After some discussion with our lawyer, we decided to visit our birth mother in Florida. We were to fly out last Thursday, February 21st at about 6:00 pm. I'm sure many of you know that's when Mother Nature decided to work a little black (or should I say "white") magic. Our flight was canceled before lunchtime on Wednesday. We were re-booked for 6:20 am on Friday, February 22nd. Now 12 inches of snow can do crazy things, including canceling flights for a second time. As it turns out, all flights after 7:00 am on Friday were on time. We were just 40 minutes too early. Harumph!
We finally got out at 12:30 pm on Saturday. Our hotel was very gracious and allowed us to change check-in dates and credit card numbers (that's a story for a later date) without issue. The only problem, cheap hotels are cheap. We didn't sleep a wink that first night. I bet your thinking, "Jeremy, I'm sure it was your nerves at meeting your birth mother," or "Jeremy, it was probably the Denny's you had for dinner that night." I'm here to tell you that's nonsense. The room was just that bad. In fact, I was looking for another hotel at 2:30 am because neither of us was getting any sleep. We didn't get checked out until 9:00 am, little worse for wear except for extreme sleep deprivation. Needless to say we found a much better hotel.
Regardless of these petty issues, God displayed his providential will in our meeting with our birth mother. Ashley and I met her at a Cheesecake Factory with our attorney and her social worker. We felt compelled to tell her our how strongly we believed in keeping her in both her child's and our lives. We also learned a lot about our birth mother. I cannot imagine how it would have gone better.
Later we arrived at the much nicer hotel and discovered that a second storm was hitting Kansas City Monday night, causing our flight home to be canceled. Thankfully, we re-booked that bad boy to earlier in the day. Sneaked in just before the snow started to fall.
Thinking back on the weekend, it seemed almost like a movie script, something out of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" perhaps. I found myself laughing often: the situation was just too silly. I also saw the ocean for the first time. So there's that.
