Doves outside the window this morning, though not now. My last day in this house. For now. By tomorrow evening I'll be somewhere in Texas, with luck. Oklahoma, Missouri, then Illinois where I'll stop for a day or two to rest, repack, gear up for fall term, mapquest some stuff, then head off to Vermont where I need to be ready and on by the 15th. If I pack the boxes carefully and give up looking at the books now. If I pull the clothes from their hangers and drawers and put them into the suitcase. The atlas, I don't know. It could be anywhere. Leaving is hard for kids. I'm still a kid.
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My grandmother used to arrive on a Greyhound once a year. The stop was an empty lot, an unmarked corner in Duncan, AZ, with only the curb to sit on. We were dressed in good clothes so we stood around shoeing dirt, trying to see through the green tint windows when the bus pulled up. She sat in the back, was slow to descend. Then she smelled sweet, like cigars and cardboard when I hugged her. She brought her things in a box the driver would drag out from the underside of the bus. My mother hugged her. The bus rattled. The tires were hot. Hot air flushed our faces. I hugged her. I didn't know her much but I loved her for loving us enough to want to be with us. I felt adoration. Excitement. A sense of something missing being found. My mother cried to see her and she cried again in the car with the soft green seats between us and the radio on low when the bus left again weeks later. I see my mother once a year, she said. I cried too, for then leaving seemed the saddest part of living and I knew I would break my mother's heart.
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But then, I'm on my way to you aren't I? I feel adoration. Excitement. Don't worry, I'll find you. If you're there when I arrive.
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Going through Colorado and Iowa instead of Texas and Oklahoma. For a change. Through Colorado Springs and Denver on I-25 looks like, and not too far from Boulder, if you want a visit. Probably day after tomorrow? Drop me a note. I'll stop to say hi.
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