October 3

Tomorrow, I'll drive to BWI, hop on a plane, and fly back home. Well, I'll fly to the place where my immediate family lives. I've never really settled on exactly where my home is, since when I'm in California, I refer to Maryland as home, but when I'm in Maryland, California suddenly takes the title. It's confusing. And honestly, I'd been embroiled in precisely that variety of confusion for a while now: where is home? Which parts of which home do I carry with me? How does who I once was --in Maryland-- influence who I am now as an adult? I still don't have concrete answers to those questions, but I can tell you one thing for sure: being in Maryland for the past few days --driving the back country roads I knew as a kid, hanging out with family, remembering what was, and looking out at this view from Grandma W's porch-- has given me a sense of peace that I'd been missing for quite a long time.

I'm not perfect (or even remotely close), but I think I'm a decent person most of the time. I try hard to do the right things, even when I have no inkling of which end is up, and if you're my friend, I care about you -- a lot. But yes, I try. I really do.

There may be some things about my past that are very hard --and I relive them, in a way, every time I come to Maryland-- but the sum of my experiences --the great ones, the ho-hum ones, and the tragic ones alike-- have molded me into the woman I am. So it's only right that I thank God for both of my homes and for how they've each helped to transform me into this 39-year old work-in-progress.