The Flight Home to My Heart

The Journey to Maryland

The Flight Home to My Heart

     It was the summer of 2011, the up side? I had finally escaped my junior year of high school. What was the down side? I was very much still single. Yes, even after the Homecoming Dance and Winter Formal of that year. I wasn't asked to either of them, but at both dances I did find someone to dance with once I got there. Oh, the irony of it all; but optimism, it's a beautiful thing. Which is why the chance of maybe, oh I don't know, summer love was still a prospect. But come on now ladies and gentlemen, that sort of thing just doesn't happen. Not to Tiffany Smith. It's all for the media; movies, music, books, that great junk. And I had a flight booked in mid-June to fly solo to Maryland for the second time in my life to visit my Auntie Shawn, Uncle James and my cousin Jackson for two weeks anyhow. And if it was to be anything like my adventure the year before, it was sure to be awesome no matter what; but me and a guy? Please, I had been down that road. That happened once to me the year before in summer 2010 when I visited them.

I had met someone at a neighborhood Fourth of July bash. His name was Henok and that ended in a kiss and that was it. Something like that couldn't possibly happen again and anyway did I really want it to? I barely heard from and never saw him again after that first meeting and kiss. Could something better possibly happen again to me like that? I don't think so.

If you've never had "irony" I recommend it as a lovely little side dish to the trials of infatuation but I warn you; it's as sour as the love bug and just as addictive.

                                                                                           * * *

I was so excited to be traveling from my home in California back to Maryland again on the East Coast to see some of my extended family again. It had been awhile since I had seen them since they mostly just make it down for the holidays partly due to the ridiculous airfare I imagine and both their careers keep them pretty busy. This year though, they had offered to help bring me up to see them again since I had such a great time the year before and I absolutely accepted, there was no way I was going to give up this chance. I was sixteen at the time but in several weeks I was to have my seventeenth birthday.

In addition to still being sixteen because I was born in the summer, I was fairly short for my age as well; just an inch over five feet. I have long golden naturally curly blonde hair that stops in ringlets just above the small of my back and I have blue eyes that tend to not be able to make up their mind whether they want to be deep blue or turquoise. I hear they change but since I cannot see them because I'm usually busy actually using them to see, I just have to go off what people tell me that they look like. I definitely get my curly hair gene from somewhere on this side of the family that I was going to see because Auntie Shawn has curlier hair than I do although hers is dark brown, but her son Jackson who also has blonde hair, well, he and I look like we could be brother and sister with no questions asked.

It is understandable we would look alike given the circumstances. His mom, my Auntie Shawn is my biological father's younger sister. I know, I said biological father so allow me to explain. You see, I was adopted when I was quite young, at seventeen months old but the adoption end result was ruled to be what is called an "open adoption." That means that I am permitted contact with members from my biological family with the consent of my adoptive family of course. In my case however, due to the fact my birth parents were unmarried and concerning circumstance for that of safety, it was decided that if I was not permitted to see any of my biological family before I became a legal adult. It was ruled that it would be best for me to see members on my biological father's side of the family only and neither of my parents until my eighteenth birthday when I become of age.