going home again

I’m in yet another airport.  Headed home.

Where IS home?

I’ll explain.

Two weeks ago I left London – home – to begin my American Summer 2015 road trip, only the road trip was in the air.  London, Detroit, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cedar Rapids, Detroit, JFK.  All places that take me home, really (except for Detroit, which I’m sorry to say must be home to somebody but to me it’s an airport, pure and simple).

I’ll tell you all this in loving detail when I’m safely in London, but suffice to say that Indiana was superb…

I spent time with so many people I love.

And then I went to Iowa, a place truly beloved to me, filled with brilliant people.

Of course Red Gate Farm is “home.”

And so are other other important bits of Connecticut.

There were dear friends.

New York City.  Need I say more? Old and new merge in my memory.

Beloved friends.

I have cooked a luncheon and five dinner parties, attended several more, held a baby, contemplated an hour-old painting, kissed a cousin, poked a dead bat, toured a new barn, jumped through a sprinkler, wept over a childhood golf course, smelled the sea, and I have witnessed the waving cornfields, American flags and loving “hello, goodbye” hands of all the people and places I’ve left behind.

I counted it up: I have sat at a table, on a porch, in a studio, on a trampoline, a swing or a park bench, with 55 – fifty-five! – people I hold near and dear, in the last fourteen days.

It’s time to go… “home.”  Next post, London.  And if I didn’t see you on this trip, I will on the next.

It’s a wonderful life.