A recent comment on this site raises a good question about the situation we faced with the birth of our son through surrogacy -- a situation that contributed to the surrogate mother's husband asking for a divorce.

Many people, including one of my own children, have asked me, "How could you let this happen? How could you let her lose everything important in her life so long as you got what you wanted?"

The obvious answer is that there was nothing I COULD do about it. My friend Arletta, who gave birth to our baby son, didn't learn that her marriage of nearly eleven years was in trouble until she was late into her seventh month of pregnancy. What could anyone have done by then? End the pregnancy to save the marriage? No one would do that, or could do that. Agree with Arletta's former husband that surrogacy itself was an immoral act? Concur with the judge's decision to give sole custody of Arletta's children to her husband BECAUSE she couldn't care for them properly while carrying a baby was correct? Try to pay him off?

Although I am neither rich nor powerful, and never sought any publicity surrounding this most private family matter, trying to intervene with high-powered lawyers or carefully placed phone calls to the media would only have made the matter worse.

Using money to try to influence the fate of a woman accused of having a baby "for money" (which was not at all her motive) would only have added insult to injury. Many times, Arletta was offered checks and legal advice, by many people concerned that this court decision would affect not only the rights of women to choose to be surrogate mothers but the rights of women, period. She refused every time.

She wanted it to be clear that her conscience was clear. She had said she would bring our son into the world for little more than her expenses, and she did.

However, at the time the whole thing began to happen, the guilt we felt was nearly intolerable.

It was Arletta who reassured us that a marriage as long and as apparently strong as hers seemed to be could not end over this one issue -- a pregnancy that would have ended in a matter of weeks. It was she who told us that many more issues had to be involved. Her faith -- in God, in her family, in us -- kept her strong in her belief that eventually, the truth would be stronger than any cruel falsehood pur forth about her or about us. That is still what she believes.

In months afterward, she would only reiterate this.

She told me not long ago, "I got so much more from this experience than I would have believed when I was going through the pain. I grew so much in self-confidence. I saw my marriage for what it was and I might never have done that. I am twice the person I was before. This was something I was meant to do."

Instead of becoming bitter and regretful, as many would have, she became more loving and giving. She earned the respect even of those who'd doubted her choice in the first place, in the small Kentucky town where she lives. Those who saw her talk about the birth on national TV felt only compassion and admiration for her.

Would we have gone forward with this if we had known what it would do to Arletta's family? Of course not.

If there were anything we could do --legally, financially, ethically -- to help restore Arletta's children to her, would we do that? In a second, we would, of course.

We thought we had her ex-husband's full support. He had time to think long and hard about signing the contract along with her, before he did it. He had counseling. They had many discussions. Though it was her idea, he was in support of it until the end.

Or was he? It isn't right to second-guess anyone's motives; but it may be that he saw this situation as a way to leave a marriage he no longer wanted. That is what Arletta's extended family believes.

To discuss what we've "done" for Arletta would be improper - a violation of a very private relationshihp. It would also seem that we were congratulating ourselves on doing only what was right. Suffice it to say that we love her as much for who she is as for what she did; and there will never be a time in our lives that we are not close friends..family. Our relationship was sealed in this fire.

Anyone who might think of me as a "Hollywood type" (the very idea is ludicrous) would never think so after she met me or my family. Arletta never knew that I wrote books for my job when we met and began this journey. It was only later that she gradually gained that knowledge -- and not from me. I (and my husband) entered into this journey as a parent, not as someone whose picture had been in the newspaper.

No one needs to know if we were there for Arletta or not there for her -- except Arletta. But she does know. And if you were to ask her, I know exactly what she would say. While it hurts to be considered someone who would use a good person to satisfy her own ends and then stop caring, it's comforting to know just how far from the truth that assumption is.

Jackie Mitchard

Did you ever see a product other than breakfast cereal or a board game that said on the label, 'Great for General Use by Anyone Of ANY AGE?'

Or a subatnce other than nitrogylcerine for which the directions DO NOT say to 'Shake Well Before Using?

I'm not concerned here with those wonder medicines rapturously advertised on television that remind viewers, after the individual sufferer is pictured rising from a sickbed to play beach volleyball that (in rare cases) the medicine can cause side effects including loss of limbs, seizures, liver tumors, dizziness, fevers, joint pain, swelling, hair growth on the palms, a sinking feeling, the urge to laugh at old Warner Brothers cartoons, flu, vomiting, uncontrolled bleeding and occasionally death.

