I found this today while going through old notebooks and journals of mine. I’m retyping it here in case it gets lost or destroyed. Paper is so unreliable.
I wrote this on the airplane two days after you were born, when I was on my way to see you and hold you and breathe the same air as you for the first time. Before I became your father for reals. I was completely exhausted when I wrote this. I still remember the feeling. The prior two days were a whirlwind for all four of us: me, Mommy, your birth mother, and you. It’s not all roses and strawberries. Not all of it’s pretty. 10 1/2 years later, knowing what I know now, that you are the core purpose of my life–a loving, thoughtful, curious, whip-smart, blossoming girl who brings me so much joy every day, a girl who loves to sing and dance and tell jokes and has friends she loves and won’t stay off her iPad, and who is kind to young children in Aftercare and the new kids in her class, who likes Roblox and Fortnite too much and loves Sia and Noah Kahan and Olivia Rodrigo and has a sweet tooth like me and a smile that lights up a room–I feel so stupid and embarrassed for being so afraid back then. Beyond stupid. But hindsight is 20/20, right? Always perfect.
This should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway: what appears below is a snapshot in time from The Before Time. Before you. Before I saw you and held you for the first time and you were three-dimensional to me. Before I knew you and loved you and became your father. I didn’t know anything about fatherhood then or the boundless love that comes with it. Before you, these were only abstract ideas to me. You changed all of this and gave me the greatest gift that I will ever receive in this life.
I’m sure some will think that you should never see this, that you won’t understand it, or that it will hurt your feelings in some way. That last one might be a little true, even though we have talked about some of this already. I only want you to know the rest when you’re older. But this is the real truth, and I believe that the young woman you are becoming will understand the context of this and will want to know as much as she can possibly know about her birth. I think she will understand what I wrote above far outweighs what I wrote below. I want you to see this and understand what I was feeling right before I met you, before everything changed for both of us forever, just like I want you to meet your birth parents if that is what you choose to do. I think it’s more important for me to continue to not be ruled by fear and share this with you when you are old enough to hear it.
You were our destiny. I love you with my whole heart and every particle of my soul, and I always will.
7/19/13
Adoption
The feelings that go with it: tedium of the process – how uphill it feels the entire time. So many choices: how to do it – public versus private – how much to reveal about ourselves. How to say things.
Humiliation – not being able to conceive ourselves and all that goes with that. The frustration of trying and failing – how sex came to change into having the purpose of procreation, rather than pure pleasure, which was strange for me b/c I always wanted to avoid procreation and only experience pleasure. It turned sex on its head.
The humility of having to advertise ourselves. I never thought I’d have to do that to have a child but here we find ourselves doing just that, putting up an ad – just like you would on Match.com or Craigslist.
– How much time we put into the website and books. Crafting it, perfecting it.
Impatience
The waiting for contact, the checking of stat hits to our website. The competition – more A. than me. I can see how much she wants this, to be a mother. I want to be a father too, but it does seem she wants it more – she’s driven – she has her eyes on the prize, she is going to make this happen. I respect and admire her for it, but it does make me worry about impulsiveness and lack of foresight. You get the thing you want as quickly as possible and it introduces a host of problems & stresses you didn’t expect – like when we got the house: bills, exhaustion, a never-ending, fix-it list, taxes.
I’m exhausted right now. This week has been a whirlwind. I’m about to meet my daughter – it’s crazy! A daughter made by two strangers who will soon be mine to raise. It’s surreal. I’m at the beginning of a journey that in so many ways feels out of my control & not of my making and in other ways, it feels like this was destined to be, no matter what I wanted, did, or said. She’s so beautiful and innocent – as yet-unnamed Baby Girl. The first time I saw you was digitally from 2,000 miles away. I worry about you already, what effect you will have on me and my life. I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think it would, you would, change my life for the better. I hope I can be the father you need. You are giving me the gift of fatherhood. If you knew how hard it has been – this process, how fragile destinies are – how easily things could be different for both of us. A thin reed of emails, texts, and bits and bytes.
When I found out you were born ‘Love Is Alive’ by Garry Wright came on my computer radio. All I could do was laugh and get goosebumps. I felt my grandmother’s presence and A.’s grandmother’s presence and their reassurance that they would be looking out for you and that things would be okay.
You were born and then decisions had to be made. I did not feel remotely confident to make them, much less so quickly, which is unusual for me. I like to have time to decide things – particularly important things like this. It was not a luxury here. How can it be fair to judge the future of an innocent baby on probabilities, chances, risks? It’s not remotely fair. It’s scary to change my life like this. I feel guilty that I had to judge, weigh, play things out about you. But it wasn’t really about you. You did not do anything, and I didn’t know you. You were just Baby Girl, and I needed you to stay that way, to keep your distance, until I could think.
A – who will be your mother – said she was on the same page, but I don’t think it was the whole truth. She saw you before me. She did not hesitate to get on a plane, to want to get out there as soon as possible. I worried about the impulse, but we had to see you in person, talk to the doctors – it’s the truth – one day I hope and expect that we will hate ourselves for it – the way things started, and will thank God and all that is that we were not ruled by fear, but by openness and love, so that you would enter our lives.
I’m going to meet you within hours and hold you for the first time. I’m nervous, excited, and exhausted, all at once, all right now.
