a twitch.

As if I hadn't engaged in enough change already. That's the sentence fragment I shall begin with.

DC has been kinder to me these past few weeks, and I have been kinder to myself. In the midst of all of this kindness, my thoughts have kept their place in my head, and most recently, took their place in conversation with the best kind of friend a thinker could have; Consequently, they haven't made their way to this whimsical little corner of my life.

In the meantime, I have been engaging with, as the beginning fragment would indicate, yet more change. The tangible reaction to this would be my left eye, which voluntarily twitches in reaction. It reminds me often that I frequently ask too much of myself, all the while telling myself I am still not doing enough, still feeling stuck in between worlds of adolescence and adulthood, with characteristics of each phase littered throughout my life.

One of the best, as mentioned earlier, came to visit this past week. It was the run-up to her twenty-seventh birthday, which indicates the completion of her twenty-seventh year, and we spent a good deal of conversational energy hatching at our paths and life's direction. After perusing through pictures of a high school friend on the web, with his wife and three kids in check and a very adult-like existence, insecurity about what has yet to be accomplished inevitably rises to the surface.

After finishing my Sunday morning coffee multiple metro stops from home, as well as some changes to a blog post about pancakes I am entering in a creative non-fiction writing contest, and re-entering the house I left earlier in search of the previously mentioned coffee, I joined the company of three adults, two dogs, two bottles of wine and a tray of cheese. Among the adults was the general manager of the premiere sea food restaurant in DC. One of the two dogs belonged to her, as well as a listening ear. As I tried my best to articulate my direction-challenged-direction, and the possibility of another country in my future, her response was that of agreeability and the admonition that, "You're young! You can still do those things!".

This sentence comes in the midst of my self-reprimanding attitude, and the fact that my life fails so completely at resembling the life of an adult. And the adults are telling me to keep it that way.

A year ago, I went to visit the same friend that's presence was so helpful and kind this past week. Her sentence to me last August of two-thousand and nine: "What you're doing there in that place, working your job and living in your little garage apartment and spending time with the good people in you're life? It's fine! But if you're doing the same thing at this time next year, I will kill you. Fast-forward to the time she speaks of, and you have now. I am in fact not doing the same thing, which means I get to keep my life. Her newest sentence to encapsulate my existence: "You're doing okay, kid."

And in light of the kindness I have been bestowing upon myself, I have to agree. If only I could get someone to convince my left eye.

going...somewhere.

It takes little to thrill me.

At work, toward the end of sunny days, I get a little jazzed at around six-thirty in the evening. It's the time of night, this time of year, where the sun starts to cast the most beautiful shadows. It's also the time of night when we have to close the shades a bit, as the beautiful sun often angles itself at eye level of the guests aware enough to choose the window seats. When the shades are up, and I get to see the shadows I love, my step bounces a bit, and my interior smiles.

With this tendency, this ability to really get all up in arms about the mundane, is a keen ability to flutter around, simply enjoying. This is truly a gift, I think. But, when it comes to doing things, my ability to just breeze through has the tendency to breeze over direction; Accomplishment isn't a familiar word in my vocabulary. Indecision is my vocabulary's best friend.

"What does she want to do, though," he asks. "Ha ha ha," followed by a wayward giggle, is the response.

Though I am not magnetized toward the metal of accomplishment, there are things I would like to do, and accomplish. Sitting in the corner, with brightly lit windows in front of me, and change all around me, I am realizing the value of what it is I have done, and the somewhat shaky, around the bend steps I have taken. A strong step in one direction would have been false, as would inaction, and the act of taking no steps at all.

But the step I took was wrought with enough awareness to choose the window seat. I am looking out over ambiguous opportunity and rays of possibility, with my feat more prepared to step, one in front of the other, in front of the other.

With all of this possibility is the reality that the answer to the question and what I want to "do" still takes the recipient in multiple directions. "Weelll, a little of this with some of this and she'd also like to do some of this with that." My decision to go, arrive, meet, try, interview, and start has made the possibility of this and that more likely, yes. But it also means that, like much of life, I must be patient with the not sure. I don't have a solid answer to give people, and I don't have a clear plan for what the coming months hold.

It's the life-long exercise in being comfortable with the unknown, and patient and accepting with what is. Which brings me back to the beginning, where the ability to find thrill in very little is more appropriate than ever, and serves to enhance, like real maple syrup, rather than distract, like scrambled eggs covering up burnt toast.

