Upon Your Breath, Lilyana O ...Part I

We are now only months, rather than years, from a life-changing trek to China to bring home our daughter (!), Lilyana. We have waited longer now than we have yet to wait. We finally feel we have caught the growing swell of a wave, are gaining momentum, no longer treading water...on a tide borne of the new moon of this Year of the Glowing Pig; a tide that will deliver us across the great Pacific and lap us gently upon ancient shores where family, now unknown to us, await us. The image is still too incredible to wrap our minds around entirely. A miracle that we ourselves have willed into being; or, more humbly and accurately, have nurtured to fruit.

This comforting momentum allows us now to breathe and reflect on the path we have already journeyed, a perspective we more seldom allowed ourselves so many months now past, for fear of building expectations too weighty to bear for the long haul we had ahead.

Nearly ten years have passed already since Susan and I first knew our love for each other had grown into a life promise. Through the formative months and years of our relationship we certainly talked around the issue of having children, but were content enjoying the discovery and shaping of our life as couple. I recall a time when we gently closed the door on the room that contained that conversation -- about bringing a child into our lives. We were independently and mutually resolved that, perhaps, the opportunity to be parents had simply passed us by, as we settled into the image of our family as two. We settled on this image consciously -- we didn't simply stop talking about the alternative. The act of closing the door made the discomfort of letting go (of the hope of parenthood) less acute, made the pain more manageable.

Susan's latent desire to be a mother had always appeared stronger than mine to be a father. I certainly experienced occasional pangs, usually when spending time with my brother's or sister's children. Those whiffs of fatherness, however, never seemed to last long enough to cause the family room door to reopen. However, I did peer through the keyhole from time to time; and I sometimes wondered if my apparent ambivalence about being a father had contributed to Susan sealing the door to her own longing. I decided to wait for a sure and deliberate
breeze to blow open the door, but it never came.

Until a warm zephyr (from the East, no doubt) alighted February 14th, 2004...

(to be continued)