family – Birth of Adventure

Searching for Smiths

Several years ago, before launching Birth of Adventure, I started a blog called “Searching for Smiths,” chronicling my attempts to search for my biological family. I was originally named Alison Smith, and my father, Wayne Smith, died in a tragic drowning accident when I was six months old. I wrote in my first blog post that “searching for Smiths in North America is like searching for a needle in a haystack,” and it really seemed that daunting. I wrote the blog hoping that one of my relatives would see it online and it would lead them to me.

Although I had no memory of my birth father, I had known that I was originally a Smith my whole life. My mom remarried when I was eighteen months old, I was adopted by my new Dad, and I became Alison Wilcox. My older sister Abbie and I knew that we had a different birth dad than the rest of our siblings, but we also knew we were our new Dad’s kids too. I had a crop of Wilcox cousins on one side, and Bing cousins on the other, with eight sets of aunts and uncles. I didn’t think much about the fact that the Smiths were not in my life – I had a huge family and didn’t really think anything was missing. There were pictures of Wayne in our family photo album, and his picture hung on our living room wall and I knew what he looked like, even if I didn’t remember him.

My connection to my birth father became much more important to me after I became a mom. David and I had our wedding when Ben was four months old, and at our rehearsal dinner, our family went around the room sharing well wishes for our wedding. When it was my turn, I spoke from my heart, without really knowing what I was going to say, and I got choked up. I was present to the love I had for everyone in the room, and my birth father’s absence felt particularly strong. As I spoke, I shared that having a four month old made me realize how long six months really was. I realized that all of the love I felt for Ben, how amazed I was by him, by his face, by his little toes, his tiny, kissable feet, I realized that my dad probably felt that love and amazement for me too. Although I was surrounded by loving family members, I felt the loss of my dad keenly right then, and saddened that I didn’t really know anything about him. I imagined what it would be like if something happened to me and Ben never got to know me, and I wished I could know more about Wayne.

It was a complicated feeling. If I wished that things were different, that my birth father hadn’t died, what would that mean for my family? If my father hadn’t died, then my mom wouldn’t have remarried. I wouldn’t have the dad who raised me, who I loved, and who loved me. If my birth father hadn’t died, then my three younger siblings – Ayron, Craig and Neil wouldn’t even exist. Wishing for another reality would diminish the other.

Three years after our wedding, my mom passed away. On top of missing her, I lost the main connection that I had to Wayne. I hadn’t asked her enough questions about him. I knew he was a nice man. He had red hair and freckles like me. He was a photographer. I had some of his photos. Whole contact sheets he had taken of his daughters that when David saw them, he related to Wayne as a father and said, “he was fascinated by your faces”. Pictures he had taken of our mom. A professional published portfolio he had taken of images in Toronto in the 70’s. Beyond that, I didn’t really know anything at all about him.

Wayne’s photos of his daughter Alison and wife Jackie

That’s when I started googling Wayne Smith, and the only other name I knew, my uncle, Wayne’s younger brother. I remembered meeting my uncle and his two daughters, my cousins, but the last time I’d seen them was when I was about ten years old. Over the next few years I tried searching online for any clue I had, and didn’t find any leads at all.

Eleven years after my mom passed away, in 2017, I started worrying that my uncle and any other relatives were getting older and I could be running out of time. I didn’t know if my grandparents were still alive. I started the Searching for Smiths blog, and after a few fruitless posts, David gave me an Ancestry DNA kit for my birthday, hoping to give me the gift of family. A few of our friends had found biological parents or other relatives that way, and we thought it was worth a try. I opened up the box, took the DNA sample, mailed it in, and about six weeks later the results popped up in my online account. I took a deep breath when I checked the matches, and saw my uncle’s name.

After staring at the computer for a few minutes, I texted David frantically, “I found my uncle!” I clicked on his profile, and wrote him a message saying I was his niece Alison. Within a few days, I got a message back. It was a weird sensation, like using a matching website, but instead of for dating, it was for reuniting long lost relatives. We messaged back and forth, and set up a phone call on the weekend. When the call came, I was outside walking our new dog Louie around the block on a blustery, snowy winter day. I had a mixed up nervous-excited feeling, wanting to talk to my uncle, but also afraid, carrying the weight of expectations.

