We�re back from vacation at last. We arrived home last night to an effervescently floral yard, a pretty shaggy lawn and some very happy cats. Quite a satisfactory welcome.

It�s always hard form me to leave my parents house. It�s not like it was my childhood home or anything, but we�ve vacationed in the area since I was a kid. And since I had such a transient childhood, it�s the only place in my history that I have continued to visit over decades rather than months or years. With each visit, I find myself remapping my knowledge of the area, recalling what certain places used to look like, which buildings are new, which have been altered or torn down, remembering events that have taken place in various localities.

This trip I had the added pleasure of watching AJ begin to create his own maps, which are overlaid on my own. He spent a lot of time exploring his grandparents� attic, full of my and my brother�s former belongings. There was something rather satisfying about watching AJ playing with toys I used to play with as a child. I think this is what passes for continuity in a life without geographical roots.

Despite a familiarity that surpasses any other region of my inhabitance, the area is not one I would ever call home. It�s exoticism is part of the attraction. The palm trees, the tropical flora and fauna, the cabins half-swallowed by kudzu.

Some of the small shacks and trailers in the woods along the main road, the buildings that I remember best from my first visit, are still there. But each time I return, another has disappeared, replaced with a horse farm or fancy house. I hope the cabin-owners received good money for their property and went on to bigger and better things, but I fear they were run off or ripped off in the great coastal land grab.

Egrets were making slow circles over the marsh on the morning we left.

Despite the flooding and road closures we endured, there was not too much visible damage left in Gaston�s wake. We drove without incident, noting the occasional fallen tree.

We stopped in a small college town to visit my childhood friend K. and her husband M. and enjoy pizza and pinball at the kind of parlor that only seems to exist in a college town. The place could not be described as having any kind of d�cor. It was barely clean, beer by the pitcher, and outstanding pizzas. The perfect driving break. We headed back to their house for coffee and chocolate, one of which bought AJ�s friendship for life. And for the record, AJ thoroughly enjoyed his first Toblerone bar.

AJ was an excellent traveler, hardly wanting to stop. He loved being in the car. Was the model of decorum in hotel rooms, loved having his own queen sized bed and even fell asleep without complaint when we still had the lights on to read in the next bed.

We stopped halfway home in a small town in Kentucky at a motel where we often break the trip. My mom and dad, returning from a family function in Michigan, had met us at the the motel on the way down, so when we arrived back there on Monday evening, AJ leapt out of the car and yelled, �Let�s look for Bamma and Bop!� It nearly broke my heart to have to explain that they weren�t going to be there this time. And yesterday he was further upset to learn that we were not going to be going back to their house but on to our own instead.

I�m always terribly sad when I leave my mom and dad�s and somehow it made me feel better that AJ did too, perhaps because it gave me an acceptable outlet for my missing them. I wish they didn�t live quite so far away. But then again, it is awfully nice to visit them where they�re now living. Except, perhaps, during hurricane season.

I�ll likely be out of commission again tomorrow, as I�m heading into town for one last visit to the archive before it shuts down for a couple of weeks. It�s my last grab for data before I finish up my conference paper. But after that, I�ll try to be back on schedule. There is much to say and do.

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