I was partially adopted. I doubt many people realize that about me. It's not a tragic story; upon discovering I was being given away, the father stepped in and took me to raise on his own. This was highly unusual "back in the day," and probably accounts for a good bit of my skewed outlook on life. We were a pair for several years before he found someone to add to the mix. The woman he ended up marrying grew up in Iowa and vowed to escape at the first opportunity, so it was a compatible match: he procured a replacement mother to raise me while she, in turn, got a golden ticket out of the Midwest to explore the world. Given the situation, I didn't have much in terms of a family tree. My father's family was long gone, himself orphaned at an early age and raised by his sister before joining the merchant marines and the war effort. As for my mother, to this day I know nothing of the woman who was set to give me away, not even her name. The adoption, however, did bring with it a set of half-relatives and foreign family traditions.
This is the week of vacation. I've been looking forward to it all summer, wistfully watching friends and coworkers take off to exotic locales, or visiting family, or just getting away from the daily grind. I've noticed that it's taken me a bit of time to slow down, and I think that's typical--after all, it's usually my job to plan, coordinate, verify, count bodies (not including ones I've buried and we don't talk about) and generally ensure that countdown to--and arrival at--our destination is successful. Until that point, it's really not possible to totally relax and let go. There are a lot of the little things to be done before departing: cleaning up the odds and ends at work, watering houseplants, clearing out the post office box, making sure that house and dog are being cared for and attended to. You tell the neighbors not to panic when they see strange people staying at the house, and to please take advantage of the spoils of the garden, before things actually spoil. Vacation prep is work; and you hope that you've remembered it all. Which of course, you haven't, but once that car pulls away and gets far enough down the road, you hit that point of no return, where you realize you can replace the non-essentials, but the essential--vacation--is in front of you.