We talked for a while, about where we lived, about our families, he asked about Abbie, and about my mom. He sounded sad when I let him know Mom had passed away. After a long time talking and catching up on over 30 years of life, he asked me if I knew what had happened to my father.

I knew the story. It was a tragedy, for many reasons. From what I knew, Wayne had just gotten a new job, which was something he and my mom were excited about, because they were broke and this job would pay the bills. He was driving near my Grandma and Grandpa Bing’s house, and he stopped in to visit his mother and father in law. My grandpa was an avid boater and fisher, and he took my dad out with him on his boat. My dad couldn’t swim and he didn’t put on a life jacket. At some point, my dad fell out of the boat and drowned. This was what I knew about the story. I also knew that this accident caused a giant rift between our families, with my mom in the middle – losing her husband, and father of her two children, when he was 30 and she was 25. Seeing the effect this had on her dad. Seeing how it affected her in-laws – her husband’s and children’s family.

When my uncle asked me if I knew the story, it was clear that the trauma of his brother’s death was still palpable. He said he would like to meet me and I said I would too. We decided to work out the details over email. I got another message through Ancestry from a distant cousin who ended up connecting me to more relatives – two aunts and another uncle. I had found multiple Smiths!

David, Ben and I planned a road trip to meet my uncle in Toronto, and then on our way home to Buffalo, we would meet one of my aunts in Hamilton. I had been searching for Smiths for over a decade and here were two, living within a few hours of me.

We met my uncle at a restaurant for dinner. He looked a lot like how I remembered him, and he resembled Wayne too. He brought some photos of him and my dad when they were younger. He told me that both of my grandparents had passed away. I was sad that I would never get a chance to meet them. I let him know that I was going to see his sister on our way home, and he said he wasn’t in touch with his other siblings anymore. Towards the end of our conversation, he talked about the day that my dad died. He was 29 when his brother passed away, and he had driven up to identify his body. He was visibly shaken as he described what happened. My mom had told me that my dad’s family blamed Grandpa, and I knew that was a big part of why they weren’t in my life. My uncle shared details that I hadn’t heard, that he said he had been told by witnesses, including how two boats collided which threw my dad out of the boat, and about what happened in the early moments after. Just like mom had said, my uncle still felt angry about the accident, and at least partly, if not fully, blamed Grandpa for it.

His account troubled me. We visited with my aunt next, and she was lovely – she was warm and welcoming to us, and also showed us some pictures. I asked her what my dad was like. Both she and my uncle said similar things – they loved him, he sounded like a good brother. He liked the water but didn’t swim. When they went to the beach, he sat under a tree with a book. I felt warm recognition – although I love to swim, I’m most happy on vacation sitting in the shade with a good book too.

When I got home, the story my uncle told kept niggling at me, and I couldn’t let it lie. I searched online with the details I had about Wayne’s accident, and ordered a copy of the police report from 1975. The next day, there was an email in my inbox from the police department with the report attached. Reading the cold hard facts, I started to cry. Without any memory of my dad, his whole story throughout my life felt hazy, not quite real. Reading the police report, it became real. He was a real man. He had lived, he was lost, and his death affected so many people. But besides the boat collision, the police report did not include the details my uncle had said he’d heard from witnesses. It was deemed an accident; it didn’t have any details that would have suggested anyone could have done anything differently to prevent it, besides the obvious – if my dad had worn a life jacket that day.

It all felt so sad to me. Not just my father’s accident and death which were tragic on their own, but the unraveling of the family too. The Smiths blaming my grandpa. My grandpa feeling guilt for what happened. My mom hurt and angry at how the Smiths treated her and Grandpa. Abbie and I growing up without our Smith grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

When I first started searching for the Smiths, I knew that not everyone in my family was happy about it, either from trying to protect me, or from loyalty to my mom, my grandpa, or the Wilcox side of the family. I was conflicted too – I was searching for Smiths, but it didn’t seem that they were searching for me. I was driven to find them for many reasons – primarily to find out who my dad was, but also to close the hole that losing an entire branch of my family tree had caused. In meeting the Smiths, and learning more about Wayne’s story, I learned that no matter what happened, everyone involved was a person who was hurt. The people impacted lost a son, a husband, a brother, a son-in-law, and a dad. There was no point blaming anyone for it – it was a terrible situation.