I'm talking about regular old stuff.

There's always a caution. Even on dollies. "Not for us by children under the age of eight." (By which time, most people are about to outgrow dollies). Was anyone ever done in by a Barbie? (I'm going feel pretty darned guilty if someone has.)

Salt shakers have warnings.

Lip balm should not be injested.

I think this leaves...wooden spoons.

Jackie Mitchard

And one more thing.

Have you ever had someone who fixes things come to your house and say, "Well, sure, I have that part! I have it right here in my pocket!"

I know the answer.

It's, "Well, we had two of them on the truck this morning, but we just used the last one! And the other ones come from Uzbekistan! And the ships carrying them are blockaded right now!"

My friend's husband had to wait TWO MONTHS for an appropriate BOLT.

We've waited a combined total of EIGHTEEN MONTHS for a dimmer switch.

These people aren't unkind or dishonest or even lazy. It's just that nothing can ever be fixed on the spot, by anyone, ever.

Jackie Mitchard

Though my family life is my own business, I supposed I made it public business on this website when I expressed my grief over the sad events that befell our surrogate mother, whose husband divorced her over her choice to be a surrogate. Even before that, Arletta's family had contacted the national magazine show "Inside Edition," in hope of rousing public sympathy for her cause when a judge gave her ex-husband sole custody of their two children.

A comment posted on this site asked me what I had done for Arletta. I assume this meant, had I paid for her legal defense or tried to use my supposed influence on lawmakers and politicans to overturn the judge's verdict? I wrote that a financial contribution to Arletta's legal fund would only leave her open to more charges of "baby selling," which was the point continuously made by opposing lawyers.

The anger that this apparently prompted astounds me. Called a "Hollywood type" with a "Boston mansion," because I confessed how terribly guilty and helpless I felt when all these events unfolded, I also learned that this site was intended to "sing my praises." I've been told that our gestational surrogate is "twice the mother I am" and that the hope is that I'll one day have the courage to tell my son what another woman gave up to give him life.

Though my heart was stinging, I tried to post a few silly blogs to divert the stream of critical remarks, but then I ended up approving all of them.

This site isn't intended to "sing my praises" as a human being. It's intended to draw attention to and discuss my work as a writer, whether or not readers praise that work.

I'm not a Hollywood type. We lived in Massachusetts during the period our son was born because the laws in that state made it possible for us to get an order letting our names be on our son's original birth certificate. We rented a modest house on a modest street. We thought about staying; but after all this happened, we turned and ran back to the Midwest, where we've lived all our lives.

We live in a nice house on an old farm. It's far from a mansion. It's large enough to accommodate our family. There is no guest room. My husband designed it and built it with help from contractors he knew. We once had a small vacation home. Various legal costs from a previous birth as well as educational expenses forced us to give that up.

Why would anyone think that I took advantage of a woman with the same level of education as I, the same ethical beliefs as I, with whom I have become a close and confiding friend? How could anyone think that anyone, unless she had a demonstrably cruel nature, and to my knowledge I don't, would be so callous? Why would anyone so selfish and self-centered want to devote her life to raising a large family? Does that make sense? Wouldn't such a cynical person want to spend her life on lavish trips and fancy clothes instead of devoting herself to spelling lists and spit-up?

My child's question about Arletta was natural. Children see things in terms of black and white. If there had been no surrogacy, would Arletta have lived happily ever after? Even she doesn't think so. She thinks her choice exposed cracks in a marriage that she overlooked for years.

I've always known that people could be terribly unkind, make assumptions about situations of which they know only the apparent facts, not the truth. I've always known that people love to feel that anyone who has achieved any recognition in life must be greedy, conniving and heartless. It's as if there cannot be a good and ordinary person who also earned some measure of recognition. Being successful at anything must mean surrenduring your integrity and even your dignity.

I'm not that successful; and I don't know how true "Hollywood types" or dwellers in mansions behave. But I imagine that there are as many of them who are loving and good as there are who are vain and disdainful -- just as there are in the suburbs, the city, and in trailer parks. I imagine that that even the beautiful suffer and even the rich feel longing for what they cannot

I've always been honest about my life, and given access in the belief that my experiences had some universal relevance. I'll close that door now. No one has any right to ask me what I've "done for" anyone, anymore than I have the right to ask anyone who reads this post what he or she has done lately for a sibling or a friend or an aged parent. Or a child.

