"The ground on which you make the fiction is already a fiction."

Headed to New England again, at long last.

I woke this morning before the alarm, watched the sun come up against the buildings out the bedroom window. It was easy to get out the door—JRoss was sleeping, so I was not tempted to make some kind of scene. But the sweetdog was piggy and bear-y and I could not hug him enough or make him understand how I love him. JRoss’s friend, now mine also, drove me to the airport. A real gift, such a ride, seven AM and rush hour.

It’s impossible to accurately describe how much a loathe air travel. The stressful drive to the airport, stuck in traffic and watching the clock. Trying to check in on the ticket machine that doesn’t work. Standing in the security line forever, then scrambling to unpack my things the way the TSA wants me to, taking off my shoes, holding up the line. And then: the gate so far away, the food so overpriced, the current issue of US Weekly uninteresting. Delays. Nausea. Trapped in the window seat. The entire time convinced it’s impossible to get wherever I am going. Horrible.

Now I am sitting in the Philadelphia airport. I wish I were traveling with someone—Mary B, headed back to Chicago for AWP; JRoss, heading to MA. But: there are many things to be said in favor of traveling while injured. People offering to take my bag, airline employees offering to call that little electric cart I rode once as a kid when traveling with my grandparents. I get to board early, even before the horrible parents with their horrible infants. I don’t have to put my own bag in the overhead compartment.

But: this connecting flight is delayed.

Horrible.

But I have hope: that I will make it to Burlington by dinner, that I will finally rest my foot and it will heal, that JRoss’s car will come back to me from the shop as good as new, that Schnipper and I will take the dogs to the lake and that Lyra will be brave enough to swim. I have hope that I will drive to the top of Philo, that the ice cream will be sweeter than when I left, that there will be sweetmail waiting when I arrive home.

And in a week: Jorie and Hal come home, too, and their wedding week starts, and then Mary and Hannah and TT arrive and we will eat and drink and swim and spa and rehearse and process and recess and speech and dance and be merry. And then: I will return to Chicago and collect my sweetperson and sweetdog, and we will return east, where we most belong—even if my cheating heart has found a mistress in the Middle West.