My partner and I grew up in families that didn't travel a lot, so we've always had a sense of wanderlust. Before we had kids, we traveled together, and it was life-changing-travel opened our minds to different ways of life.
In 2000, Triton and I decided to have kids. At the time, my mom had terminal cancer, and we were all about connecting with family. We wanted to adopt, because we felt like there were so many children in the world who needed love and a good home. In 2002, my mom passed away, and Sophia was born two weeks later. We welcomed our second daughter, Ava, in 2004.
Our first trip as a family was to Hawaii, when Sophia was just eight months old. For my 40th birthday and Sophia's first (our birthdays are three days apart), we rented a big house with friends in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The adoption wasn't final, but we had all the paperwork, including her birth certificate, which lists us as her parents. We had a wonderful time.
On the flight back, we were sitting on the tarmac when the federales boarded-armed-and removed us and another same-sex couple and their baby. Our luggage had already been offloaded onto the tarmac.
This story is from the October 2024 edition of Travel+Leisure US.
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This story is from the October 2024 edition of Travel+Leisure US.
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