I have several birthdays, a couple of anniversaries
and one Happy Day on my calendar of family rememberables.
The Happy Day belongs to my daughter, Dorian. She guards it fiercely.
Forgetting about Happy Day would be tantamount almost to my telling her I didn't
love her.
Every April 14th, I have to make sure my wife, Jan and I do not let Happy Day slip
our minds. I lean on Jan heavily in all matters of date remembering. Days come
and days go and my hectic schedule usually makes me numb to their passing. But Happy
Day, that is one that can not pass by ignored.
This was our seventeenth celebration of Happy Day.
I just realized, I did not tell you what a Happy Day was.
If there are any adoptive families reading this, you probably already know the answer.
Happy Day is the day that the adoption process awarded us our daughter.
The day Dorian came into our lives.
Jan and I went into adoption not knowing much about the process. But in every book
we read, prior to taking the plunge, one thing was suggested. Make the anniversary
of the adoption day special for the child. Happy Day was the name suggested to
differentiate it from birthdays and other notable days in a child's life.
So it became known as Happy Day and what a Happy Day it was when we brought the pretty,
perpetually smiling, slightly-bald-headed baby into our home.
This day reinforced the goodness of God.
We had not been actively seeking to adopt. Just testing the waters, seeing what it
would entail. We had just completed raising a family. The nest was empty,
there was no pressing need to refill it.
We made an appointment at an area adoption agency and I would recommend the Children's
Home Society of New Jersey to anyone who ever has adoption on their mind.
Our appointment was with one of their veteran adoption counselors, Emily Kaye.
Instead of greeting us with a "hello, how are you," she received us with
wide-eyed silence, a look of amazement on her face.
When she finally recovered enough to speak, she said, "I have been looking for a
couple exactly like you for months and here you coming walking in to me."
Jan and I looked at one another. We looked the same as the last time we looked at
one another.
We already had been married for 10 years at that time, and I guess all that time together
caused us to forget about such minor details as I'm of an Afro-American heritage and Jan,
she is of Jewish, Irish-English heritage.
It is hard to see color, or a lack of it, when you are up in someone's face on a daily
basis. They just become who they are, not what they are.
Mrs. Kaye continued, "We have been looking for a couple just like you for a little
inter-racial girl we have been trying to place and we have been having an impossible time
finding a family for her."
And here we had come, walking in from the street. Matching the profile exactly, or almost
exactly.
Thing was, my entering thought was a little boy. You know that male thing.
Playing baseball, Boy Scouts, helping me cut the grass. Junior.
Mrs. Kaye, who had piercing blue eyes, fixed her gaze on me. "Would you consider
adopting a little girl." She said technically she shouldn't even be telling us
the little girl was available but she was just shocked that at her moment of need, we
arrived. She said it felt like God had answered her prayers.
I left her office, heading for home, in a state of confusion. I went in hoping for a
little boy. I leave with an offer of a little girl on the table. A little
girl. Frilly dresses, baking with Mommy, chasing little boys ...and big boys away.
Not my agenda at all but life is not always about our agendas.
Something moved me to pick up the phone as soon as I arrived home from that appointment.
I dialed the number and even to my surprise, I heard my voice telling Mrs.
Kaye, who seemed equally surprised on the other end of the phone, that I would be
fine with a girl. Jan already had indicated, she would be fine with either a boy or
a girl but I think she smiled a little wider when she heard me make that pronouncement.
Then came the paperwork and the interviews. The interviews at our house, the interviews at
the agency, joint interviews, interviews of Jan and myself singularly.
Interviews on top of interviews.
The paperwork was finished, the interviews concluded. We were informed we were approved.
Normally this would mark the start of the search for a suitable child to be placed
with you.. In our case, the child was ready and waiting, they just had to make sure
we were suitable.
We were told we would not be able to just go home with the baby. She was seven
months old at the time. Old enough to have formed some bonding with the foster
parents who had her since she was a baby.
A two-step process was suggested.
The first day, we would meet our new daughter. Play with her for an hour or so.
Feed her lunch and then, relinquish her back to the foster parents. The next
day, we would meet at the same time, but after feeding her lunch, we would take her home.
Neither Jan nor I could sleep the night of the first meeting. We already had
selected a name. She was going to be named after her grandmother, my mother, with
just a twist on the theme. My mother's first name is Doris. So we took the
root of that name and converted it into Dorian. We kept my mother's middle
name of Lee intact. So the baby we were to visit the next day was to be named Dorian
Lee Fisher. We figured that way, two people would not being looking up whenever a name was
called yet it was close enough, no one ever could doubt who she was named after.
Tired and anxious, we went to the nursery at the Children's Home Society the next
afternoon. Dorian was brought into the room. Girl didn't have any hair!
Just a couple of wisp's of light brown fuzz here and there. She was crawling
and wasted little time crawling right up to me and grabbing on to my leg. I suddenly
lost sight of the fact she had no hair. Forgot she wasn't a boy too. All I could see
was that sweet smile and the smell of Baby Magic swept through my nose. I was
hooked.
Her Mommy to be held her and fed her some pureed sweet potatoes, her favorite meal at that
time. It all seemed so natural. She did not cry for her foster parents,
who were out of the room and out of sight during this whole time. She did not fret a
bit, it was like she was supposed to be with us.
Then came another sleepless night. Worse, if possible, than the night before. now we
had a chance to be with our daughter. Hold her. Feed her. And then had
to give her back. You try to sleep on a night like that. Morning was so slow
arriving.
We dawn did break, and we arrived at the Children's Home Society, the transition was
easy.. Her foster mother, who we still maintain contact with to this day,
brought with her all of the possessions Dorian had accumulated during her short
time alive. She was kissed and hugged. A few tears fell on all sides, and then
we drove home with our new bundle of joy.
That became Happy Day, April 14, the day we brought our daughter home with us.
"Tell me the story Dad of how I came over and grabbed your leg that first day.
You didn't really try to shake your leg to shake me off did you?" she still
asks as part of our Happy Day ceremony.
I admit, I added that shaking her off bit for comic effect, somewhere about her 8th Happy
Day.
But each year, she still wants to hear the story, with the shaking off in, only so she can
extract it at the story's end.
When Dorian came home, we took all the traditional baby pictures of her. When they
came back, my mother found some pictures of me at the same age. It looked like the
pictures were of sister and brother.
God does not make mistakes. From beginning to end, Dorian coming into our lives was
His plan. Unless I told you she was adopted, you never would know from looking at
her. She looks like she would be the ideal product of Jan and myself.
She has so much family resemblance....how great God is!
We have never hidden, or cloaked, the fact Dorian is adopted. Instead, we wear
it as a badge of pride of how God provides.
Last night, as we sat around at the restaurant Dorian had chosen to celebrate
Happy Day in, she looked at me and asked, "Dad what are you going to write about in
the newsletter tomorrow?"
I told her God had not given me a sign yet. "You know, you can write about My
Happy Day."
This morning, God told me this was a great idea.
We all have our Happy Days but unlike Dorian, most of us do not realize it.
Our Happy Day is when God adopted us into His family.
How many of us remember the date when we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and
God made us part of His family. That was a Happy Day, like the song echoes, when
Jesus washed my sins away.
Happy Day in the Fisher household is one more day to thank God for His goodness. Do
I regret not holding out for a little boy? Never! I could not have asked for a
better fishing buddy, athlete and companion than I received in Dorian.
And Jan got the daughter most mothers only wish for.
God put the pieces together. Dorian needed a family to love her as much as God loved
her. And we needed this little girl to love, who had come to us out of God's love.
It indeed was, and continues to be, a Happy Day!
