To understand how Jessica managed to wrap me around her little finger and convince me that we should travel to Italy, you first have to understand how much she loves Disney World. That began because she loves Disney movies, which begat an unfortunate fascination with Disney princesses (“Sweetie, I’ve just been asked to work on…

“Jessica wants to go to Italy for vacation,” I tell my friend Mary. “Italy?” “I know. Maybe I can talk her into Key West or something.” “You would love Italy. Italians are brusque but friendly.” “Um, okay,” I say. Then: “Oh. You mean like me.” “Exactly. You will fit right in.” “Except I don’t speak…

I am standing on a subway platform in Washington, D.C., and trying to figure out how, exactly, to get to the line I want to get to, and Jessica is vibrating with anxiety next to me. “Do you know what you’re doing?” “Does it look like I know what I’m doing?” “Are we lost?” She…

In our last installment of Travels with Jessica, we had arranged for Giorgio to plan a trip for us to Italy for less than eight million dollars, and Jessica had negotiated a trip to New York City (“Since there are no direct flights from Kansas City and we have to change planes somewhere! And we…

A while back I had the great idea that I would start writing about how to travel with special needs children because I think that not only do our children need to see that world, but that the world needs to see our children. However, this turned out to be uninspiring (to me) because the…