All my efforts paid off double—the next time, we were blessed with the miracle pregnancy of the twins! Growing two humans was rough on my body. I gained over a hundred pounds and got very ill. I developed poisonous edema—I was dangerously swollen full of toxic fluid. I also developed gestational diabetes. But the most damaging of all my afflictions was the loneliness. All my fun party friends were nowhere around, because I couldn’t twirl around the city, I couldn’t partake in splashes of wine and late-night gallivanting. On the contrary, I was in constant discomfort. Again, I didn’t have a team that knew how to surround me with the proper care. I was often by myself. But fortunately, this time I did have a mother-in-law who was there for me more than anything else. Nick’s mom, Beth, would come and rub my back (the backaches were debilitating) and feet, which were under excruciating strain from all the weight. She helped me slather on my very special cream that I developed with my dermatologist on my giant, tight drum of a stomach (over a hundred pounds gained, and no stretch marks ’pon de tummy!). She would just sit with me and her grandbabies growing inside my big belly. A kindness.
Nick, on the other hand, didn’t quite comprehend the enormity of what I was going through. Once, we were at an appointment with our specialist for high-risk pregnancies. While I was hooked up to a machine, with the weight of two human beings and a small lake of fluid filling my entire body, the memory of comfort of any kind far in the distance, my kind, older doctor, in his thick Middle Eastern accent, looked over at my sulking second husband and said, “Poor Nick; he’s so exhausted.”
The recording of Merry Christmas II You is what held me together during my treacherous pregnancy. I loved creating the first Christmas album so much; I thought doing another would keep me from slipping into sadness. I totally immersed myself in the writing and recording. I wanted this album to be more diverse and the production lusher. I was collaborating with a broader range of producers, like James Poyser from the Roots (we made “When Christmas Comes” as a classic R & B song, and it’s one of my all-time favorites) and Broadway musical producer Marc Shaiman (the 1950s-esque standard “Christmas Time Is in the Air Again”), in addition to my own go-to favorite partners like Randy Jackson, Big Jim Wright, and JD. The doctors wanted me to be on bed rest, but how, tell me, how do I rest? As I was being pulled down from the loneliness and the fluid I was retaining, working on this album was lifting me.
I recorded most of it in our house in Bel Air, which once belonged to the late, legendary Farrah Fawcett. In my many imaginative roles as a child, one of my all-time favorites was private investigator Jill Munroe of Charlie’s Angels. No surprise, I was fascinated by her hair: the perfection of the color and cut, just laid. (I’ve paid it several homages in my career.) I recall my mother telling me her hair was “frosted,” which my six- or seven-year-old mind heard as “frosting.” And I just knew someday I would slather my hair with a chocolate-and-vanilla swirl and come out looking just like Jill.
One of the highlights of the album was arranging the “O Come All Ye Faithful / Hallelujah Chorus” duet with Patricia Carey, where I was able to blend opera and gospel. We performed it on my ABC Christmas special, with a full orchestra and choir (and with me very pregnant—three generations onstage together!). During this time I also recorded “When Do the Bells Ring for Me” with the incomparable Tony Bennett for his Duets II album; the timeless icon himself came to my home studio to record. I squeezed my big pregnant self into my little pink vocal booth, and we set up microphones outside in the studio for Mr. Bennett, so that our voices would be separate and smooth, but we could be in the same room, which was very important to Mr. Bennett. I recall looking out my little window at a living legend singing with me in my house—a moment. “I never sang with a trio before” was his witty remark (as there were technically four hearts beating in the session), a memory that will always remain with me.
I promoted and performed Merry Christmas II You while enormously and dangerously pregnant. One invitation I simply could not turn down was performing a song I wrote called “One Child” for the twenty-ninth annual Christmas in Washington special. It was filmed in the majestic National Building Museum, and I was singing with a full choir of beautiful and hope-filled young people backing me up. President Obama, the First Lady, Sasha, and Malia were in the front row, directly in my line of sight, beaming with dignity. It was such an honor to perform for the Obamas, and by extension the country, again. For the finale all the performers were gathered on stage and the First Family joined us. Earlier Nick had suggested I tell FLOTUS our then secret. She and President Obama were going down the line, thanking all of us, and when she came to me, I seized the moment and whispered in her ear that I was having twins. After I sang “One Child,” Michelle Obama, our forever historic First Lady, became the first to know we were having two children. What a blessing.
Monroe and Moroccan got their names because I wanted them to have the initials MC, like me. My precious daughter was obviously named after my childhood hero (the sonogram revealed her posed like a Hollywood starlet, reclining on a chaise in the womb!). We arrived at Moroccan because both Nick and I loved the name Rakim (because he is one of the greatest rappers to ever do
