40 years ago today our daughter was born. I think that she has come to a point in her life where she doesn’t mind my mentioning her age. The event of her birth, however, is not something that I remember. In fact it was nearly a month later when I first realized that she had been born. It took that long for the Village Family Services Center to decide that we were the ones to be her adoptive family. During that month she spend slightly longer in the hospital than typical for a healthy baby and then went to a foster home where she was loved and cared for. They even thought to have a portrait of her photographed and presented us with the picture when we picked her up to take her home.

She has probably tired of me telling the story, but the first night that she was in our care I was too excited to sleep. I kept waking up and going to check on her as she slept. I remember standing there looking at her in the crib and thinking, “I don’t know what I would do if something happened to her.”

As it turned out, in the nights to come we discovered that she was going to be the one to wake up during the night over and over again. I sometimes joke that she finally slept all the way through the night once when she was five years old. That is an exaggeration, but I spent a lot of time up with her in the middle of the night during her early years. It was a new experience for me. Although her brother is two and a half years older, he was born into our family and I was not able to feed him until he graduated to bottles and baby food. With Rachel the process was to get up, change a diaper, mix up a bottle of formula and feed the baby. Then I would rock and sing until she was ready to go back into her bed. Sometimes she would cry and I couldn’t figure out how to help her. Sometimes I had to wake Susan for help. Sometimes neither of us could solve the problem.

Part of the issue was that she was prone to frequent ear infections and after the doctor inserted tubes into her ears to help relieve pressure she did sleep better and there was less crying that we couldn’t figure out how to console.

Of course a day like today is good day for me to reflect on her and all that she has come to mean. I have a lot of stories about her. The thing that seems to be important to express is what an amazing person she is. It was love at first sight from the first moment I held her tiny body. I could not imagine what a wonderful woman she has become. I guess that by the time she was in middle school, I recognized her special abilities with young children. At some point I knew that she would make a really great mother, and I was right about that. She and her husbands are wonderful parents to our grandson.

When she was young, she had a lot of fears. She was frightened by insects and frogs and other small creatures. She didn’t like some of the games I have played with other children. She has, however, grown up to be an especially courageous woman. She has lived in England and Japan as well as several states. She has an incredible ability to make friends and to be a good friend. She gives a listening ear to those who need to talk. She is creative and artistic.

As a girl she was my dancer. When her brother started school we would walk by a dance studio on the way to school. She was mesmerized by the studio and she wanted to start dancing there while she was still too young. As soon as she was able, we signed her up for lessons and she loved it. Her first teacher was a dancer with the American Festival Ballet and I learned about pink tights and dance slippers, the French names for the various positions and I thrilled to see her in her dance costumes. She continued dancing ballet into her college years. One of my treasured possessions is a picture of her in a dance costume taken when she was a high school senior. I love to look at that picture, which hangs on our living room wall.

All of the experiences of four decades seem to pile up as I pause to celebrate her birth. Every child is a gift of God, but somehow she seems to be such a special gift to our family. When her husband asked my permission for him to propose marriage to her, I said two things. First of all I said that the decision about who she would marry was her decision, not mine. As nervous as Mike was about asking me about proposing to her, the one he had to convince wasn’t me, but Rachel. He was successful in that. The second thing I said to him was, “You have to understand that she comes with a family.” If she marries you she will be no less our daughter and you will become our son. That’s the way it is with our family and that is non-negotiable for me. He agreed and has been faithful to that commitment. He is, indeed a wonderful son and a treasured member of our family.

Today as I wind down from three days of sailing and adventuring, I am filled with gratitude. I have deep gratitude for a wife and partner who is such an intrepid adventurer with me. I am grateful for children who support their parents in all of our adventurers. And I am especially grateful for the tiny baby born 40 years ago today in a North Dakota hospital. I am grateful to her birth mother who graciously released her, to her foster mother who selflessly cared for her, and to her for being the treasure that she is.

Indeed there have been showers of blessings.