Descendants.

"Welcome to East Midlands Airport. The current time is 8:03am. From the captain and the crew here at United Airlines, we send out a huge thank you for choosing to fly with us today.”

I had been on one airplane or another for roughly the last 12 and a half hours. An overnight flight may seem like a good idea in theory, but in hindsight, sleeping on a plane is damn near impossible. The 6’5” passenger on to my left didn’t seem to have the same problem. While I wasn’t tossing and turning in what was surely a child sized seat, the man next to me was snoring. Loudly. And often.

The few pity looks that I got from the flight attendents did nothing to help my sleeplessness; neither did the ear plugs they passed to me during one of the cabin checks. But maybe my problem with falling asleep had nothing to do with the man sitting beside me, and everything to do with the reason I was leaving Oklahoma to head to England in the first place.

The adoption agency that had processed my adoption 28 years ago in the state of California had called earlier that week. After two long years and countless dead ends, they had found them. My birth parents.

Who were miraculously still together. Married. With three kids, no less. I didn’t know their life story. I had no idea what had happened between the time that they decided to give me up, and the time that they got married and decided it must be the right time to start having a proper family. But, that was why I had immediately resigned at my job and booked this transcontinental flight.

The adoption agency had contacted them and let them know that I was coming. Ellen, the specialist at Cooper Adoption Inc. who had been kind enough to help me in my search, said that they were ecstatic and couldn’t wait to meet their oldest child.

I had my reservations.

What I didn’t have was a job waiting or a place to live. And while I could have decided on booking a vacation instead of a move to another country, I didn’t have anything holding me here. I had bounced from foster home to foster home until the day I turned 18, so the only family I knew anything about were the ones I was about to meet for the first time.

Leaving the plane and heading down to the baggage claim had my nerves boarding the rollercoaster in my stomach. I was exhausted, starving, and completely freaked out. Luckily I had had enough sense to ask my birth parents not to meet me for the first time at the airport. I had calmly explained that after a long night of traveling, I was going to need a bit of time to relax and get freshened up before meeting a couple of people who were likely to change my world forever. In one way or another.

The cab ride from the airport to the hotel I’d booked for the next week was short and relatively uneventful. Thank goodness. The Mount Hotel was as stylish on the inside as a friend back home had suggested. The service was impeccible from the moment I walked in, and in less than five minutes I was on the elevator and heading up to the only thing I could bring myself to care about at that moment: the bed.

Throwing my bags on the floor right inside the door, I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket, set an alarm for noon and took a dive face first into the ridiculously comfortable white down comforter.

Notes

Chapter Title lyrics: "End of the Beginning" by The Rembrandts.