Happy New Year!

So, I can’t help but feel reflective and even philosophical on a day such as this…

One year ago today, I sat here at the computer and made my first Google search about international adoption. I can’t believe I’m admitting this, but I searched on “J@ne Aronson” because I had read about her being the “orphan doctor” that Angelina Jolie took Zahara to see straight away after returning from Africa, and I thought that her name would be a better starting point than just Googling the bigger categories. Her site led me to R@inbow Kids, where I learned how to order birth certificates and found a list of agencies, and the rest is history, as they say.

January 2007 also marks the 13th year I’ve been trying to become a mother. I stopped BCPs in January of 1994 (in my first marriage) and, except as part of fertility treatments, I haven’t used any since. Had I had a child in due course, I’d be a mother to a 12-year-old today. Hmmmmmm…

And the reason you just can’t play the “what if” game too long is because I also would probably still be married to my ex, would still be living in Michigan, and wouldn’t be adopting at all–let alone adopting the most amazing Emme Lu.

Whether you believe you create your own life path or have one created for you, life is what it is. You try to understand it, you try to make decisions that jive with your sense of it, but–in the end–there’s a current to it that, I have to admit, isn’t always navigatable. The past year has been full of surprises. I am no where near the place where I thought I would be, when I was sitting in this same chair a year ago today.

But I like it. I like where I am.

I guess I’m not the best judge of that current. And, now, before I break out into some overwrought, sappy rendition of “Oh Captain, My Captain,” I will wish you all a very happy 2007…

full of PEACE, both for you personally and for the larger world…