On what started of as a normal Sunday morning in October, I was taking my dog, Ophelia, out for a walk when I received a phone call from my former foster mother, Jane. After reconnecting for the first time in over a decade just short of a month before, I was excited to be hearing from her. Toward the end of the phone call she asked me something that I had only been dreaming of for my entire life up until this point- she asked me to join them on their family Christmas Vacation they had just started planning! I was ecstatic, yet (in typical ‘Morg fashion’) very nervous. What an amazing opportunity this would be to spend quality time with and get to know the family I had been so close with so long ago. Putting my anxiety aside, I (enthusiastically) agreed and the planning quickly started. We set sail on the Disney Dream cruise ship just two months later!
This family vacation (my first ever family vacation with them in my adult life) was the trip of a lifetime for me. I got to spend 8 straight days with them- traveling together, sight seeing together, Disney cruising! together, laughing together, loving together. I was able to relearn my place within their family and get to (re)know each one of them, and them, me. We are now a complete family of 8. To say I am grateful would be an absolute understatement. During one of our first days together, we got on the topic of how they chose to do a New Year’s Eve cruise and vacation. Jane mentioned they had been planning on doing some sort of destination Christmas for years, but had never actually gotten around to it until this year. I will never forget this moment, when my foster sister, Jessica, chimed in that, “We were waiting for you, Morgan!”. Whether or not the timing just happened to be coincidental, the feeling of knowing that they were genuinely excited that I was joining in on these memories is one in a million. These are the memories I will cherish for the rest of my life, and I cannot wait to create more with them.
