I have been out of town for about a month now. I left a few days after finals completed, flew over to South Carolina to see my sister graduate from college, then back across the country to southern California for a week at my Dad’s, then up to Davis in Northern California where I have been working for my aunt.

Shortly after getting here, I felt something I had, literally, never felt before. I was homesick.

The truth was, I rather enjoyed the melancholy feeling, because never in my life have I had a place I called home enough to feel that irrational longing for. The longing for the familiar, the comfortable, the place where “everybody knows your name” – or at least more so than anywhere else.

I missed my house, to be sure.  My bed – a long army remnant with bright pink sheets. I missed the fried egg pan in the kitchen, waiting for a new user. I missed constantly having music on – Papa’s Negramaro or Vince’s The Killers or Brand’s Led Zeppelin or Mom’s folk or even Jo’s “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It.” I missed messing around with my little brothers, sitting around watching Star Trek or playing board games or all piling in to the kitchen to make snacks at 4 pm. I missed my dog, and her loosely curled tail bobbing around as she searches for “tidbits”.

I am used to missing home; I have routinely left in the summer nearly my whole life. But this time, it was different – it was more.I found myself missing Hulen Blvd. and going to Half Price Books; walking around TCU’s shady campus. Missing the bike path by the duck pond, and my church, which, in my opinion, is just right – not to cakey, not too hardcore. Even missing sitting around griping about wilting heat, and watching dry lightning appear in a dusky sky.

There’s nothing too special about Fort Worth. Out here in Cali, we have lots of neat things – fresh fruit of every variety, reasonable weather, the beach, lots of Asian food. Rolling fields and that lovely light green brush. Davis has piles of bikes and my Dad is right behind a mountain. But you know what – they’re not home. Nowhere is but Fort Worth – I say this after seven years of it growing on me. To think, seven years and a few months ago I was crying in the Sacramento airport to hear I was moving there, and now, a few miles away from that very spot, I am dreaming of returning. Returning home – to see the skyline appear as you move over the crest of the hill from DFW, or Oklahoma, or Burleson, or the exhasuting trip in from the West.