The Perfect Father Day’s Present

On Friday my editor, Mark Platte, wanted to know what I was writing about for today. I didn’t have much, and he said, “It’s Father’s Day, you know.” We kicked around a couple ideas, but nothing grabbed me.

Nothing, that is, except a memory from a week earlier, a Saturday afternoon in the office when Mark’s wife, Sara, brought in their 5-week-old daughter, Brianna, for her first newsroom visit. Mark tried to attend to his duties, but there was no disguising that look on his face as his new daughter lighted up the room. “I never would have thought something could bring this much joy,” his mother-in-law, Meme Schantz, said to me, as she and I watched my colleagues perform the rituals of cooing, touching and holding this doll in pink clothes.

I don’t know that joy; likely I never will. I can imagine it, though, and a lot of what I imagine was in the face of that new father last Saturday. And so, when Mark asked again on Friday what I was going to write about, a thought crystallized: “Why don’t you write a Father’s Day column for me?” I said. “A guest column.”

He thought I was joking.

I was not. I know something, but not everything, about why Mark’s first Father’s Day is special. And so, for the first time in nearly eight years of columns, I’m relinquishing the space today so he can tell you and me the story--the whole story of why June 21, 1998, is a day he’ll never forget.

It took a long time for Sara and me to finally meet Brianna Lynn Platte.

I could say she came to us easily, but that wouldn’t be truthful. We have tried to have a child for many years, always with the same disappointing result. Ours was a problem that could not be diagnosed and we came away from our countless trips to the fertility doctors without a logical explanation. If we simply knew what was wrong, we could fix it. But no one could answer the one question we desperately wanted answered.

We turned to a Los Angeles adoption agency and

sat in a room with six other couples who wanted kids, swapping our stories and wondering who among us would be the first to have a child. We drafted our “birth mother letter,” a fancy resume with pictures of ourselves looking our happiest: posing by the beach, sitting astride a log perched over a stream in Colorado; huddled by the Christmas tree with the dog and my mother--a grandma to be. In the letter, we spoke of all the love we could provide a baby.

Months and months passed. Not a call.

Now in our late 30s, we tried nearly all of the fertility treatments available and Sara dutifully attended to her doctor’s appointments. The worst part was the nightly needle injections of Pergonal, which I came to dread as evening approached.

Earlier this year, out of the blue, a woman called from San Bernardino County. Her 19-year-old daughter was pregnant and thought our birth mother letter looked interesting. But she didn’t want to get our hopes up.

A few weeks later, we heard from the 19-year-old herself. She had chosen us to be the parents of her baby. We met her a few weeks later, a pretty young lady with flaming red hair and green eyes. The baby’s father was in the Navy. The woman told us she had made up her mind to give up the baby for adoption. We spent the day together, riding horses at a nearby ranch and getting to know one another. We met her mother. It struck us that she was about our same age.

On the way home from San Bernardino County, we could hardly contain ourselves. I phoned my mother from the car. She got goose bumps when she heard the news because she had adopted my sister and me when she and my dad were in their 30s. “I feel like you’re living my life all over again,” she said.

On the day the birth mother had her sonogram, she phoned us.

“You’re going to have a boy,” she said. “What are you going to name him?”

It hardly seemed possible. In a month, we would be parents. We were as unprepared as we could be. We told absolutely everyone about the good news and those who knew us best seemed the happiest, realizing all we’d been through.

Three days later, I woke up on a beautiful Sunday morning. Sara walked into the room and said our birth mother had just called. “She’s having second thoughts,” she said.

We both knew it instantly. She had decided to keep her baby and she wasn’t going to change her mind. We tried hard to forget about it but getting back on the fertility treadmill seemed too depressing.

Throughout, we continued to pray. Our faith in God is deeply rooted and we knew he had a plan for us, a road map only he could see. At times like these, though, it seemed so hard to believe that we would ever be parents. Maybe that was God’s plan.

On a Saturday night, the day before Mother’s Day, the phone rang. We were on our way to church. Lisa, the wife of one of our church’s pastors, was phoning to tell us that she had just heard that a baby was available through our adoption agency and was staying with a couple in Placentia.

“You can see her right away,” Lisa said. “I need to tell you she’s a mixed-raced child.”

Just the day before, we had updated our adoption form saying we would be open to such a child. Then this phone call. From a pastor’s wife. And the day before Mother’s Day.

We were prepared to head to church and see this baby girl the next day, but something pushed us past the worship service that night up the Riverside freeway into Placentia, where an amazing couple, the Bruners, introduced us to this day-old infant. The Bruners had adopted their own beautiful baby just months before.

It seemed surreal, coming together as quickly as it had. We prayed about it. We debated the implications of bringing this baby of a Caucasian mother and a Latino or African American father--a couple we have never met--into our lily-white family.

It didn’t take long. One week after we first laid eyes on her, we brought Brianna Lynn into our home. It was May 15, the day before my mother-in-law, Meme’s, birthday.

Sometimes I just stare at her and can’t believe this blessing in my arms. I picture her 10 or 15 years from now, and I wonder, what kind of young woman will she be? Will she love her daddy as much as I love her?

The other day, we had to stop by the fertility doctor’s office. It was a Sunday morning. Inside, the place was packed with anxious couples wanting a child. I wanted to stand in the middle of the room and tell them that there are wonderful children out there waiting for adoption. Go get one!

But that is not my place. My place in the world on this day is as Brianna Lynn’s father. My daughter. On Father’s Day, I can’t begin to tell you how that feels.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com.