Back at Last

I am so happy to be back home. After staying away for almost two months coming back felt strange. I saw my home with new eyes and I loved seeing it again. I felt the heat and it was brutal. I saw Fourth Av. and it was empty. I thought about the masses of people in the streets of St. Petersburg, especially downtown. I thought of the metro in rush hour and wondered how we were all able to walk in different directions without walking into each other every second, like a bunch of babies playing bumper cars.

At the end of May a gentle white flower blooms called "Under Snow". It usually grows in the forest under the melting snow. I'm not sure how or why it's in this snowless field.

I have often wondered the same thing when walking on the U of A campus between two periods, I think that's usually the 10 minutes before the hour. Everyone is rushing, no one is checking the street before crossing it and bikers and skateboarders are flooding the same paths as the pedestrians in all different directions. Somehow no one ever seems to get hurt and I think the human brain is amazing for being able to navigate through such chaos.

My grandmother can never take a walk without sitting down on a bench for a rest. Here we're sitting in our neighborhood in one of the small refuges from the city. You can pretend you're in the country when you sit here.

St. Petersburg was beautiful because of the pretty buildings, lush summer foliage and aromatic spring time blooms of lavender, cherry blossoms and fresh leaves sprouting on the branches that smell of the gentle green color. St. Petersburg was home because of my grandmother that I know and love and the strangers whose faces I understand with their open frankness and meek soulfulness. Tucson is home because of the large support network of friends and family I am so fortunate to have and because I know where the yummiest food is, where my friends play the best music and where people I know and love show their art.

I wish my grandmother didn't live by herself. I am sorry to leave her so far away where she has no family and most of her friends are already dead.

I am so happy to be back home.