Trading a window for a door...

Today is the first birthday I've had without my father. Last night I had a dinner attended by two of my aunts, an uncle, my cousin, my sister, my sister's adoptive parents, and CK. We went to one restaurant that told us they could not fit a party as large as ours together, could not seat incomplete parties, and could not keep holding tables while the rest of our party arrived.

So, CK, observant of the smoldering wrath of my plans in ruins, called Copeland's and we went there. I gave my sister and my cousin copies of Redwood Delta, about the platoon my father served in while stationed in Vietnam. I gave my aunts copies of the report I wrote up on my father's royal line to Emperor Charles II the Bald.

Had my father been alive, I doubt I would have had the visits with my sister and her adoptive parents that I've had since last October. They 've taken me into their family by my being brother of their adoptive daughter.