This whole experience was a profound one for me. I had set out to learn more about my dad, and I instead found peace knowing I had finally found his family. I think he would have wanted us to know each other. I meet three of my aunts and uncles and some of my cousins. They know Wayne’s daughters are doing well, and that Wayne has four grandchildren. They now know where we are, and we know where they are, if we ever want to connect further.

I didn’t find out a lot about my dad from the Smiths or from others I asked, but everyone told me the same thing, which I think is the most important thing. He was kind, he was loving, and he was loved.

In my mom’s early 50’s, she started writing a book about her life which was left unfinished when she passed away. I read through the chapters she had completed, including her description of her life with Wayne. She wrote:

“Wayne’s artistic endeavors helped me more than I at first realized. I began to become reacquainted with all the beauty around me. In a wild flower by a fencerow, the setting and rising sun, or a simple smile on a stranger’s face. I began to open up more and more and realize how wonderful my life was.”

This was a beautiful description of how he had affected her, and about his way of looking at the world. In her words she described how Wayne had a dream to get his photography published, and they would take walks together and visit the sites that he was capturing on film. They were excited when his first portfolio was published and sold in Toronto area bookstores. He hosted a cable show on photography and my parents were hopeful about what lay ahead. Wayne was a man living his dream. He was a man who saw beauty in the world.

A few weeks ago, my nephew Kodie, Abbie’s son, texted me to say he was getting into film photography, inspired by his grandfather Wayne, and wondering if he might discover he had inherited some natural talent. We talked on the phone, and Kodie told me his apartment in British Columbia is decorated with the published photos from Wayne’s portfolio. It reminded me that in my college years, my rooms were decorated with Wayne’s photos, and I took his 35mm Canon on my backpacking trip around Europe, also hoping to tap into an innate photographer’s gene. I smiled thinking of Wayne’s legacy living on, through his two daughters, through his grandchildren, through his love of photography, and accomplishing his dream to publish his photos that the next generations could enjoy.

In a stroke of serendipity, a few days ago my dad (Brad Wilcox) reached out to me asking if I wanted Wayne’s 35mm camera. I think of this camera belonging to both my fathers as Dad often used Wayne’s camera throughout our childhood to take a plethora of family photos. I had brought this camera on my travels overseas but given it back to Dad because I thought he would use it more than me. I reached out to Kodie, offering it to him as the next photographer in line and he said he would be honored to have it. I look forward to seeing the world through Kodie’s eyes.

This story is connected to my inspiration to write this blog. As I wrote in my first post – The Birth of the Birth of Adventure: “A main theme of this blog, a lesson learned from losing my parents and brothers and others too young, is that life is short. Too short to leave passions and dreams dormant. Too short to be looking back with regrets.”

Write your book. Publish your photos. Love boldly.

The search for Smiths helped me to find some peace and connection about my birth father, and in solving this mystery through Ancestry DNA, I found something else; Scottish ancestry that leads back to generations of ancestors who lived on the small island of Coll. David and I will be spending a week on this island in April 2022, and I’ll make sure to stop and sit and tune into the world around me. And do my best to write about it, and to tap into my innate photographer to capture its beauty. I look forward to sharing the stories with you soon.

Pick up the Glove-Reflections, Completions and Intentions for the New Year

Pick up the Glove – Reflections, Completions and Intentions for the New Year

Twenty years ago on December 30, I was sweating and slightly panicky about my first date with my now husband David. He asked me out for New Year’s Eve, and as I lived in Toronto and he lived just outside of Buffalo, NY, it was a bit complicated. He offered to cook me dinner at his place, and because I didn’t drive he also offered to pick me up at my parent’s house in rural Ontario where I was staying for the holidays. Lest this sound like I was a teenager, I had just celebrated my 27th birthday.

I was surprisingly nervous. Nervous to find out if the feelings we had while talking remotely would still be there when we were together, nervous about navigating a weekend long date, and mostly nervous about my loud chaotic family being part of it.

It was too late to wish I’d gone to my place in Toronto first – he was already on his way to meet me. My brothers and sisters teased me about all the things they could say and do to embarrass me. I grabbed a glass of wine and practiced breathing.

The snow was coming down hard and David was stuck in a snowstorm – he did finally make it safely but it was a tough drive. When he arrived he gave me a book – “West with the Night”, a memoir by Beryl Markham, a woman adventurer and aviator who was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America. David said he thought I would like it when he heard I was flying in a small craft airplane with some other students in our course. I loved it.

