And just like that, I’m back in Houston. I drove through the rain on Friday, then flew ahead of it. I saw the rain again in Charlotte, then flew behind it. Takeoff this morning was among the bumpiest ever — up, down, side to side. Here in Houston the temperature is lovely but the sky is a little overcast. Up in Boston where some people I know were running some dinky little marathon, conditions were ten times awful. You just can’t escape the weather no matter what you do.
I had a lovely time in Charlotte as expected. It is always nice to go home. My parents mentioned a conversation that they had with my dad’s family last week, a “what if they moved to the farm” question. “The farm” is the dairy farm in Pennsylvania that my dad grew up on and that his two brothers, my uncles, own and manage now.
I stared at them. Moving to the farm is probably the one and only place they could move that wouldn’t spark a riot from us kids. See, my parents have lived in Charlotte for more than 30 years, and in the same house for almost as long. Despite the monster mansions popping up all over the neighborhood (which has become popular and expensive; people buy the old houses for $300-$500K just to tear them down and build something entirely new and monsterous and completely too big for the lot), we love that house. I know my parents could sell it for 10 times what they paid for it, but still…
I don’t think they were serious though. At least not in the next few years. There probably aren’t many people that spend their entire childhood in the same house anymore. But I did.
I don’t get to see Jose until late tonight because he has a sim. Boo.