When Thanksgiving Day changed our lives

My favorite holiday of all time is Thanksgiving, 1990, which involved a middle-of-the-night drive down Interstate 680, dinner at Denny's and a night at a cheap hotel.

It was a life-changing event.

Just a few months prior, Mrs. Brad and I dived into the world of adoption. We had done as much infertility treatment as we could stand (not that much) and made contact with lawyers who dealt with adoption. Within a few weeks, we miraculously met a brave 21-year-old pregnant woman named Denise who made the painful, best-for-the-baby decision to allow a family to adopt her child.

Us.

It was rapid-fire: We fell in love with Denise, we feared she might change her mind, we raced to get our home set up, we met with lawyers, we told our families, we worried again that Denise would change her mind. She was due to give birth Dec. 3, so I went to an electronics store Nov. 21 and picked up a pager, so we could be reached at any time. That night – the night before Thanksgiving – Mrs. Brad and I watched a TV movie, then went to bed, knowing our prospective child wasn't due for two weeks.

At about 1 a.m. the pager vibrated, waking us.

There was only one possibility: Denise was in labor. My hands shook as I tried to dial the number from the pager (great technology!). It took multiple efforts, but finally I reached Denise's sister and found out it was true: Denise was in labor.

Mrs. Brad and I threw everything we could in our Hyundai and headed toward San Jose, where our child would be born. At a convenience store, we bought some terrible coffee (it had grounds in it!) and made the 70-minute drive to Alexian Brothers Hospital with our conversation bouncing between terror and excitement.

We rushed in, Mrs. Brad served as the labor coach and I watched the miracle. Just after 3 a.m., our son was born. He was beautiful.

A birth is always chaotic, but ours seemed more so. The nurses weren't sure how to handle us (were we stealing the baby? Had we brainwashed the birth mother?), but Denise was fantastic in what had to be one of the roughest moments of her life. We held Chad (Chad!), helped wash his hair, made a series of phone calls from a pay phone and floated through the morning, exhausted.

We were too tired to drive, so we got a cheap hotel in San Jose and collapsed for a few hours, then returned to the hospital. That night, we ate Thanksgiving dinner at Denny's (turkey!), then returned to the hospital before finally going back to the hotel. And collapsing. Again.

A day later, we drove home, worried all the way that baby Chad might need something we couldn't do. Did we know how to be parents? We weren't sure, but we knew one thing for sure: Our lives were changed. And we loved our son.

That was 27 years ago Wednesday.

Now he's married and expecting his first child (!). We've lived through the childhoods and teen years of him and his younger brother (born on April Fools Day, 1993). We celebrated Christmases and birthday parties and Fourth of July celebrations and, yes, 26 Thanksgiving dinners.

I love holidays. I love celebrations. I love getting together with loved ones.

But every Thanksgiving reminds me of 1990, when we ate at Denny's, slept in a cheap hotel and met our son.

We're still thankful.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.