I know what I've done today for each of my children. Do you?

Jackie Mitchard

It occurs to me that this controversy over the personal cost to my friend Arletta of helping us create our son Atticus may seem tragic only for Arletta, her extended family and her children -- when her plight is taken entirely in the context of this single incident.

But there was a reason we turned to Arletta.

We might not have chosen to work together with Arletta if we had destroyed the embryos that were frozen at the time of the birth of our son, Will. Though we would have adopted several of our children, because it's a practice in which we believe, we might not have done that so often if we hadn't adopted children -- one in particular -- no one else would, though I won't tell you which one or why, nor could you tell if you met that child.

We might not have adopted so many children, given birth or assisted birth to so many children if eight pregnancies hadn't ended, one at an advanced stage, one nearly costing my life.

I might not have seven children if my first husband hadn't died horribly of cancer in his early '40s, and, after four grueling years as a single mother who at one point had $186 in her checking account, I married again, a man who'd never been married or had children. VERY Hollywood! I was the Paris Hilton of the local garage sales. I used to watch women on the street who were close to my size so I could buy their outworn clothing. People anonymously left boxes of their children's clothing on my porch for my sons. It wasn't until eight years ago that I first bought an outfit at full price at a store. And that hasn't happened often.

We might never have tried surrogacy if we hadn't spent the equivalent of a hefty year's salary fighting for custody of one baby daughter with her birthfather, who was in prison.

I might not have been so bent upon family if my mother hadn't died when I was very young, and if our father had decided to be a father mostly in name to me and my kid brother, although he loved us in his way.

None of us makes our choices in a vacuum, blithely deciding that wouldn't it be fun to have a huge family no matter what the costs to others? We all have a history and it shapes our destiny; and while Arty's family is suffering now -- I well know because Atty and I spent the past two days with her in Kentucky -- mine has suffered as well, fierce pain. Pain is never redeemed. But the happiness our children have brought us have allowed us to start a family over on ground where it seemed nothing would ever grow.

Jackie Mitchard

A few months back, my family and I moved to Massachusetts; and we thought it was a permanent move. There was so much we loved there, and so many possibilities. We were as excited to go as we were frightened to leave.

A few months after that, we moved back. We were going to renew our life at home in the Midwest, celebrate our friendships, do more of the things we'd always neglected to do. And to some degree, we have done that. But our love for the coast never went away. And as the year slowly creaks toward spring, we long for what we once had there.

It's stupid and embarrassing in the extreme to wish you had a summer house when fifteen years ago, you thought you'd never own your own home, when you grew up in apartments, when even your parents didn't own a flat over the store until you were nearly grown up.

But it's three degrees F* here right now, in the sun. Half the new trees we planted are dead, and the sun is like a mockery. Out where we moved, it's about 40* F, and soon the crocuses will pop up, and the seals will have pups, and the whales will return. There are hard winters there once in a while, but not the kind of winters that sear the lungs or causes porches literally to fall off houses because of the effects of the cold. And right now, we wish, or sort of wish, that we hadn't been so hasty in turning tail and heading back for all that was familiar, because, after all, it's so ... familiar, and thus unremarkable, and what is comforting is not adventure.

We can visit the place we once had a home, and stay in someone else's for about $2,000 a week. But, we all agree, that would be like going to the wedding of your ex-spouse. And, it would be like going to the wedding of your ex-spouse six months after the person broke up with you.

Do you ever wish you were two people and could lead two lives? Do you wish you could leave a part of yourself in the place you undeniably call home, where those you love, live, too, but send your other self to dance on a beach in Mykonos, or a cliff above the Atlantic? Perhaps part of you could enjoy the wisdom and validation of being older, and the other the sheer animal joy and metabolic grace of youth? Stand with the one you'll love forever and dry the plates at the kitchen sink, and also send that other self to experience the sleepless obsession of new love, the utter disappearance of appetite at one voice on the message machine?

This kind of yearning has inspired so many stories of physical time travel that it is itself almost a cliche. But we only really ever will be possessed of one kind of time machine -- memory. And it comes with a bittersweet tariff.