After a few of my siblings did their best shenanigans, we headed out. A pleasant conversation was cut short when David’s car broke down, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a snowstorm. My sister Abbie kindly drove out to pick us up, and after a few more Wilcox family shenanigans, David spent the night in my brother’s bedroom at my parent’s house. We laughed about it, but this date was definitely not going as planned.

The next day, New Year’s Eve, we spent several freezing hours in a Canadian Tire parking lot while David fixed his car. I kept him company and kept him supplied with hot drinks and snacks.

I can’t remember why I wasn’t wearing my gloves in that weather, but for some reason I was holding them – either squished between my arm and side, or in my hands. What I do remember is that I kept dropping them. Each time I dropped a glove I became more self-conscious.

Recently a friend had told me he thought I was “sloppy”, ie., the type of person whose shoelaces would always come untied, and he encouraged me to become more polished. It didn’t help that I was also considered “Awkward Ally” a lot. After about the third time I dropped a glove I made a self-deprecating comment, and tried to laugh it off.

David turned to me and said “Just pick up the glove. That’s all there is.”

I laughed. It seemed simple. The glove was on the ground and no matter how I felt about it, all there was to do was to pick it up. Beating myself up about dropping it wouldn’t change anything.

I picked it up. And when I stopped worrying about what David thought, and stopped being caught up in an existential crisis about my perceived sloppiness, something else happened.

I stopped dropping the gloves. It seemed easier to pay attention to them when my mind wasn’t focused on worrying so much.

That was one of the first traditions that lived on after this date – for several years, whenever one of us would get dramatic or make a lot of meaning about something, we would remind each other to just “Pick up the glove”.

David managed to get his car running, and we made it to his place in Hamburg, NY in time for our New Year’s Eve date. He made me a delicious pasta dinner, and was excited to serve me a dessert of fresh espresso and delectable chocolate truffles his brother had gotten in New York City. David handed me the chocolate, and told me to put it in my mouth and then take a sip of the espresso. The hot coffee melted the chocolate and the taste combination was incredible.

To cap off the evening, we decided to reflect on our past year, and set an intention for the next year. We each wrote a list of what we wanted to highlight from the past year – things we were proud of, things we wanted to complete and leave behind, lessons we had learned. Then we wrote a list of what we wanted to create for the next year – what we wanted to do, who we wanted to become. We shared these lists with each other.

That first date led to another date, and then another, and I don’t take for granted after our own histories, that we just celebrated our 20th anniversary of our first New Year’s date together.

Each New Year’s Eve since then, give or take a few days, David and I set aside an evening to enjoy a lovely dinner, and share our reflections and completions from the past year, and our intentions and creations for the next year. Sometimes we are joined by our kids, sometimes joined by friends, and most times just the two of us.

For the sake of keeping this blog post to a reasonable length, I won’t share everything from my list, and instead share a few personal reflections and completions from 2021:

2021 Reflections and Completions:

Family:

We said goodbye to my wonderful grandpa Lloyd Wilcox who passed away in May. Because of the pandemic and border closure, I joined his funeral and celebration of his life on zoom. I am leaving behind the sadness at not being able to be together in person during that time, and bringing with me the joy I felt when I was reunited with many of my family members in July when the border finally reopened. I think of my grandpa often as someone who lived life fully and loved generously.

We celebrated Ben turning 18, graduating from high school and looking forward to his next adventure.

We welcomed two new babies to the family and two new sets of parents were formed. Sweet baby Bernie was born in February, my youngest brother and sister-in-law’s first child and my niece. And sweet baby Gemma – my stepdaughter Sarah and son-in-law Liam’s first baby was born in October, making David and I proud new grandparents. We haven’t hugged and cuddled these babies enough due to the pandemic, but I’m so glad for each moment that we got and look forward to more to come.

Rediscovering Writing and Adventure:

In March I declared an intention to write, to start a blog and to plan an adventure to Scotland in 2022. I attribute the supportive words from friends and family at this time as the boon that gave me the guts to make it happen.

In May I became a co-author for “The Rising Sisterhood Book Two“, spent the summer writing and revising my chapter, and was proud to be a published author when the book came out in October. I’ll share more about the wonderful experience that being part of this collective was, but in short, it was a supportive community of women who helped me get through the anxiety of telling my story publicly, in writing and on video, and all that was entailed. Because of this experience and sisterhood, I gained the confidence to push through those feelings and realize I could do it.

