This is a vacation post, written looking down on the River Walk and up at the towers of downtown San Antonio from the condo on the river where we stay one week a year. It was fun this year to introduce Liam and Andrea (both two now) to this sweet little place as their "vacation home." It's always odd for me, coming here as a comfortable vacationer to remember that the Salvation Army facility where I was born to a scared, unwed mother was very near the location of our condo building. When I walk down the block to get root beer for the grandkids from Walgreens I imagine my birth mother walking cold in December into that shelter, about to give birth to a baby she knew she wouldn't know. It was three days before Christmas. I hope Christmas isn't hard for her still. I also look at the parked cars along the streets and remember the story about how I, wrapped in too many blankets, was hand delivered to my adoptive parents in their car. Daddy opened the blanket, saw my red hair, and said "We hit the jackpot!" I scared my parents by screaming all the way back to Austin, where they took me straight to a pediatrician who pronounced me overheated. They removed several of the blankets and I calmed right down.
That story has always rooted me in my coming into the family in which I grew up. Being here on this street takes the roots back a step, to my actual birth and the emotions of the parents who felt unable to raise me. Life really does come full circle.