One Day

One day in September 1989, I was at the New Center in Detroit, getting ready for a presentation. There was a new guy there, and I laughed at his jokes. In fact, he made me laugh so hard that we started to attract a bit of negative attention. I still recall Steve Maritz' raised eyebrow.

 

One day in November 1992, the two of us eloped to Las Vegas, and got married at the Little Church of the West.

 

One day in June, 1995, I stood at the top of a stone stairway at the Wuhan Foundling Hospital in China. Someone placed a bundle in my arms, and I was holding my daughter. She had red painted fingernails, a circle of red polish in the middle of her forehead, and a very annoyed expression, that, more or less, she has perpetually retained.

 

One day in July 1997, I refused to believe the results of the home pregancy test, so I tried again. Seven months later, Mary Katherine was born -- almost six pounds, utterly hairless and radiating love from the get-go.

 

One summer day in 2001, the boys who lived across the alley showed up, as they had been doing since the weather got warm, to see if Emma wanted to play outside.  Behind them was their sister, a solemn-faced little girl who asked me if Mary was available to play. I summoned Mary, and they faced off in the kitchen, deciding to play Barbies in the basement. They haven't, in many senses, ever stopped.

 

One day in September 2011, Emma left home in the middle of the night to fly to Beijing as a student in School Year Abroad, determined to conquer the language she'd heard only as an infant.

 

One day in December 2011, the five of us met up at the Marriott Beijing City Wall, ready to make our own crazy quilt version of a Family Christmas.

 

From where we've come, to where we are now, God Bless Us, Every One.