Today's challenge is to write about what we know. To describe in detail a very important day in my life. I thought about 1989 when I married my amazing man. Then 1991, 1993 and 1996 when I understood a mother's love. Or what about my adoption day or graduation or the first day we brought Frosty (our mare) home. Then I knew what I needed to write about.
The day I met my birth Dad for the first time.
It's a long story and a fairy tale at that. To write about my first day, you have to know how amazing all of my parents are to make this first day possible. Having grown up for parents is a really good thing!
The phone call.
I called him. Finally.
I had his phone number. I had talked to his mom and my new found sister.
(He told me later he felt he didn't have the right to enter my life and waited for me to call. His Vicki said he was really anxious and didn't wait patiently! I had looked for him over the years without success. Circumstances had all converged in just the right way for us to become family.)
His voice was amazing. His laugh. He is one of those guys whose emotions seep into his voice, his laugh and his very being. His authenticity, honesty and directness. I adored him at once. (People have asked me to put into words the experience and I truly don't know how.)
Here is what I can tell you.
My heart felt as if it grew one hundred times and it beat very close to the surface of my life. I felt raw and vulnerable. As if I could feel, sense, and hold the world within in. It was as if anyone who bumped into me, felt it.
His voice and personality reverberated into my head and heart. It was if I had known him forever. As if a person who had been with me forever walked into my reality and wrapped his arms around me.
He had just arrived in Arizona for the winter, when I called. His wife and him turned around and drove way back North to meet my family and I and to spend Thanksgiving with us.
I was sick with anxiety and excitement. Tore in to my house and bought new chairs. I couldn't sleep and couldn't work. My family thought I'd lost my mind and my husband saw me as a love struck puppy. Then the day came.
We waited and watched. My boys were protective. Even as they went about their daily lives of school, sports, work, chores and life. I paced. David paced. He watched out the window. The boys came to check on me and then disappear back to their worlds. Finally, David said, "They are here."
I screamed and ran into the kitchen to hyperventilate. "Are you sure?" I whispered.
David said, "It's a couple with North Dakota plates." He tried talking me down from the ledge and I trembled and shook.
Finally, David went to the door. The boys were here. One of their friends were here. My house and my dogs and my world was here. I wasn't.
I felt completely outside myself as I met this man of my dreams. The man I had wondered, pictured, sought, yelled at and wanted. I met him and he hugged me. I met his wife and she hugged me. They met our boys and our dogs and sat in my house and my world. He was perfect. His laugh, his smile, his hands and his attitude. He was so full of life. The dogs immediately climbed on his lap. The boys told about their lives.
(My oldest held back. Unsure of this man who had (in his high school mind) knocked up Grandma and ditched me. He was protective and unsure until the day he watched him meet his Grandma.)
My middle son and his friend had a dance. We all climbed in to our old suburban to go to Subway and take them to the fairgrounds. It was this ordinary act of living our lives and Dad stepping in to it in such a natural way that won my heart. It was the way the boys responded to their new Grandma and the way my husband swooned over them both. How my horses came to him and he pitched hay. I saw myself in him. His attitude, smile, passion and honesty.
When they were going to leave, I held on to him. Not wanting to let him go. Embarrassed as I felt like a five year girl who wanted to climb into her Dad's lap and never get down. I wanted to bury my face in to his shoulder and stay. As if my adult world was in another time and my little girl heart needed this man. Even now, I am crying with joy and hope and dreams.The day I met my birth Dad changed my life. It was the day the little girl within my heart was held, valued and cherished in a way I would have never dreamed possible.
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