last time. Please, either do it or don’t, but we have to move on.

On a Tuesday morning in April of 2022, I held the shock of my life: a blue plus sign.

***

We lost the baby.

***

On a walk later that year, we found nineteen golf balls.

***

Seven months after grief had run its tumultuous course, embryo adoption—an option I had discounted long ago—now seemed like it might be the answer. It would be the perfect marriage of wanting to adopt again and the dreams I’d been having of a baby’s face flashing on an ultrasound.

But what are the chances a woman gets pregnant in her forties?

Approximately five percent, each month.

What are the chances a woman has a successful pregnancy using embryos already created?

After three transfers, approximately ninety-five percent.

I nervously clenched my jaw—and expectations—as I walked into that first appointment at the fertility clinic. The fresh white walls, the receptionist’s wide, promising smile, and a slogan about making babies and dreams coming true plastered on the wall. Each was such a stark contrast to my history of an unruly reproductive system and the wake of grief it’d left behind.

I laid on the table, waiting to hear the same old words—“cysts, endometriosis, fibroids, polyps”—I’d heard before.

Instead, the doctor surprised himself just as much as he surprised me.

“Everything looks perfect! You have a beautiful uterus,” he said.

What are the chances?

***

I never thought we’d ever find more than nineteen golf balls. But one day, it was like someone pulled a ripcord from the heavens, and my small beliefs shattered into candy-colored confetti, raining down twenty golf balls.

***

On a Friday in the fall of 2023—nine days after our first frozen embryo transfer—my doctor called to confirm what every cell in my body believed to be true.

“You’re pregnant!” he said, and I could tell he was smiling.

But three days later, he called again, this time to let me know my hCG wasn’t rising quickly enough, confirming it was a chemical pregnancy. The news felt like whiplash, and recalibrating back to hope seemed impossible; but our two remaining embryos gave me enough to still believe.

And six weeks later, after our second and final transfer followed the same trajectory, I asked my doctor, “What are the chances there’s a baby at the end of this?”

With pity in his voice, he said, “Slim.”

***

We stopped collecting golf balls when our total counted more than three hundred. Since then, Vera has started a business to sell some. We’ll likely get rid of the rest but we’ll keep our favorites: the bright purple and gold ones. The strawberry red one and the ball with tiny shamrocks stamped all around.

“I still can’t believe we found twenty golf balls!” any one of us says, every few months.

These days, walking Archie starts out the same as it did almost two years ago. Our spunky girl, seven now, still skips down the gravel driveway, shouting the same words back to us and the world, “Girls in front, boys in back!”

We shuffle into our familiar places. Kicking pine cones like soccer balls, splashing in puddles in the spring; crunching leaves the size of our hopes in the fall. We listen to the mountain bluebirds calling, feeling the pebbly sand squish beneath our feet, basking in the sun’s warmth and light on our faces.

We don’t know what’s coming next, but we look for it anyway.

Guest essay written by Becky Morquecho. Becky is a wife to Jesse (yes, just like Full House), an adoptive mama, and an adventurer. She loves thrifting, fuchsia bougainvilleas, and gigantic Mediterranean salads. She believes there is beauty and goodness just waiting to be discovered and writes about it often. You can keep up with her work over on Substack.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.

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