A lot to consider

So, last weekend I took a trip to Portland OR, and somehow wound up in Montana...When I was a kid we moved every two or three years, so I was never from anywhere. We spent a couple weeks in Montana every summer, so Montana was always where I considered myself to be from. At the end of each vacation I always had a great sense of loss as we left Montana to head back to wherever we lived at the time.

When my kids were young we always spent our summer vacations in Montana too. Even as an adult, I felt a sense of loss as we left Montana behind to head back to wherever we lived at the time.This weekend I felt a similar sense of loss as we left Portland to head back to Atlanta and left the kids behind. I think the pangs are worse now because they don't head back to "wherever" with us anymore. Yesterday my kids were young and we were all in Montana; this morning we are all older, and wondering where the rest of our lives will take us.

Just when I was becoming fully immersed in loss and self-pity, we showed up at the airport for our 11:50PM "red-eye" back to Atlanta. We had returned the rental car and checked out of our hotel; imagine our surprise when we discovered that our red-eye had actually been a white-eye that left at 11:50 AM that day.

I got up at 3:50 AM to go for a run from our new hotel by the airport. I ran down an empty road in an industrial area nearby. Imagine my surprise as I ran past a huge rock that looked like a sleeping guinea pig."What the hell?" I wondered aloud, even as I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet and crept noiselessly by lest I awaken it. I escaped unmolested, due more to my lack of a need for inspiration than the goodness of this undoubtedly evil rock.

We made it home, and the sense of loss is easing up a bit. Loss is my least favorite emotion, unless it’s over weight that I have lost, then its ok... I'm slowly losing my mind, but I forget that that is happening so there is no real sense of loss there most of the time. Other than those two exceptions, loss is my least favorite emotion.

Emotion...it keeps you alive and feels like it's killing you all at once.