My Alter Life as Fertility Goddess

I should have seen it coming when my doctor diagnosed a myoma somewhere inside me where babies come from. It was an itty bitty growth that would soon grow up, I was warned. Rather harmless, except it was obstructive of motherly ambitions.

"Go and multiply now and I mean NOW-- or forever remain two," the OB-gyn as much as told husband and me.

That was countless years and countless babies ago. The duo has not only become a trio but a glee club that is not always in tune.

Myohmy! Whereohwhere has my little myoma gone ? That's a question which I’d have wanted to confront Dr. Young with, for all her U.S. training credentials (not from some Philippine med school, ha? hahaha!).

If it’s still inside me, it must have grown into an amulet. A fertility charm.

And that is how I have become goddess of fertility, with childless women worshipping at my altar.

Mary and Waiping did. They are two Singaporean women I met in an international program in KL some time in my prolific past.

They had no children yet, though each four and five years married, they told me during our getting-to-know you lunch. Their woebegone look gave away the yearning in their heart.

Their eyes popped when I told them how many I got or begot.

“If you want to have children, stick by me,” I declared, “I'm a fertility deity."

I am not sure if they believed me. But stick by me they did -- all through the one-month program. They’d flank me in class pictures. Hustle to get into my group during field work. Knock on my door to chat.

Waiping and I met again in Singapore three years later. The conference I was attending was held at the National Productivity Board where she and Mary worked.

I was delighted to meet again a very big, very pregnant Waiping. It’s her second baby she said. It was then I noticed she still looked woebegone and -- did I only imagine it? -- wary.

“And where’s Mary,” I asked.

“She’s on maternity leave. Her second, too."

Before I could react, she added: "I don’t think she wants to see you.”