Veronica and Terry Harris, charting their own course

THE PARENTS: Veronica Harris, 30, and Terry Glen Harris, 36, of West Oak Lane

THE CHILDREN: Jade Aliceson, 4; Jace Terry, born Dec. 14, 2019

THEIR NAMES: Jade, the stone, is said to transmit wisdom, clarity, and courage; Jace, of Hebrew origin, means “the Lord is salvation.”

It started as a middle-schooler’s crush — Veronica approached Terry as he was playing basketball in a church recreation center and teased, “You’re my husband, right?” — that turned into a six-year friendship.

Terry, then a high school senior, barely knew who Veronica was. But they discovered a mutual passion for music — they would write songs together over the phone — and began confiding in each other about dating and family life.

Both were being raised by single women: Terry’s aunt and Veronica’s grandmother. Both were deeply involved in the church.

In 2009, Terry was in the Air Force, stationed in Afghanistan; buddies ribbed him about this “Veronica” he couldn’t stop talking about. “They said, ‘Why aren’t you two together?’ ” Terry says. “I started opening up to there being deeper feelings there.”

When he came home and learned a friend had been killed in a motorcycle accident, he called Veronica, despondent. “I was crying, and there was no judgment,” he says. That clinched the relationship: He sent her a plane ticket to South Carolina, and the two kissed as soon as she came through the gate.

“It felt like this was the person I was supposed to be with the whole entire time,” Veronica says.

But Terry had to return to duty in Afghanistan. While there, something traumatic happened — he doesn’t like to share the details — and the incident shook his faith in God and in people. The two broke up for six months. Meanwhile, Terry prayed and finally came to a realization.

He showed up at Veronica’s on New Year’s Eve of 2010, a guitar in hand. “He wanted to be my boyfriend again, and I accepted,” she says.

By 2012, they’d settled in Philadelphia; that April, Terry suggested they get frozen yogurt to go, then dance at home to Kenny Lattimore’s “For You.” He slipped a ring box onto the frozen yogurt in the fridge and set his laptop to record the moment.

“She opened up the refrigerator door and started laughing. I’m in the living room, on my knees, waiting,” he recalls. The answer was yes. They married the following July, a destination wedding in Montego Bay. Terry sang his vows.

Veronica felt wary of family; she hadn’t been raised around children or intact marriages. Neither had Terry — his dad passed away when he was 5, and his only male role model was a godfather — but, he says, “I knew I wanted to make a difference in a kid’s life.”

Gradually, Veronica changed her mind. And after a dinner out to celebrate their second anniversary, she handed him a gift box containing three pregnancy tests, all positive. They weren’t a surprise: Her period was late, her body felt different, and they’d been trying. Still, she’d prayed as she waited for the results: Lord, if this is supposed to be our story, just guide me through it.

The pregnancy was rocky: hyperemesis for seven months, with so much nausea that Veronica couldn’t even tolerate water. “I went from being excited and happy to being miserable and frail and weak. I didn’t even know if I wanted to continue being pregnant. But he encouraged me, despite how mean I could be.”

Terry, meanwhile, worried about practical and emotional matters: “Did I have enough money to take care of her? Could I be the husband my wife deserved? Would we ever trust a babysitter?”

The morning of a scheduled induction, Veronica’s contractions began. But they ramped up slowly; it took Pitocin, an epidural, and 30 hours of labor to bring Jade into the world. Veronica recalls looking at her daughter, teary-eyed with joy and responsibility, while Terry peeled off his shirt for skin-to-skin contact.

“Sometimes dads are too macho,” he says. “I cry at a moment’s notice.” And in that moment, “[Jade] opened her eyes and looked up at me, and I felt like I was in a different space.” His commitment to parenting equity continued at home, even when friends wondered why he was taking time off work.

After the initial steep learning curve — “we were tired, angry, sleep-deprived, and the baby was crying,” Veronica recalls — she felt content with their family of three, and leery of a reprise of her first difficult pregnancy.

One day, Jade was saying prayers: “God bless Mommy, bless Daddy, bless baby and me.” Terry and Veronica exchanged a glance: What baby? But not long afterward, even before the drugstore test stick confirmed her hunch, Veronica said, “Babe, I think we might be expecting.”

This pregnancy, too, was riddled with nausea, but at least this time Veronica knew what to expect. Her contractions began a few days before a scheduled induction, as she and Terry were doing errands. Later that night, she made Christmas cookies with Jade. By the time they arrived at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, she was nine centimeters dilated.

“We don’t deliver babies in triage,” the midwife declared. Jace was born about an hour later. “I was in awe of him, and in awe of myself,” Veronica says. As for Terry, he recalls the staggering sense of responsibility, fear, and love that accompanied the birth of his son.

“There’s no real blueprint for Veronica and me for being parents. [Growing up], we didn’t see marriage. I saw mothering, but never fathering inside the household. I thought: I just have to show him the best example of what a man is supposed to be. Some people want kids to grow up so fast. I say, No, be innocent as long as possible.”

He wants his son to know it’s OK to cry. He wants his daughter to know she can be heroic. Both want their kids to believe that no one can blunt their dreams.

“Jade says to me, ‘I want to be just like you,’ and I say, ‘You’re 10 times better than me,’ ” Veronica says. “I want them to know the world is what you make it.”