Nick Ullett - All’s Well that Ends Well 

 

 

All right. I am a great believer in marriage. I, myself, have been married for 56 years- [audience cheers and applause] -unfortunately to four different women. [audience laughter] My present wife, Jenny, was also married previously. When we got together some 36 years ago, we did not want to make the same mistakes that had ruined our lives before. So, we sat down and we asked each other what it was that we wanted. The only thing that Jenny desired that caused me any apprehension was that she wanted to have children. 

 

I already had a son from a previous marriage and I knew what a child could do to a relationship. But I really wanted to make a life with this woman, so I wholeheartedly agreed. We leapt into the business of creating a family, which obviously involves lots and lots of sex [audience laughter] and endlessly everywhere. [audience laughter] 

 

But after a year and a half, nothing happened, which is not only dispiriting, it also engenders a sense of inadequacy. But we forged on into the world of fertility experts. The first thing they want from the guy is a sperm test, which, actually, that phrase alone almost defines the word, inadequacy. This is back in the mid-1980s, and these tests were do-it-yourself affairs. You found a container, you put your specimen inside, you took it to a fertility clinic, they told you what was going on. 

 

At the time, I was working in New York. I was doing a play. One freezing February morning, I had made an appointment at noon with a fertility clinic on the east side of New York. The same day, it turned out I had a voiceover audition on the west side of New York at 10 o’clock. The problem was I couldn't carry this specimen around all morning, [audience laughter] because it has to be freshly delivered. If it's cold, it will die. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I had to get this deed done between being in the [audience laughter] voiceover audition and the fertility clinic, which is how I ended up masturbating in the gents in the Grand Central Station [audience laughter] for a truly humiliating experience. [audience laughter] And it was made no better by the fact that the only container that Jenny had come up with that morning was a Hellmann's mayonnaise jar. [audience laughter] It's a big jar. [audience laughter]

 

Anyhow, I did my duty. I thrust the jar deep into my pocket and I keep it warm and I hightailed off to the first fertility clinic where I filled out the forms, and then handed them in to the woman behind the desk along with my specimen. She took one look at it and she said, quite audibly, “That's it?” [audience laughter] I hastened to explain. “It's a big job.” [audience laughter] She said, “What was the method of delivery?” “I'm sorry. What?” “The method?” Oh, God. I mutter masturbation under my breath. 

 

She takes out a magic marker, and she writes this huge M [audience laughter] right over the front of the form. I see that M following me for the rest of my existence, [audience laughter] a shadow over my entire life. “Oh, Mr. Ullett, you're perfect for this job. Unfortunately, there's the matter of this M.” [audience laughter] Oh, God. And then, two days later, the doctors tell us that my sperm has low motility, does not swim well with others. 

 

Now, my self-esteem, which had not been doing well since the test took another nosedive. I found myself feeling useless, emasculated, really truthfully worrying about really, is it all worth this bother? Do I want more kids? But Jenny was insistent and on we went. But nothing worked with the fertility doctors. So, we ended up with adoption. 

 

This was where my real fears began, because I already had a child. I understood how I loved that child, how instinctive that was, how would I feel about one that was not biologically mine? That really worried me. But by that time we'd already engaged an adoption lawyer in California who had in his practice a pregnant 16-year-old. 

 

Now, California is an open adoption state, which means that the birth mother gets to choose to whom she gives her baby. Our job was to write a letter enclosing photographs of ourselves, explaining who we were, what we did and why we would make wonderful parents to this as yet unborn child. This letter was then sent to the young woman along with other letters from prospective parents. The young woman reads all the letters, and then she makes her choice. 

 

It started to feel to me, in my worried state, rather like a rather weird reality show, somehow this choice business. I got very worried, and I was going, “We're both actors. Is that good or is it bad?” Jenny, at the time, actually was on a weekly television show and had a minor celebrity. Therefore, easily trackable. “Would the young woman turn into a stalker? Would she blackmail us?” While these paranoid fantasies kept building, she chose us. All those fears went away. We were absolutely thrilled. 

