Parents of Child Born to Surrogate Face Final Challenge : Families: After bitter custody battle, they enjoy a quiet life with the toddler. But a Supreme Court ruling looms.

Christopher Calvert knows nothing about the books of newspaper clippings and the row of videotaped news programs that his parents keep on a shelf in the living room. When he gets older, he will be permitted to look at them. And he will see that they tell the unusual story of his life.

But it is not time for that yet. At 19 months, the restless toddler is far from able to understand the media frenzy that surrounded his arrival into the world, or the many days that lawyers spent fighting over him in court. And for now, his parents think that’s just fine. Mark and Crispina Calvert say they want their son to have the carefree years children deserve.

“We’ll explain it all to him when he gets older,” Mark Calvert said. “He has a right to know. But now he should get the chance to just be a normal kid.”

In his black-and-white checkered overalls and white sneakers, Christopher is 100% toddler: constantly in motion. He trots around the yard pointing to objects, naming them in a sweet whisper. “Mooooo,” he says, pointing to a pale crescent in the evening sky.

It has been a year and a half since an Orange County Superior Court judge ruled in Johnson vs. Calvert, reshaping the legal definition of parenthood. He decided that the Calverts, an infertile couple whose egg and sperm had been implanted in a surrogate mother, Anna Johnson, were Christopher’s only legal and biological parents and that Johnson, who waged an emotional battle for the infant, had no rights to him.

The decision carved out a new and controversial concept: that carrying and delivering a baby do not make a woman the infant’s legal mother. An appeals court affirmed that decision in October, 1991. Now the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, a landmark because it is the first to tackle the issue of parental rights for a woman who has no genetic link to the child she bears.

As thick stacks of briefs are filed, both sides look anxiously to the court for resolution. Both sides say they are optimistic they will win. But heartbreak, it seems, waits in the wings for one or the other.

Johnson, now 31, declined to be interviewed. Her lawyer, Richard C. Gilbert, said the last 18 months have been painful for her, marked by constant longing to see the little boy she still thinks of as Matthew, her son. Some months ago, it appeared that things might be looking up for Johnson, with a new marriage and another baby on the way. But that happiness was short-lived--she lost the fetus and the marriage is dissolving, Gilbert said.

“She’s really suffering. She would just like to see the baby,” Gilbert said. “It’s been a living hell for her.”

Gilbert said the Calverts have spurned Johnson’s requests to visit the child. The thing that has buoyed her for months has been the confidence that the state’s high court will grant her parental rights, allowing her to share in the boy’s life, Gilbert said.

Co-workers at the hospital where Johnson is a nurse are sympathetic, Gilbert said. But in public, she tries to avoid the inquiring glances of strangers who recognize her from newspapers and television programs, often wearing glasses and changing her hairstyle frequently to keep a low profile, Gilbert said.

The Calverts, too, must contend with strangers who want to talk about the case. Crispina Calvert, a nurse at Western Medical Center, says she gets tired of being “stared at, stared at, stared at.”

Mark Calvert, 35, an insurance underwriting manager, and his wife, 38, obviously revel in their son, who has his genetic mother’s dark shiny hair and wide eyes. The couple repeatedly interrupted an interview to chuckle at his antics, tickle him, blow bubbles for him, offer him sips of juice.

But simultaneously with those happy moments, they talk about their bitterness, about the months sacrificed to courtrooms and mobs of reporters, and the financial toll. They sold a house on a quiet cul-de-sac near a park and bought a less expensive one on a four-lane highway, putting the difference toward medical and legal bills.

The Calverts also look anxiously to the state Supreme Court, saying they know they will win, but adding that they still worry that “some judge” will see the case differently than the lower courts have.

And they have to keep on with their lives in the meantime. They think about having a second child. They think about adoption. And despite the trauma of the case, they even consider having another baby through a surrogate.

They would do it differently the second time, they quickly add. Those words said, they turn their gaze to Christopher, who leans against his mother’s knee, smiling shyly at a visitor.

They look at him, and their eyes say: Yes. It was worth it. Yes.