Gotcha Day. If you’ve not been involved in adoption, you may not know the term, but Gotcha Day lives right up there with birthdays and anniversaries. It celebrates the day your family’s life changes forever, all without eradicating a past or belittling a history.
21 years ago we met at our little home in Germantown the people to whom we were the closest (and who were able to get there on very short notice), the people who would be most involved with the raising of our child, the people whom we trusted and loved. We all caravanned to the airport to meet our son, arriving after a long flight from South Korea and by way of Detroit.
And many things happened leading up to and on that day. We spent countless hours nesting, preparing. We were showered with love and gifts. We rearranged our schedules, and we reconsidered our priorities. We made room. We watched my father’s health decline before our eyes. And we accepted life and the many changes we expected were coming. We were pregnant with anticipation if not with child.
Gotcha day, like the birth of a child, changes everything. The difference, I suppose, is that Gotcha Day has two sides. And, for me, it’s important on this day to never lose sight of the other side of adoption. And I give thanks. And I give tears. And I give thought and reverence to my son’s birth mother and to his foster mother on this most amazing of days.
Blessed doesn’t begin to describe the joy we’ve been given through adoption. Gotcha day for our family is truly a celebration of life, beginning and birth, but also of all that happened before.
Gotcha Day for us is a celebration of the start of our family, our Family Day, and that is what we celebrate.
Nancy Wiley writes. 