An Unusual Family Reunion

Once upon a time our son was born in Hong Kong, and after a month in the hospital he was taken to an orphanage where a beautiful South African woman cared for him for a year until we flew to Hong Kong and brought him home to California to be our son.

Five years later we found ourselves in South Africa, and the woman who cared for our son in Hong Kong is also in South Africa, though she lives in Cape Town and we live in Pretoria. It is a beautiful, long story, but not the one I want to tell today.

The one I want to tell today is about her cousin, who happens to be in a band that is playing at the Presidential Inaugeration tomorrow, and who happened to invite us to his band rehearsal. And thus we were introduced to Cape Town jazz... that is also another story!

I don't know what it is or why it touches me so, but to stay in contact with this woman who lovingly cared for my son and then to meet her cousin and to think that we're all in South Africa now after jaunts on two other continents, it felt like a small taste of heaven, a teaser of the amazing family reunion to come.