Home

I am tired.

It's been a quick weekend, one filled with last minute presentation tweaks, late night flights and cab rides on moonlit highways, crowded airport terminals. The hum of the airplane and Washington, DC spring sun warming my face. The sweet smell of fresh-cut grass in the suburbs, the feeling of wind on my face as we drove with the top down; I caught the horses grazing on the rolling hills as the car bobbed in and out from the outstretched arms of the trees. Late night drinks and memories of diapers and whimsical childhood fancies like lime popsicles and tag. A weekend of familiar faces, the downpour of the April rains that fell like candy from the sky. Lost umbrellas at metro stops as strangers gathered to help someone too sick to ask themself. Quiet metro rides where I sat propped with a book while I let my jeans dry and changed my soaked sandals, pulling back my wet hair into a ponytail before running out in to the DC rain yet again. A weekend of one too many hazelnut lattes, jet lag, cautious peeks into my past.

After 15 years, I can go back to a place and still read it as though it were a map scrawled in the palm of my hand. So much has gone unchanged. A few new housing developments here and there, but the blue baptist church still sits, active, off of Jones Lane Road. The elementary school hosts ghosts of children on the playground. Turkey Foot Road is still lined with trees and if I close my eyes I can see the autumn, how we would drive and be showered in red, gold and yellow. The homes of my childhood friends stand proud, just now a bit quiet. No longer are there crowds of kids outside running from home to home to wake up their best friends by calling up to bedroom windows on hot summer nights.

I don't think they sell corn anymore off of Route 28. The door on the home where I grew up is painted an ugly green; it doesn't match the rest of the house. The back deck is new. The hill on the side of the house that I used to sled on looks like it's tiny. When I was little, that hill was an adventure.

Next stop: Chicago.