But I think that the other kind, the real kind, would have that very same price tag.

Jackie Mitchard

In my upcoming novel, 'Cage of Stars,' the young woman protagonist is a Mormon.

She's a Mormon for reasons that I chose, as an author -- because I wanted her to be part of a religion in which religion is not a part of life but life itself, but also because Mormon young people are very much of the world, encouraged to excel in every field. In a recent performance of 'Mamma Mia!' in Las Vegas, I watched as three of the main ensemble performers bewtiched the crowd. They were graduates of the estimable drama program at Brigham Young University.

There were errors in my novel. There were not many, because I was very, very careful. But some of the errors were accidental, because it is almost impossible to write from the point of view of a Mormon without having lived as a Mormon or with Mormons for a very long time. Others were a bit "accidentally on purpose."

Why? Unlike some other religions, Mormons do not like or allow their private rituals to be examined by people who are not of their faith -- in their words, Gentiles. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is not for me to judge; but it is a true thing. And when books are written by former Mormons that intend to "expose" rituals of the temple, normal, ordinary Mormons suffer it.

For twenty years, I have had a very close friend who is a Mormon.

I met her when she called me on the telephone one day at the newspaper where I worked then. She wanted to write a screenplay based on a non-fiction piece I had written, and though she never did, we remained close throughout the years. As in, very close.

When my husband was dying, and e-mail had barely been invented, my friend promised me, in words I will never forget, that she would "walk this road with me." And through letters and telephone calls, many of mine desperate, many terrified, many lacking in any faith for the future, religious faith included, she did. She taught me to "put my face against the fear." And I did. And I learned to be strong. My friend, Kahliel, became a fixed star in the firmament of my life.

I love her. I love her husband and her children.

On the rare occasions we meet, we hug and joke and cry for joy. These used to be more frequent, because she lived in New York City. But recently, she and her husband moved to Provo, where Kevin is a professor at BYU.

When I first spoke to her, she had five children.

When we met in person, she had six.

Finally, she had nine.

When I first spoke to her, I had three children. When we met in person, I had four. Now, I have seven.

I often tease her that this is her doing. She often teases me that I am a "dry Mormon," because I am so strict and intolerant of the so-called "ordinary" vices of children, such as experimenting with alcohol, or rudeness to adults.

For this novel, I lived with Kahliel's family for a week, as part of my research. And her family was utterly sharing with me. And thus, I probably know more about being a Mormon than most Gentiles, and I'm sensitive to that. And so, I didn't want to write everything I'd learned, not from her family, but from other sources about subjects that aren't supposed to be revealed to the world.

Some Mormons who have read my book said that the errors, both deliberate and inadvertent, would cause Mormon readers to boycott the book and call it just another false depiction of what is a rather new, and definitely strange to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but ultimately a loving and protective religion that produces some remarkable people, and also some remarkably intolerant people. In that, it is very like all religions. I hope that isn't true.

But in other ways, it isn't like any other religions at all.

Whatever else it is, 'Cage of Stars' is a fond portrayal of a young Mormon woman and her family -- if not of the religion itself.

Moreover, it's not a novel about Mormonism, but about a terrible and divisive event in one family's life, and the extended effect of violence on all our lives.

It is a novel, a story, not a document of historicity and fact, though I like to think that it is genuine. Unlike Jim Frey, I am not calling it a real story. It never was real, though some of the events in it are inspired by real events. But I hope that it is true.

Jackie Mitchard

I have a persistent dream of sleeping in (with breakfast in bed!) but I wake early, before the sun is up.

I always have. It's a habit now, born of long years of waking with babies.

I never fail to see the sun rise, even when I don't want to. I see it rise through bullying clouds, over demin skies, through a driving curtain of snow, kindly down upon birds at the feeder, hyachinth in brave early bloom. I see the deer near a copse of trees glance up, as if they, too, haven't seen sunrise before. I see the rabbits on the lawn, near the bushes, and the hawks that hover, speculatively, above them, hoping for an early breakfast.

I see the lights blink on in the houses below the hill that was called Story Hill before we came to live here on it. I see the first car that pulls out of a drive without need for putting on the headlinghts. Sometimes, I see a flurry of people outside. Someone's sick. Someone's celebrating Someone's headed off for an adventure. Someone has an early job.

