Family Ties - The trip to Rehoboth and back traversed the ancestral homelands of Jamie's family. During Friday night's drive to the coast, we made a slight detour for dinner at Portside Seafood Restaurant, owned by Jamie's Aunt Martia and Uncle Bill. It's located in Cambridge, Maryland, right across the Choptank River from Oxford. (These Eastern Shore towns come by their Anglophonic names honestly -- from the original Elizabethan settlers.) After a delightful meal heavy on blue crab, we fought food coma for the 90 minute drive across the sleepy backroads of Delmarva. Along the way we encountered such landmarks of Jamie's heritage as his great-grandparents' old farm house, just across the "other" Mason-Dixon line, in Hardscrabble, Delaware. The return trip featured a stop at his mom's aunt's house, perched on a bank of the Nanticoke River at the inland port town of Seaford. We also drove by the office of his grandfather's insurance company in Federalsburg, Maryland.

Geography has the power to evoke strong emotions, particularly of beloved departed relatives associated with special places. My boy spent some wonderful carefree days in these towns during his youth, and I'm glad he shared his nostalgic journey with me.