I am going to enjoy the pancakes and maple syrup of change from the window seat with the sun in my eyes, and look forward to going, well, forward, albeit in the company of shadows.

tasty things.

It's been record hot here, and nearly everywhere else. My friends in Tulsa have been recording what feels like 120°. What? And please don't ask me to prove this or provide credible evidence, but one of my co-workers told me the other day that Russia has been swept with record high heat as well. I don't like it at all.

So I became facebook friends with a friend of a friend a week or so ago. I didn't know this person, but she had met and liked a couple of people that I love, so when she told me she was new to the area too, and would I like hang out sometime, um..."yes," I said. Confirmed.

My new facebook friend that is now my new real life friend came into the city last night to run some errands, and so we met and had dinner. I help people with this simple little act multiple evenings a week. I have a station filled with tables, and couples or groups or parties of two will walk in, sit, sometimes order drinks...I tell them the specials, and they spend the remainder of their time, most of the time, sharing conversation and story over a meal. Oh how I love this act. The process of a meal, fit with desired company and interesting honest conversation is one of my very favorite things. I genuinely enjoy serving tables that know how to enjoy its process, and genuine enjoyment comes from an appreciation of the food and the company. It's been kind of a tease for me, regularly helping people with one of my very favorite things without getting to experience the process for myself much at all.

I do not concede completely. I still go out and have dinners alone, annoyingly engaging my server as much as I can. And though a meal with myself is genuinely a lovely experience, one that a friend of a friend has referred to as "liberating," it's not the same as one with company.

Last night's dinner was one of those simple things that, because of my decision to uproot, I have really, really been missing. To say that I enjoyed my meal, fit with interesting conversation, sipped drinks, culminated with savored dessert, would be an extreme understatement.

One of our conversation topics was the ever cliche weather. We didn't discuss that of Russia, but my facebook-real-life-friend had lived in Seattle, and one of the things she relayed were its "awful summers". Wha? Waaaiiiit a minute. That's something I think Seattle has in it's corner..."It never gets really hot there, you know?" Yes. I know. And I like. "I went swimming maybe twice...I am used to Oklahoma summers, and I like for there to be a season of some almost unbearable heat." Eeek.

What makes some people love a place may turn someone else off. I explained to her that I like to be able to run outside all year long, and the unbearable heat we have experienced here makes it difficult for me to want to leave the house. "Seattle would be great for that," she said.

We have this dish at Posto, where I work, called "mezzeluna". I get quizzed on it regularly, before my shift. It's half moon shaped pasta stuffed with pancetta and stracchino cheese...tossed in a light olive oil white wine sauce...and finished with english pea, tomato concasse, and finally, black olive. There are some people that order it simply because of the last ingredient. They will order almost anything because it's finished with olives. I loathe olives. Their taste causes the gag reflex in the back of my throat. I've ordered the mezzeluna before, and I asked my server to have the olives left in the kitchen.

This contrast, like a shared meal, is also one of my very favorite things. My facebook-real-life-friend made her way here for a job, having just finished attaining a masters degree. I made it here as something more of an experiment, with sort of direction but more ambiguity that anything. She likes the heat I have trouble bearing. Some people like olives, others are vegan, steak eaters, liberals, democrats, moderate conservatives, day-time professionals, night-time professionals, decaf drinkers, religious fanatics, coffee haters, and somewhere in the mix of all of that, people find a way to enjoy meals, company, and conversations, despite, and sometimes because of, differing tastes and opinions.

Cheers to enjoying something simple you've been missing, and to someone doing something different than you, and it being okay.

class, endless class.

When I arrived back in Tulsa in the fall of two-thousand and eight, after attempting to teach english in South Korea, I was itching to escape. I felt like I was going in reverse, and conjured up numerous ways in my head to get out before it was too late. I had to move out of my lovely old house a few months after returning, and I didn't really have anywhere concrete to go. It was around the holidays; My friend Chris took me in for a few weeks, and I stayed on another friend's couch when she left to visit her boyfriend's family for Christmas. And then, sometime shortly after Christmas, I moved into the house of my late great grandmother. I had my own room, and shower, and also, two jobs. I was baking and working at a coffee shop, two of the most early morning jobs one could come up with. It was a rather unenjoyable combination, leaving me quite exhausted. I began to crave a space of my own, somewhere marked by simplicity and ease, and I found a nice little space in a nice old neighborhood that proved to be just that.

