8 Feb: Coming home

Visalia, California - There is something very surreal about unsuspectingly crawling up a familiar driveway in the middle of the night. A homecoming. It has been over a year. Things look the same, they smell the same. We ring the doorbell - the elated family – somehow I feel like I am watching this on a movie screen, from afar, perhaps from the neighbor’s yard. Then it sucks you in, deep into the belly of the house, and it snaps you back in a heartbeat. The room is as it always is (save for the floor under repair), but the bathroom is new. The rest is eerily similar. It is comforting. The family looks good, I shower, we go out to dinner. I drift in and out of reality and remembrance.