Writing this a bit late….please excuse me…

Father’s day is a bittersweet day for me. It has been ever since 2001. The sweet is that is the year my son Thomas was born. It was also the year I lost my father. (He passed away in January of that year, Thomas was born in June.) My father never got to see my son in this life, although I’m thankful he knew Thomas was on his way. My dad successfully predicted Thomas was a boy, even though we never found out his gender from the ultrasound…we wanted to, but Thomas was being a stinker and hiding what he was. We like to think, in retrospect that he was giving us a pleasant surprise to look forward to after the shock and grief at losing my dad.

Simply put, my father is, was, and will always be my hero. I thought there was nothing he couldn’t do. He was a quiet man who let his actions speak louder than his words. And I knew without a doubt that he loved me and my brother…and would do anything for us or my mother.

My Father-in-law was also a neat guy. He has also passed on from this life, but not from our hearts. I didn’t know him nearly as well as I would have liked, due to the fact that he was also a very quiet, private man. But I know he was a good husband and father…and his son, my husband, is a lot like him in many ways.

As for Royce… he is a good man and a good father. People talk about looking forward to seeing me with our girl and I look forward to that too…but I also really look forward to seeing Royce with his daughter. Before we had even seen her face, Royce would half-jokingly say that our daughter wasn’t dating until she was 30. To which I’d reply, “Good luck enforcing that one, daddy.” (hahaha) He’d have better luck playing the “Good cop” to Georgia’s future dates and asking Uncle Dave or Uncle Steve to play “bad cop”.

One last thought about… even though both of our dads passed away years before we saw Georgia’s face, they knew of our plans to adopt….and they approved and supported us in our desire to add to our family through adoption.

On mother’s day, I wrote some thoughts for Georgia’s first mother and her nannies. For Father’s day… my thoughts go to her first father…I don’t know if he was part of the decision to abandon Georgia or not. If he was, my wish is for some measure of peace to his heart. And my thoughts, well wishes, and deepest gratitude to Yangzhou CWI director Huang Wenlong. I am looking forward to meeting him and thanking him in person for his care of all the orphans, and especially for putting forth Georgia’s paperwork so she could be adopted.