Date: Jan. 27, 2007
Subject: Throwing rocks for fun.

Darling,
������� I hope that your experience with taking the red eye flight was better than mine.� At this point, I've already sworn them off.� You said that you didn't sleep much on the plane.� Were you guys giddy with trip sugar plums?� If so, I totally can understand that.� To boot, flying across the country just sounds like a fun thing to do.� My flight was pretty uneventful.� I read a bit, listened to some records, and tried my best to get some sleep.� Once landed, I took the tram over to the rental car terminal.� That's right, DFW International airport is a beast of a place.� There are six terminals and to travel between them requires car, shuttle bus, or some kind of monorail.� At the rental car plaza, which is basically what is was - a shiny, stone-floored glass UN for cars, I bounced from counter to counter only to be told again and again that there were no cars for persons without reservations.� I felt like such a dolt.� Always, I'm forever making plans and trying to not fly by the seat of my pants.� It always happens like this when I try to stray: a mess ensues.� So, defeated, I shuttled over to the nearest terminal to the airport entrance and sat for a while trying to think my way home.� This was short-lived.� I called my parents and asked for a ride.� I spent the next three or so hours dozing upright in the terminal.��
����� From the moment the truck left the airport, though, my chest became tighter and tighter.� I was acutely aware of being so incredibly far from you - the farthest since I lived in Texas - and I felt panicky to be so lonesome.� The scenery, too, reminded me immediately that I wasn't home anymore.� The Winter here makes for a Wyoming-esque palette of tans and browns, the trees stripped and bare.� Everything here screams discomfort.� The land is so flat and uncradling and the air is so crackling-dry�that I can't imagine how I ever got along without the support of mountains and ocean air.
������As we approached Durant, I became more and more nervous.��To hide this,�out of sight, I�tapped my finger rapidly and felt the seat's velour�for comfort.� We stopped first to see my mom at her office.��Some day when I have children, and I go a year without seeing them, I know that I�won't be able to keep from smiling and hugging them warmly.� I�imagine being filled with relief and warmth.� Essentially, it's the same feeling I�have when I saw you at�the airport in San Diego -�just wonderful.� Though, with my�children, I'm sure�I won't be as ambivalent about their feelings of hugging me.� Hopefully they'll just be ready for it after years of them. My mother, however, simply made a joke about her "long, lost son" and slowly rose�and�came around her�desk to hug me.� I didn't expect anything else, really, but it did�seem like my visit, already, was becoming something�more for her an exercise in duty, than in longing.� Maybe I'm mistaken, but�her actions�always seem to reflect this.� We went to lunch where we talked politics and I told them your John Edwards line and�about how I think it's spot-on.� My�parents both love him, by the way.� I also argued about Obama's homophobia�and told them that I�couldn't�vote for someone with such a�stance.� I believe my line was, "I'd rather write-in for Alf."
���� After lunch, my dad and I went out to the new house where he gave me the tour and introduced me to the new animals.� I was so happy to see Dorie, my old cat.� I even mistakenly called her Lady Bird while I held her.� I realized that I was already becoming homesick.� The house is nice.� While I do like it better than their old house, it's smaller and more fitting to both my new West Coast sensibilities about smaller rooms and my sense that two people hardly need the thousands of square feet that they just sold off.� Plus, not as many square feet that were being wasted. However, they've done an amazing job of recreating the same motifs and Home Interiors design murder that was typical of the old house.� Seriously, the room colors, moulding, everything is so similar.� It's strange.� So, not only was this place unfamiliar and not home in reality, but it was a mocking recreation of the place that also stopped being home.� So strange.