Thoughts from 37,000 feet... and JFK

And suddenly, in the time it takes for a plane to liftoff the runway, this is much more real than it has ever been before. It's hard to describe this feeling, it's a surprising feeling. I have been the queen of paperwork for 10 months, controlling and analyzing every detail, every step. Doctors' visits, passports, visas, apostilles, apostilles again, birth certificates, marriage certificates, mortgage papers, bank letters, social workers; the list literally goes on and on endlessly. If we hadn't left this morning my list of things to do would have only grown, a strange fluke in human nature to never actually complete a to-do list (or maybe it's just in MY nature). The endless influx and outgo of paper has made it easy for me to never actually believe that this adoption was going to happen. It's sort of like watching tv every night; it feels like life, but it isn't really. It seemed like I was adopting a baby, but only in the remote sort of sense, in a conversational sense.

But now it IS happening. We are on the other side of the paperwork fence. We are up in the plane now. We are living, I think, yes, that's what you call it! We are not going somewhere easy, this is no beach resort. This is an adventure. This is it. This is the beginning of our new family, the point where we bring this life home with us, and we can't control him! We're about to do something insane!

I am thinking, "Did I do this?" I remember being up in the plane with Lisa before, skydiving years ago, and thinking to myself "Wow, I'm about to jump out of a PLANE, and it was MY idea." I don't know how I thought I had gotten myself to that point before I realized that it was my own drive that did it. It didn't feel like me, it didn't feel unique. It felt sort of like "the thing you do", at least until I was truly getting ready to jump out of the plane. Then I realized, people do NOT jump out of planes every day, most people NEVER jump out of a plane, I got myself up here and no one else! You know those adventure magazines you might see? Those camping magazines, extreme sports magazines; most people never actually DO any of that! As it turns out, they just read the magazines! Here I was thinking that it was normal to jump out of a plane, like a rite of passage, like graduating from high school or something. And here I was thinking that it's normal to fly across the world and adopt a child...

Well, it ain't normal. None of this crazy stuff is, and certainly not this journey we're on. It may not be normal, but it's fun! Except for that soda I spilled on my lap mid-flight... sigh...

Jen