The price tag I thought I could do. The lease was the more uncomfortable option for me to reason through. I would have to stay a year, they said. This means twelve months in a row in the same place. I looked around at the little kitchen with black and white floors, fixing my eyes on the spotty red-orange paint job attempting to cover the walls, and the notion of fleeing...Fled. The lease was a piece of cake to sign, and this over thinker of most everything capable of being thought of didn't have to think much about signing the line at all. In the back of my foggy brain, somewhere, I knew this year in this place, both the concrete former garage floors covered with carpet, and the city known as Tulsa, would be vital for years to come. And so, once again, I summoned my father, his truck and trailer, and made the little space something of an oasis, all my own, and began to feel excitement about the coming year.

The excitement was valid; It was truly a great year. My cup overflowed. And that's what I was leaving behind when I came to this place. A year of growth, confidence, encouragement, companionship...Life was plush.

The thing about places like that is that they change, whether you leave or stay. Friends that added to the wonderful canvas will move, marry, and make changes of their own. I wasn't tempted by the goodness of my year to stay; But rather, I was tempted to believe more in myself, and my ability to find goodness wherever I chose to roam.

So that's what I did. Packing up my little apartment was the first leg of letting go. I put things in boxes, gave stuff away, brought in reinforcement to leave it as clean as could be, and then I cried, after handing over the key. I drove to my new little temporary home in the basement of a house, with boxes piled in the back seat, and I just let the tears fall. I followed the tears with work, and distracted myself with tasks. My walls turned mango madness, and I turned my sights to what was in front of me, which wouldn't be for much longer. All of this gave more weight to my beliefs; My thoughts about life and about what we can do with it became only stronger.

And then I left in a frenzy, jumbled it up with "a run into my future", and plopped myself into the foreign, and got all clammy. Really! Clammy! If I was an animal when I left, I'd maybe have been a zebra...Something confident and valiant, odd and okay with it. Somehow I transformed myself into a clam! Sheepish, anxious, and inadequate. Who is this person I am waking up to in the mornings?! I don't recognize her! AAAaaaaa! What is happening here?

So what I didn't realize is that not everything transfers, like those blasted credits and classes you have to RETAKE when you switch universities. YOU'VE already taken them, with the SAME book. "Sorry," the dean says. "They didn't transfer." "What do you mean they didn't transfer?! I've already learned this stuff." "You learned it somewhere else. Now you have to learn it here."

So that's what I am doing now. I am retaking confidence 101, philosophy, and style, and a great course about relearning the art of solitude. I have managed to fall in love with the white chair in the corner of my room, which is my newly adopted oasis, and today, I wore my yellow tights. I signed up for a wine class that starts in September, so I will be adding a few new lessons too. I am also, frankly teaching myself how to eat again. Luckily the coffee credit transferred seamlessly, as is evidenced by the empty macchiato cup to my right.

sunrise, sunshine.

When I was little, I would wake at seven on Saturdays, before the rest of my family, beginning my day with the company of Zach and Kelly and Screech and the rest of Saved by the Bell's cast. A few years later, once I had discovered cooking, I would start the pancakes, again, before the rest of my family rose. I am one of those morning people; I love waking with the day. There's something inherently beautiful in the process of sleeping, closing out the past, and waking with newness, and with possibility. And that's what I see when I am out and about at a day's beginning. There's something raw and lovely about bumping into people in the waking hours, when they are just starting too, and a day's direction can go so many different ways.

Since being here, however, I have closed the book on mornings. I open the pages, read the first few lines, and then slam it shut, eventually waking chapters later. When I very first arrived here, I think it was because I was genuinely exhausted. There was the time change I had to deal with, I'd just ran a really long distance, the distance's training had imposed a lot of stress on my body, and in the midst of all of that, I had packed up my life and left most of it behind. I needed to rest, I didn't have any where to be, and so I used the mornings to catch up.

A little later, I found employment at a restaurant. Said restaurant is only open for dinner, and most of the evenings I work, it closes at ten-thirty in the evening. This is not too late, though it used to be my bedtime. By the time I leave, it's usually eleven...I wait on the bus...get off the bus...walk the block home...and by the time I have finished all of the evening's necessary tasks, it's rarely earlier than one in the morning. At seven, when I would like to be up for the day, I am still. sound. asleep.

And this makes me feel like I am truly missing out.