In October I procrastinated launching the blog by dusting off the middle grade novel I started a few years ago and taking a Highlights Foundation writing class in my spare time to breathe life back into it. I’m nearly 10,000 words in and still going.

In November with the tech and design expertise of my talented niece Molly, I launched the Birth of Adventure blog, and I was beyond gratified by the comments and feedback from family and friends. Thank you for reading – I appreciate you and it means a lot.

For 2022, I’ll share a few simple intentions:

I will keep writing. I’ll share stories in the Birth of Adventure blog, and finish the first draft of my novel which has characters and a story I love and dreamed of telling

I will plan and take a great adventure in Scotland with David this spring

I will keep exercising and build my strength so that I can actively hike and climb hills in Scotland

I will hug and cuddle the babies whenever I can

I will be open to being a yes to adventure

I will lead with empathy and courage and help grow leaders around me

And last but not least, when I inevitably stumble, I will pick up the glove

If you haven’t spent some time reflecting on the past year and setting an intention for the next year, I invite you to consider doing this in a way that best works for you. If you have done this, are you excited about what you created for yourself? If not, consider revisiting if it’s something that pulls at you, that you are yearning for, or if it’s something that you think you “should do”.

For 2021, what are you proud of? What lessons did you learn? What are you completing and leaving behind?

For 2022, what are you yearning to do or become? What is your next adventure? What scares you in a good way?

I look forward to hearing what you are excited about (and scared in a good way about) so that I can cheer you on and support you. Please share in the comments or in the facebook group.

Cheers to new adventures in 2022, and remember, when you stumble, all there is to do is pick up the glove.

Birth of Adventure Part Two – Choosing Adventure

Birth of Adventure Part Two – Choosing Adventure

I looked at the pregnancy test: two strong lines, like they were drawn by a Sharpie. I was pregnant.

I was shocked. What was I going to do? I was recovering from an accident, my face broken. I’d only been dating my boyfriend for six months and we lived in different countries. We had a good relationship but it was still early – there hadn’t been any talk of a lifelong commitment. And right now I was in New Zealand, 9,000 miles away from David and all of my family and friends.

And what about the baby? I’d had surgery, xrays, morphine… what could that have done to the baby?

I decided to call David and tell him. First I talked to my sister Abbie.

“Are you sure you want to tell him on the phone? This is a big deal – maybe you should wait until you’re back so you can tell him face to face,” she said.

I thought it over, and shook my head although she couldn’t see. “No, we are talking every day and it’s too huge – he’d know something was up. I’ll tell him tonight.”

Alison and David in Glendalough, Ireland – during April/May 2002 UK and Ireland trip

On the phone I mentally braced myself to tell him the news.

Better to just do it. I said, “I have something to tell you.”

“What, you’re pregnant?” he asked jokingly.

“Yes,” I said.

He erupted into laughter, snorting.

“I am really pregnant,” I said.

He laughed louder.

“I’m not joking,” I said.

His laughing stopped. Then there was silence.

“Oh”.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“Ummm.. I don’t know.”

I really didn’t know.

“I want to see a doctor when I get home, check and see if any of this could cause … You know, the accident, the surgery, morphine … I just want to check if the baby would be okay.”

“Okay, well let’s talk more about it when you get home,” he said.

It was a relief to have more time to think. I spent the next few days doing my best to focus on work, although it was strange to harbor such a big secret. Only David, my sisters and Christine knew.

Flying home was exhausting and uncomfortable. It was already a long flight, over 30 hours through Australia, Hawaii, Los Angeles to Toronto but there was an 8 hour delay in LA. My face ballooned from the air travel and the summer heat- I so badly wanted to get home.

I was worried because I couldn’t reach David to tell him that the flight wasn’t going to arrive until the next morning. That was on top of worrying what he would think when he saw how I looked. The criss crossed bandages were gone, replaced by a white bandage over the gash on my cheek. My face was puffy and bruised, my mouth drooping on the left side.

When I finally arrived in Toronto and walked out of arrivals, David was standing there waiting for me. He looked tired. I wondered where he had waited, if he had slept. He grabbed me into a big hug and then kissed my broken cheek through the bandage. I relaxed for a moment in his arms. It was going to be okay.

