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President's Letter
August 2009
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Summers mean vacation time for our family—just another reason why this is my favorite season! We recently came home from our 2 week road trip—out to Colorado and back—it was exhausting, but really great. I never thought I would “subject” my kids to The Road Trip. When I was growing up, my parents would pack up me, my two sisters, and all of our luggage into our Custom Cruiser station wagon (blue with wood paneling), and head to Wherever. On several occasions, we traveled with another family of 5…in the same car. I am not kidding. I’m not really sure how that was physically possible, but we did it – trips to Pittsburgh, the Smoky Mountains, Disneyworld, and more. I’m sure that I complained and did my best to not enjoy myself, but the truth is, the memories from those trips are among my favorites. Road trips, as long and tiring as they can be, force families to share the same physical space…and with no distractions from work or “life”, you are set up with the ideal opportunity to bond, communicate, and really get to know one another. How often do we have those chances?
We did not have an auspicious start, as 1.5 miles from home, my 3 year old daughter, Cassie, asked “are we in Colorado yet?” By the time we were in the middle of Iowa, she was crying that she wanted to go home. She has never been a great traveler, but she did manage to rally for the rest of the trip, as long as we kept the legs short, and stopped often. Our 6 year old, Alex, did much better—he has always enjoyed chewing the scenery, and took advantage of the Fun Car Kit I put together for him. We made our way through the windmill farms of Iowa and the corn fields of Nebraska before we arrived at our destination – beautiful, magnificent Colorado. The Rocky Mountains were at once, spectacular and nauseating, as we wound our way up to heights of 12-14,000 feet.
The reason for traveling out that way was that we enrolled at the Colorado Heritage Camps—specifically, Latin American Heritage Camp (LAHC). The mission of Colorado Heritage Camps, Inc. is to provide educational, cultural, and family related experiences, which support the healthy development of families formed by adoption with children from diverse heritages. CHC (www.heritagecamps.org) has been supporting adoptive families since 1991, and many of the camp counselors (if not all), were once young children attending the camps themselves. Campers were divided by age group, so Cassie was with the 3-yr old pre-school group, while Alex was with the kindergartners. The kids had a great time, not only during camp hours, where they were kept busy with culturally based arts, crafts, music, dancing, reading, etc., but also during down times when they ran around with their new friends at the lodge where we stayed. The parents were given many alternatives as well—hiking, cooking classes, seminars—when they weren’t scheduled for volunteering. It was heartwarming to be surrounded with families built like ours—and almost impossible not to feel an immediate bond with one another through our shared adoptive and cultural connections. My favorite part of camp was attending a panel discussion of young adult adoptees who had traveled to their homelands, some more than once. They bravely shared their experiences and emotions about being adopted, reconnecting with their birth countries, and developing their identities. It was very emotional, but so eye opening to have some insight into what we might anticipate in our own children’s futures. Their resolve on the importance of honoring their culture truly validated our decision to participate in this camp, as well as Hands Around the World Camp (www.handsaroundtheworld.com) in Roselle, IL, which we will attend shortly.
My hope is that my children will have the same kind of fond memories of this vacation, as well as past and future trips, that I have of my childhood trips…that after they roll their eyes at how loud (and bad) mommy & daddy sang…that while we didn’t spend nearly enough time in the hotel pools…and that while it took FOREVER to get to Wherever…in the end, it was just as much about the journey, as it was the destination.
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