So this week I decided to implement some goals. Goal one: drink more water. I bought a re-usable water bottle. It's working. Goal two: Get up at eight. I down loaded an alarm onto my I-Telephone. I set it. Monday, I shut it off. And then I shut it off again. And then I got up at nine, patting myself on the back because I had risen before time reached double digits. And then, around the time that time reached double digits, I needed a nap, like the way a nursing baby neeeeeeds it's mother's breast. I was sitting, and my eyes literally started to shut. I stopped what I was doing, and I went back to sleep. This was an epic get-up-early-and-don't-waste-the-day fail.

I eventually made it to work, and started being productive at around four in the afternoon. My friend Angela works the same hours as I, and she still gets up early. It can be done. When she suggested, on my laziest of days, that we have coffee in the morning I said, "YES!" Incentive. It's helpful.

I made it home after work, well rested, and turned off the lights before one. Before falling asleep, I set my alarm for seven-thirty, feeling hopeful. Beep beep beep...snooze....beep beep beep...snooze...and then, at 7:50...BEFORE EIGHT...I plunged myself from the sheets. Success!

Near unbearable heat and humidity were predicted by the weather man, so I slipped on my cut-off shorts, tank-top, and sandals...washed the night off of my face, and left the house for the metro.

So this is a long story, I know. I usually take the long way around to say the simplest things. So there you go. The simple thing I am trying to say is that this was the FIRST morning since being here that I have left the house before nine to get on the metro during the work week. I am a different kind of professional. My profession is the kind that makes their way to work when the rest of the world is still closing things up at the office. Because of this, I don't usually bump into the office crowd...at least not until seven or so, when they make their way into the restaurant, and I serve them dinner.

Walking along the sidewalk, I see the heals, the collars, and brief-cases, and the march. It's not a stroll. They are going somewhere, with intention; There is a fervor in each step. On most days most people ride the escalator all the way down, underground. I like moving, and walking, and so I am usually only one of a few walking down the escalator, passing the escalator standers to my right. This morning, however, the standers were in the minority. I follow my fellow walkers down the moving stairs, and make it to where the trains converge. Upon the platform, I feel like I have entered a cloud of pastel collars and black pencil skirts. I plop myself on to train with the day-time professionals, in my cut-offs, brown attire, and flip-flops, and I stand out as if there was a stamp on my forehead. I wish, in the moment, that I had the courage to just start dancing right there, in the middle of the train, as I try to keep my balance without holding onto the rail, as the train lists the tiniest bit.

We make our exits, and de-converge, as the collars and skirts make their way to their offices to make copies and send emails and add to the colorful necessary fabric of the the world's corporate political financial workforce, and I make my way to coffee, to sit in the sun and sip a latte over the colorful necessary fabric of budding friendship and conversation.

Morning, it's good to have you back.

tourist.

I have been pretty ambitious this week, making my way into the foreign, to new museums, eateries, and sections of town. I had two days off in a row, and though I dreamed of using the time off to make a short exit, looking up plane and train tickets to various stops on the map, I decided on the practical, and to spend some hours exploring the newness of my present.

On Friday I made it to the National Gallery of Art, and Saturday, a run preceded stops at some shops, a date with overdue Indian cuisine, and a foreign film titled "The Concert". So that's what I did, but what this is about has nothing much to do with my itinerary.

It's about the little boy on the subway that perfected the task of making faces at his grandpa. Grandpa looked at him, beckoning some mischievous behavior, and the three year old just punched him in a serious, I've had it with you sort of way. And then they went back and forth, giggling...grandpa acting like a kid, kid channeling grown-up.

The next train ride brought the man, sleeping in his seat, with a bouquet of flowers resting in his lap. I don't know who the lucky one was, and if it was for no reason, in celebration, or in mourning, and the man wasn't wearing a ring. But the image of the flowers in his lap was nice, and regardless of their course, so was the idea that he was thinking of someone, and that's something this world can't really get enough of.

Sitting outside of the Gap, after a thirty minute period of trying on things I'd maneuvered from the disorganized and overstuffed sales rack, I sat outside on the steps in hunger, googling a place to eat. A couple passed by, perhaps in their seventies. He was taller than she, carrying a shopping bag from Banana Republic, Gap's neighbor. They were strolling, and happened to be enjoying each other's company. I followed their trail away, and watched him lift her purse from her shoulders, to take some of the weight of her day away; She looked at him with a smile of gratitude as they walked further on.

