From my original AOL homepage:

Grace!

The scene is the 10th of June in the Year of Our Lord 2002: I'm riding my bike home from school when one of those sudden downpours--the ones where you feel like you're being pounded by rivers of water pouring out of the skies and it's impossible to even hope to remain dry--surprises me and in moments I'm completely soaked. Somehow it's those moments where I should start screaming in frustration that something moves inside me and I smile, laugh out loud and break into song. Typically, it's "Freude! Freude! Freude, schöner Gotterfunken..." but on this day, perhaps not surprisingly, it was a new song of mine entitled "Rain."

And the rain came pouring down
pouring down on you...

These words being more-or-less an image of grace in that lyric. I careened down the sidewalk next to the highway, no doubt an object of pity or horror, but squished my way down the halls of my apartment building, cleaned up and passed out.

But unbeknownst to me at the time, just as I was singing these words about the coming of grace, my sister was finishing eight hours labor and had just successfully brought Grace Jean into the world.

I was, unfortunately, out when Leslie called with the great news, but I was able to talk with her before too long. Grace apparently was very quiet, opening her eyes and simply looking around at her new and shocking surroundings as though trying to figure out who everyone was and just what was going on. Clearly in this middle picture, she's thoughtfully trying to figure all of this out, before she simply comes to the conclusion that she's the Number One Baby, and reminding all of us of this simple fact.

It would be a few weeks before I was able to see her myself, but I was already on my way to complete adoring my first niece and goddaughter.