In the spirit of doing things a little bit different, instead of telling you about something that has already happened I’m going to tell you about something that hasn’t happened yet.

Today I’m flying to Portland with my wife, ex-husband, and two out of three children to visit the third child in Portland for an extended holiday weekend. Emma has been living there with her aunt and uncle for the last ten months and wanted to have all of us visit so she can show us what her life has been like. She wants to take us to her favorite food trucks, parks, and donut shop. Only a couple of us will not do. She really wanted the whole family. And so we agreed.

My current and former spouse get along well. The six of us have gone to dinner together, hung out, and played games together. Chris was even one of the few people at our wedding last summer. But we’ve never all taken a trip together. In the interest of saving money, we got one hotel suite, which sleeps six. We still haven’t worked out where we’re all sleeping. I come from a decent sized family and am used to vacations where the cousins all throw blankets on the floor and sleep like a pack of puppies. However, I’m not little anymore and these aren’t my sisters and my cousins, which would at least make it sentimental. This is me, my wife, my ex-husband, and our three adult children. Melanie isn’t used to big family trips and feels a bit of trepidation about the whole arrangement. But is thrilled to see Emma.

It’s also Christopher’s (the junior, not the senior) first flight. As an adolescent on the autism spectrum he had several years of dibilitating anxiety, but he’s 18 now and doing much better. “If I get nervous I’ll just deal with it,” he told me. I keep reminding myself in my head that he knows how to soothe himself now. He and I have been working on his ability to handle anxiety for years. Now if I can just handle my anxiety about the fear of his possible anxiety, I’ll feel a whole lot better.

This weekend will also be visiting Chris’s brother, Joel, his wife, Wendy, and their children. It will be Chris and Joel’s first meeting. See, Joel was placed for adoption seven years before Chris was born. Chris and his siblings knew they had a half brother somewhere in the world, but the adoption was closed, and Joel and his other siblings weren’t able to find each other when they tried; except when 23andMe came around. To make a very long story short, Joel was able to track down Chris. Or, oddly, he was able to track down me on Facebook and I called Chris to say, “I think the baby you guys have always talked about is trying to find you.”

Since Joel and Wendy live just three hours away from Emma, Emma has been able to visit them. She absolutely loves them. She marvels on how alike Joel and her dad are, and how much me and Wendy have in common.

“She’s like a heterosexual you,” Emma told me.

And I know because I’ve met her and Joel once on a visit to Emma and talked to Wendy several times on the phone. But this will be the first time the brothers meet.

So that’s the background on our trip. It’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine (spikes coffee with Xanax).

Stay tuned.