Afterwards, he just drifted.
Gradually, everything from before grew hazy. People and places slipped into a gray mist. Events were eroded by the miasma of time until even time itself blurred and became meaningless. Eventually, nothing was left except an inner void.
Even that changed. The feeling of emptiness grew sharper. Finally, it metamorphosed into a yearning. But it was, as of yet, a feeling without focus.
He began searching, without knowing what it was that he searched for: people; places; situations―he passed through them, but his search gained neither form nor meaning.
One day, he drew near to a woman. He had done this before, often, but this time it was different.
It began.
She was leaning against a tennis net, catching her breath after a hard-fought game. The sun was bright on her ruffled hair, her throat strong as she threw her head back and laughed.
He was suddenly overwhelmed by a wordless mixture of touch, smell, sight and sound.
It was not so much how the woman looked at that moment, but rather a sensation of her entire being, captured in a millisecond.
Mesmerized, he drank of her inner essence.
Tang of oranges; scent of jasmine;
Silvered beach on a moonlit night;
Fragrant pine fronds caressing a blue sky;
The sonorous boom of a brass bell.
Light seemed to emanate from her. He could not stop himself. He drew even closer. Then, mingled with the other sensations, he felt something else:
Shards of glass, brittle and cruel,
A metallic flash, razor-sharp and hard.
Pain. He recoiled and twisted away. Finally, he broke free with a sense of relief.
Soon she was lost to sight, absorbed into the myriad sights and sounds of the world.
But something had been awakened in him. Although without words or concepts yet, the yearning now had a direction and purpose.
His search intensified. For each woman, there was again that touch-smell-sight-sound picture of her inner essence. But for each, there came again the deeply felt sensation of wrongness and a rapid withdrawal.
Still he searched.
She was standing at a fruit stall. She was not young like the others, yet she was beautiful. Tall and lithe, with a cascade of red hair, she was framed against the serried rows of brightly colored apples. As he drew nearer, light seemed to stream from her; the sensation was intoxicating.
Dappled gold on a green-leafed forest;
The distant chime of delicate bells;
Sun-sparkle on an azure ocean;
Moonlight's diamond caught in a rose's dewdrop,
Sandalwood scent, adrift on a summer's night.
The light, the fragrance were overwhelming. He was unable to resist.
The dance of sun on the green-gold apples said, 'Yes'; the sparkle of lambent warmth in her eyes said, 'Yes'. The entire world seemed to swell with a vast and lovely chord that resonated through him saying, 'Yes, yes, yes'.
With this awareness, consciousness suddenly faded and he slipped into a velvet blackness.
As she paid the greengrocer from her purse, Janice, suddenly clumsy, dropped a coin and bent over. "Ooooh!" she cried, clutching her midriff.
"O.K., dear?" said the greengrocer, concerned.
"Yes…" said Janice, puzzled. "Just a pain. Probably indigestion....nothing much…"
Later that week, Janice finished getting dressed and emerged from behind a screen in the Goodward Fertility Clinic. She sat and watched as Dr. Berne jotted down some notes.
"You're as healthy as a horse," he boomed in his avuncular manner.
"Well, you know, at my age I tend to worry," said Janice.
"Forty-two?" The doctor snorted. "You're just a child still. As for the pain―perfectly natural, lots of women get it. It's called mittelschmerz, or 'middle pain'. Not all women feel it, but it's the sensation from the ovum as its casing breaks and it drops from the ovary...ripe for the taking." He chortled.
"But I've never felt it before," she said.
The doctor's eyes twinkled. "There's always a first time."
Nine months later, a sleep-deprived Harry James, awkward in hospital greens and overshoes, found himself cuddling a tiny, wet bundle of life. His eyes flooded with tears as he gently handed their newborn child back to his wife. Janice, though tired and weak, was glowing with adoration.
"A boy," whispered Harry, awed. "It's a miracle! Sometimes I thought it was selfish to wish for so much at our age but, look at him! He is perfect!"
"Selfish?" smiled Janice, "Don't you realize he chose us, Harry?. We are exactly what he wanted."
"How can you say that? How can you know?" said Harry, bewildered by her certainty.
"A mother just knows," smiled Janice. She gazed at the wrinkled little child lovingly, kissed its forehead, and said, "Isn't that right, sweetheart?"
As if in answer, the baby yawned, smiled enigmatically and fell fast asleep on her welcoming breast.