The Skype Call, Part Two

I'm thrilled to tell you that Kevin has agreed (I'm told this was half 'happily' and half 'reluctantly' due to his private nature...) to write a guest post. Please enjoy the view from his glasses today.

Skype day was like most Saturdays at our house, a bit busy and a bit lazy. Everyone in the house was excited/nervous all day. We knew Haley would become and remain part of our lives, my wife and I had already agreed (how good is she?!). Skyping would be another step in the string of steps already taken. I set up in the kitchen. In retrospect, my wife told me she'd never seen me so nervous. I remember feeling anxious, very anxious...

I don't recall who called whom, but when we got on the call it was only Haley and I. Initially it was surreal, my first time on skype, seeing the daughter I knew I had but knew little about until just a few weeks previous.

I had prepared a small list of things to talk about because I'm not very talkative on the weekends as I talk all day at work. We'd traded photos previously, so I recognized her immediately. It's impossible not to notice mannerisms in Haley that I and my siblings share.

Woah! Not easy.

At times it feels like we're just staring at each other; even though we've found a nice pleasant rhythm in our writings back and forth, adding audio and video has added a whole new dimension that for sure I'm not prepared for.

I'm struggling to bring things up, and Haley is really quiet, it kind of feels like we're on a nervous blind date, time to call in the reinforcements! We pull Linda and Nick into the camera view and things start to settle down again, then after a few quiet pauses we bring in our kids.

After more small talk there are seven of us watching tv, not much to say but all amazed as we look through the glass. My list of questions gets used up, I try to make jokes to keep things light but it's hard for everyone (maybe because they weren't funny, though I find that hard to believe) we're all excited and nervous and mesmerized by the new family members. We lift up our 45 pound dog Danny and introduce him to Lucy, who likely weighs 6 pounds out of the bathtub, this was proof to me we were struggling a bit for content!

After we say goodbye, everyone in my kitchen lets out a huge sigh of relief, we did it! I imagine it was the same in Haley's house. We'd successfully met 'face to face' and not only survived, but set ourselves up for continuing to head down the path of getting to know each other.

That was an amazing day; with luck there will be many more to come.

-Kevin