Kimo's Day

Thirty-nine years ago yesterday I was on staff at an Episcopal church in Palo Alto, California. I went to work that Sunday morning with my week-old son -- dressed in rosebuds and pink lace. We had picked him up the day before at Los Angeles Airport. With less than a week's notice that a new baby boy was joining our family, there was lots to be done. Clean up the crib. Find the sheets and blankets. Round up the essential new baby paraphernalia like diapers, diaper pins and bottles. Where was the baby carrier? No home-from-the-hospital carseats in those days! I think we were also at the end of the diaper pin era. We had to buy airline tickets and find a hotel room in Los Angeles where we were to meet a plane from Hawaii. We would meet a doctor we had never seen before, but who we would recognize by the newborn he was delivering from Hawaii. There wasn't any time left over for finding a little boy wardrobe.

Today that little boy is an adult, a proud dad himself, and wouldn't be caught dead in pink, let alone rosebuds and lace. I honor his biological mother by allowing her to celebrate the weekend of his birth. This weekend belongs to our family.

Give thanks for Kimo, for his wife Lu, and for their daughters Brianna, Kianna and Kayla. Also for Lu's other children -- George, Gabriel and Veronica. Don't forget to pray!