Thoughts on a Sunday afternoon (David)

Three days ago, we celebrated our 19 month wedding anniversary. The wedding was magical; you should have seen how beautiful Nina looked under a rain-splashed canopy. Days later, we were in Paris, and Venice after that. We stayed at an amazing little hotel there, the Locanda Orseola, owned by some truly wonderful people. They'd become engaged at a local restaurant, and wanted us to dine their before we left for Rome. It was there that we - Nina and I - first talked about having children.

We talked about my fears, that maybe I wouldn't be a good dad, that maybe I'd be like mine, that we as a couple would change in some unforeseeable way. We talked as well about Ariel - her daughter from a different marriage, and my daughter from a past life, it seemed - and how this child I bore no biological relation to felt so much a part of me.

I had no idea that we'd already answered the adoption question a year and more earlier - how will I feel about a child I'm not related to? How will I come to love her?

I already have. We've been through 4 in vitro procedures, and came to the decision to adopt in an indirect, sometimes painful, always united way. But we're here, and it feels like it's where we're supposed to be. Where we were always headed. And when I wonder about that question of loving Kavanna, I remember a candle burning between Nina and I in Venice, and the look on Ariel's face the first time we met (gazing at me suspiciously over an offered plate of cupcakes, as if to say, "who are you with my mom, and did you take any of the vanilla ones?") and the looks we exchange now, and I know the question was answered quite a while ago.

Don't know if you're there yet, Kavanna, but we're here, and we're cutting the distance between us a day at a time.

See you.