Home Again

Tuesday April 3

I awake about 7 a.m., and again remove the dry kitty food. This motel serves a hot breakfast, so after a shower and shave, I head off to the lobby for a heapin' helpin' of egg rounds (staple of the motel "free breakfast"), sausage rounds, and biscuit rounds. All of which are perfectly proportioned so as to create a breakfast sandwich of such uniform dimension that they could be stacked in a Pringles can.

I load up the car, crating the kitties last and putting them in their positions -- Abby in back of me and to my right, and Phoebe next to me in the right front passenger seat. Today is a long drive -- about 540 miles -- and I am anxious to tear up the road and get home.

We are a curious and paradoxical breed -- most of us anyway -- in that we crave variety and new experiences, but at the same time eventually tire of it and seek to return to the comfort and predictability of familiar surroundings. Rare is the person who craves the open road all the time. I think of Marie Colvin -- the eyepatch reporter --- who was killed this past February in Syria while on assignment... a state which was more or less constant, I guess. "Home" was a foreign concept to her, and I guess it's good that there are jobs for people like that.

But I would say most of us -- and certainly me -- fall into that former category. We are at times bored with what we perceive as the monotony of our everyday routines, and so we seek to "get away from it all." But then after a while, we miss our friends, our family, our favorite haunts. And for me, having spent two extended stays in Florida, I crave the familiar yet essential amenities that this state cannot provide. I need the rhythms of the seasons. I certainly enjoyed Florida, but am looking forward to a distinct Spring, Summer, and Fall "back home." They say there are "seasons" in Florida, too, but from what I can tell of people's descriptions, they are more subtle, punctuated only by the damnable "hurricane season." I crave the crisp, cool, dry air of a Spring morning and a Fall afternoon, of which there is none in Florida. And I am looking forward to returning to the "contour" of Wisconsin, for lack of a better word. There is no contour in Florida; only flat. A day trip in Wisconsin to Sauk City or Monroe or Spring Green is filled with wondrous sights ... hills, valleys, rock formations, and all manner of geographic eye candy. "Getting there" in Wisconsin is truly half the fun. A day trip in Florida is an exercise in containing boredom. The sawgrass, cypress trees, and cattails are "exotic" for about the first five minutes when you're traveling along along "Alligator Alley" (Interstate 75) from Naples to Miami through the Everglades. After that, it's "Oh my God, when am I going to get there?"

Ah, but there is the warmth, the sunshine, the bike rides in shorts and T-Shirts, the farmers' markets in February with fresh strawberries that explode in your mouth. And have I mention the ocean?

And so dear readers,  you see the paradox of which I contemplate during my final drive home, punctuated by the occasional wail of a kitty.

I arrive home by about 7:30 p.m, with twilight descending. I exit the Prius, and I am suddenly hit by the sensation that I never left. The screeching of a power tool emanates from the garage of "Chuck," my neighbor to the one side of me, indicating he is still grinding away on his worthless '49 Ford pickup, a project he has been working on for the past five years, and which apparently has no end. Meanwhile, the familiar smell of cigarette smoke wafts from the rear stoop of the house to my other side, where Sue, my chain-smoking neighbor, for as long as I can remember, has been forced to appease her cravings for nicotine outside the house. This, in spite of the fact, that her husband toils 14 hours a day in a cheese-smoking factory and whose furniture and bedding must surely reek of sweat, smoked Gouda, and despair..

Yes, most certainly I left. And now I am home, and counting my blessings.

Bruce