Each of those lighted windows has a story behind it. Someone's happy, or troubled. Someone's pulling on long underwear to go to the barn or out for a run, both feeling the same sense of urgent obligation. A baby's coming. A long life is turning toward its close. The religious are making ready for church. The ambitious are making ready to do an online trade. The lonely are seeking the comfort of friends inside the TV. The wise are seeeking contemplation in the hour before responsibility intrudes.

As the red sun rises from its wallow and makes its gradual progress upward, burnishing gold as a medieval coin. I do humble tasks -- load up laundry, replace rolls of tissue, drink my tea. I clean away the remannts of the teenagers' ravenous midnight snack scavenging (they'll pay for this later on), and set in place the framework for a new day. I let the dog out once for his urgencies, once for his need to chase something he can never catch.

I let thoughts in, about things I chase that I'll never catch.

I think of my brother, my niece, my sister-in-law expecting her third baby. I think of my those I love and lvoed: old friends, some now dead, some now gone from me by their own wil, some simply too far away to be anything in my mind but fond presences. I think of my new friends and wonder if they'll ever be old friends. I wonder why the world is too busy and large for friendship, and why cards and jewelry too often take the place of handshakes and voices. I remember when it was not. I think back to a time, during my lifetime, when there were lazy spaces, and not only for me, for everyone I knew, and now there are not. Nothing has changed. Time is still time. Only our attitude toward it is different. I think about large topics that overwhelm me: why we want to devour the world for oil, and the soil for corn to replace the oil, but what will replace the soil?

These are the thoughts others have at night.

But night feels safe to me.

Sunrise is different. It's a lonesome time for me, morning. I don't think I feel about it the way others do. At night, I'm able to slip into the chrysallis of sleep, with the illusion, however daft, that tomorrow I can begin to make better of today's wrongs - that i can be better at what I do, more silent, more caring, more thoughtful, more noticing.

Invariably, this is when I write to you.

These next months are ones fraught with excitement and worry. A new book is about to come. It's different from what I've done before. It has the qualities of a thriller and yet centers around a family loss; but what book does not? It digs deep at moral quandries. I don't know if people will like it, and it's going to have to make it on its own, with only the loyalties of my readers and favorite critics to propel it, because all the hopes for a grand parade of welcome and pre-publicaiton "buzz" have come to naught. I see all the managed presentation of others' books, of greater or lesser worth, and feel envy. I banish the envy, and reckon that this is their time, that they have found wiser ways than I have to usher their creations into the world.

I was never good at the process of plating and presenting, even with a meal. I worry about that as the sun rises. It's a necessity now, to be a brand, not simply a writer of tales. I ought to learn how to be one.

Still, it's an honest book, and I hope it receives an honest reception. Like a little mother with a heavy child, as Emily Dickinson, once wrote, I hope for the strength I will need to bring it forth without the arms that once supported me in efforts such as these. Times are lean. The best help in publishing goes to those who need it least. It makes sense, because in these known "brands," the favorites that go off at even odds, are known returns. There are people I meet who are still asking me when my LAST novel is going to be published!

But I believe in stories, and their power. And someone, out there, will appreciate the trade without the tricks.

I notice other voices stirring. My hour of pondering is expired.

It's time for toast and honey, and Sippee cups and coffee cups. Time to hit the treadmill, and later, hit the books with elementary-school kids. It's time to hear the day and not to fear it.

Is there anyone else who, as I do, feels so keenly the weight of the morning? Is there anyone else who isn't stirred to hope by the sunrise? I'm a "morning person," as they say, who does her best before noon, and by three feels as though the day might as well wind down to its close. So why does my hour alone with the sun feel like an hour alone with the irrevocable fact of time's passage?

Why do I have to count my blessings in the morning, when they're so apparent to me at nightfall?

And yet, my tenuous salute to the sun tells me I'm alive. There's that simple fact to smile upon. I'm healthy and my children are healthy. Fortunes rise and fall; disappointments and shards of joy pierce each beginning day; they pressage the joys and disappointments to come, the expectations that will be fulfilled and those that will be dashed.

But day's begun. I'm the first witness, I feel on some mornings. And then I watch as others join to witness. I've seen the sun again. It isn't my pal. The moon inspires me more. But it's resolute. I'm resolute, too.

One of these mornings, I'm going to make friends with the sun, and see it through a haze of hope.

Jackie Mitchard