 

But then, the real business of adoption began. You have to register with child services. They send people to your houses. Two people show up. Go through your entire house, every room, your wardrobes, your closets. It's very intrusive. They took our fingerprints. They investigated our backgrounds for criminal activity. And through all this, this nagging doubt kept bedeviling me, “What the hell? How am I going to feel about another kid that isn't mine?” 

 

I started really, truthfully freaking out, and also doubting whether do I really want more children and things. This was not a fear that I could share with Jenny. I had, after all, committed to this. I couldn't back out of it. 

 

At the time, I was on tour in a national tour of a musical, me and my girl. We were playing the Pantages theater in Los Angeles, which is where I live. It's a big old theater. On one night, during the intermission, a friend of mine came to the stage door and told me that the young woman in question had gone into labor. By the time I got home, Jenny would be on a plane flying to Charleston, North Carolina. These were the days before mobiles. You actually had to talk to people to explain things to them. 

 

The next day, a baby girl was born into Jenny's hands, basically. And the next morning, she spent with the child, and with the young woman, and then clearing up the legalities that allowed her to take a baby out of a hospital, and put her on a plane and fly back to Los Angeles. That plane would get in at 11:15 that night. 

 

So, I go to theater, and I explain to my fellow performers what's going on and I say, “Listen, I have to meet that plane. This is a watershed moment in my life. I cannot not be there. I must.” And they go, “Okay. Fine. Yeah, you can leave.” I go, “Yeah, but to get there, we got to knock 10 minutes off the show.” [audience laughter] So, they go-- They're [unintelligible 00:42:34] “Yes, come on, piece of cake.” 

 

So, the show starts exactly at 8 o’clock. We talk fast, we sing fast, we dance fast, [audience laughter] We don't stop for any laughs. Me and my girl whizzes by this bemused audience. [audience laughter] And then, the stage door guy has got my car outside and it's running. I leap out, and I jump in car and I roar off to the Los Angeles airport. I get there, and/because these are the days before security, I run to the gate, and I get there and there's nobody there at all. 

 

I sit down. In that moment as I sit down, every fear, every doubt, every apprehension, every worry that I had about other children and dealing with a child that wasn't biologically, everything formed itself up into a cannonball and smashed into me. I was completely panicked, stricken. I can't explain it. It was like being hit with a two-by-four. I'm terrified and I can't move. 

 

And then, the plane rolls by the window. And I'm thinking, “God, what if I don't have any feelings for this child? What am I going to do? Can I fake it? And if I fake it, can I live with that lie for the rest of my life? And if I lived with that lie, what would that lie do to this child? I'm going to destroy a human being's life.” 

 

And then, the doors to the gate open. Instead of passengers coming out, flight attendants started coming out. First one, then another, then another. They're coming out in this V-shape. What has happened, is that on board, they made announcement that they have this tiny baby, literally less than 24 hours old on board the plane, whose father has never seen her. If everybody wouldn't mind waiting for a couple of minutes before they get off the plane, they would like to make this into a special presentation. [audience laughter] 

 

I don't know this, this phalanx of these [audience laughter] flight attendants keeps coming towards me and-- They're Americans. They've got 48,000 gleaming teeth [audience laughter] And they're all smiling. “I can't move and I don't know what to do.” And in the middle is Jenny with this tiny baby. She walks right up to me, and she places this child into my shaking hands and she says, “Say hello to your daughter.” 

 

In terror, I look down and in that one moment, love literally suffused my entire body. I started getting warm and felt wonderful. I could feel this sense of this endless love running over me. I'm looking down and I am completely besotted by this beautiful tiny child in my arms. And then, I'm surrounded by passengers. [audience laughter] They're all wishing us well and they're patting me on the head. [audience laughter] Some of them are bestowing blessings on us. And I go, “Wow, what a fabulous way to come into the world to have your birth recognized in this public fashion.” 

 

My daughter is 34 years old now. Jenny and I went on to adopt another girl. Jenny and I are still together. I love my daughter. She's terrific. She's a wonderful young woman. We've had our ups and downs, but there's one thing about her that has never changed, which is there's a part of her that is always that tiny child in my hands in the LA airport. Because from that moment onwards, there was one thing that was absolutely crystal clear to me, “That's my kid.” Thank you.