He then pulled back and looked into my eyes.

“Where did you sleep?” I asked.

“The parking lot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, and you’re here now.”

We spent the next week together at his place in Hamburg, NY. It gave me a chance to spend more time with his daughters, Sarah, 13 and Hannah 11. Living in different cities, we usually saw each other on weekends, and sometimes he had the girls and sometimes they were with their mom. They were cute kids, smart, curious, funny, kind, and I liked them, and liked to see him with them – it was clear how much he loved them.

I did some work remotely using his computer and my cell phone, something we take for granted now in 2021. I was mostly in a blur, not yet realizing that the fatigue and exhaustion I was feeling wasn’t just from my accident and the concussion, but also was caused by the first trimester of pregnancy.

We visited his mom for the Fourth of July weekend at her home in New Jersey, my face huge from the heat. Not knowing what I was going to do about the baby and bearing this secret was driving me crazy. I had always supported the right of women to choose and knew this was my choice – but I didn’t want to still be choosing – I wanted to have chosen, I wanted to know.

I faced my worry about the possible effects of my accident and surgery on the baby. I called MotherCare at the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto. The attendant on the helpline went through the checklist with me – xray, morphine, surgery. She said not to worry – those shouldn’t have caused any harm.

My shoulders dropped from a weight I didn’t realize I was carrying. If I hadn’t wanted to choose the baby, this news might not have given me the relief that it did. I was comforted to know the baby wasn’t harmed from my accident.

I put my hand on my belly. Against all odds this baby had come into my life. I fell off a cliff and the baby was still here. I felt like this baby had chosen me, chosen us.

But what about my situation? I was living in a different city than David, not married, and with no plans to rush into marriage because of a baby. I told myself it was not the 1950’s, and I was completely fine doing this on my own if need be.

And how would I support myself if I was taking care of a newborn baby? I reminded myself that in Canada there was a year’s parental leave, and universal health care so I didn’t have to worry about the medical bills, and I had income for one year.

Where would I live? I was renting a tiny room in a condo downtown, no room for a baby. I told myself if it worked out with David, great, but if not I could probably live with my parents for a while.

I wanted the baby. I felt in my bones I could do this – with David or on my own. Either way, I was going to have this baby – I chose yes.

Telling David was almost harder than making the choice – it made it real. He admitted he felt nervous. He already had two kids. He didn’t want to be pressured to get remarried. I told him forcefully that wasn’t an option – we weren’t ready to talk about marriage yet.

After a minute he said he felt relieved – it was scary but he wanted us to have the baby too. Although I’d been prepared to do this on my own I felt lighter, stronger to be doing this together.

David drove me to my parent’s home where I was planning to tell them – he’d brought Sarah with him for the ride, and he left to take her back home to NY. She didn’t know yet.

I felt awkward – telling your parents you’re pregnant can feel awkward anyway, like announcing you’re an adult doing adult things. But I also worried they would be unhappy that I was in this situation – their girl, unmarried, having a baby.

When I told them, my mom’s eyes welled with tears. “I’m going to be a grandma?” she said.

This was going to be her second grandchild, after a 9 year wait. My mom had raised a houseful of kids and wanted more babies around. She was elated, and my parents let me know they would support me anyway I needed.

I called David to let him know how my parents had taken the news. We decided we would start telling others – his parents, our siblings and friends, but we’d wait for a while to tell the girls.

We thought about a name for our tiny little being. “Baby Adventure,” one of us suggested. This baby had been in four countries already. Likely conceived on our trip to Wales, discovered in New Zealand, and already survived a hang gliding accident in utero.

Choosing to have a baby was the scariest adventure I’d pursued yet. But I also felt that with the support of loving people around me, if I fell off the cliff again, I had a safety net to catch me this time.

I felt exhilaration tinged with trepidation like when you’re on a roller coaster and it starts with a jerk, inching slowly at first, the wheels clinking on the tracks, and you know it feels calm now but it all changes once you reach the top.

I had no idea what the future would bring. I didn’t know what would happen between David and I. I didn’t know where I would live when the baby was born. But I knew one thing. I felt a surge of love and fierce protection for this baby, for my baby. Baby Adventure had chosen us, and we were choosing Adventure.

The story continues: The Birth of Adventure Part 3 – The Mother of Adventure – coming soon