Home

What I'd like to do is post some pictures of my Sacramento family: parents, grandparents, brother, sister-in-law, neice, but I can't get the pictures to download. So I've been thinking about being home, and this is some of what I've thought...

I grew up here. It's hot here. Very very hot. But I don't remember that from my childhood. I remember sprinklers and the slip'n'slide. I remember the above-ground pool we had in our early-teen years. I remember the ground being too hot to walk on, but running really fast to the ice-cream man and stopping in the shade until it was my brother's and my turn.

I've been thinking of the word "nostalgia". It doesn't sound like what it is. It sounds like "nausea", and consequently makes me think of unpleasant things. And "nostalgia" is a big word. When I go to the river and smell the smell of that much fresh water I remember everything...picnics there as a child, thousands of water-skiing trips, fried chicken, late-night swimming with my friends as a teenager, rowing for hours during crew practice, hours of running down the bike trail when we trained for triathlons and marathons, walking with friends and their babies, watching people swimming and fishing from the bridge... - and "nostalgia" is supposed to cover all of that. Because it all somehow blends into one giant memory with so many tangents. You could spend hours sitting by the river, going over every memory and the ones they lead you to. -Conversations. Dreams. Youth. Who was I then? How did I get to where I am now? Boy am I glad I'm here. -It just doesn't seem like the right word. I wonder if another language has a better one.