By Paul Reddin
Monday, June 12, 2006 On The Eve Of Traveling to Our Daughter
What strikes me as funny about extraordinary days is how ordinary they are. The day we got our referral for Katie started out like many others: I made Monica coffee, took her bag to the car, and drove past a neighbor walking his beagle as I was taking Monica to the trainstation. Drove home, walked Riley and then got ready to go to work. Now we had a thought that this could be "The Day", so it was not a total surprise when Monica called. Then when it took her a minute or so to choke out "Hi Daddy", I knew. The drive to Brooklyn was unremarkable, finding a parking space was as hard as usual and the subway was as crowded as expected. I was to meet Monica at the main entrance to Macy's on 34th Street. A word about cell phones. I tend to find having one a pain, but the fact that we were standing within 8 feet of each other and still could not find one another, well, they come in handy.After a hug, I took Monica in my arms and we danced together. It's something we tend to do as we go through our lives and I could see out of the corner of my eye an elderly black woman smiling at us andn odding her approval. Some of my in-laws find our dancing "icky" while my sister thinks it's sweet, and it is so beyond the motor skills of my brother that I'm not sure if he knows what we are doing. As we went into the new Gladney offices, everyone was telling us how cute our baby is. Finally, when they gave us the photo and I looked into a pair of eyes that seemed a little cautious looking back at us, this ordinary day turned into an extraordinary one. It made me think back to almost 5 years ago when I looked into a pair of eyes, walked up onto an alter and changed my ordinary life into an extraordinary one. With those steps, we started on a path that would take us around the world to find the heartbeat that is in rhyth mwith our own, to become an extraordinary family, and to dance.
Monica, Paul & Katie www.rileysgirl.blogspot.com
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