At the movie, I sat next to a couple, who seemed to have been married for years. Their company seemed so natural and appropriate, like apples being picked from apple trees, or mellow music on a Sunday morning. I was at the movie quite early, and so privy to conversation I'd otherwise miss. They still seemed to have so much to talk about, and enjoyed listening to the thoughts of the other. This is something I think about when I think about being married for years, which in and of itself is hard for this relationship novice to imagine. It's a hope that not only will I find a someone to spend lots and lots of years with, but also someone that I won't tire of conversing with. They were a picture of this. A preview passed by that she enjoyed and she subtly said, "I'd like ot see that." He nodded, not in agreement but in recognition, and she asked, "would you like to see that one," with a tone of hope. "I would," he responded. As they exited their seat, after the film had ended, he maneuvered himself down the stairs with his cane in is right hand, her hand in his left.

A friend of mine from work gave me a blue stone, since it's the color of my eyes. It's a gratitude stone, she said, and when I reach in my pocket to get something and I feel its smooth surface, I am supposed to think about the things I am truly grateful for. I made my way home on the metro, thoughtful of the day, inspired by humanity that had been sprinkled throughout my itinerary, and by the blue stone gift I'd been given. I marveled at the weather, and what felt like a sixty-degree evening as the breeze pierced my skin.

My mind wandered to an evening with Melinda and Liz on a red couch, as we each sipped girly drinks and they gave a sermon to me of what they want me to have in my life. I thought of Aimi, and the countless times she has expressed more interest and excitement at goodness coming my way than I did. I thought a conversation with Chris a few weeks before I left, as she tried to explain how injury toward me is injury toward her, and that she feels it, too. I thought about the meal Isaiah made for me on one of my least favorite evenings, an evening that turned out to be one of the best because of his care, and because of the homemade avocado sauce deliciousness. I thought of Lindsay wanting me to hate where I am so I'd just up and move in with her, and of my Aunt Mae, who feels as if I've been gone from Tulsa for a year, though it's only been two months. I thought of the crane Mary gave to me at Melinda's wedding, speaking of adventure, and of not giving up, and of Tonia, always reminding me to give myself more grace, and credit. I thought of Pamela, my cousin and hostess, and the encouragement, challenge and friendship she has offered to me, generously, since the moment I arrived to be a guest in her house. And readers, the gratitude and the weather and perhaps the mellow music providing a most appropriate soundtrack brought tears up, welling to the surface. The rest of my walk was accompanied with a cry of gratitude, salty water streaming from my blue eyes, like the stone placed on a path of streaming water.

In light of my day and what I'd payed attention to, I wondered what passersby were thinking of this lady, walking, smiling, and crying. I hope they felt a little piece of humanity. That's what I hope.

concession.

I have been, for years, an I-Phone teaser. Not a critic. Please don't mistake. I have always thought it was a really cool piece of technology and very relevant to the lives of many. It just wasn't relevant to mine, and so I didn't have one, and therefor, wasn't caught up in the I-Phone frame of mind. This frame of mind can be seen in the eyes of someone holding their I-Phone intently, pressing things, and mostly unaware to the rest of their surroundings.

Because of this phenomenon I wasn't a part of, I made up nick names. I began to call the fabulous little device an I-Telephone. When my friends would refer to new apps they found, I would respond with looks of confusion. An App? What's that? Short for apple pie?! You can get Apple PIE from your I-Telephone?! OHHH. You mean "Application". Sorry.

A few months ago, I moved from Tulsa to another place where streets have different names and neighborhoods different themes. Before moving, I spent a week of travel, mostly alone. I turned getting lost into a hobby. I looked for a bakery in Boston long enough to have baked a thousand luscious lemon tarts for myself. By the time I made it to DC, it had gotten HOT, and the getting lost felt a lot more like a mess than an interesting adventure. My free phone from verizon, that couldn't accept pictures, much less take them, offered me no assistance. And it was defective. I would send someone a text message, and their response would take the form of a message I had sent an entirely different person months prior. With the move and changed life-scenario came the feeling like it was time for an upgrade. "Upgrade" is what they call it in the cellular telephone culture.

"On no", my subconscious thought. I may have to get an I-Telephone and become one of those people! I can't become one of those people. There are other telephones on the market, I told myself. So I looked at the Verizon Droid. Sure. That'll work.

I have a Macintosh computer whom I affectionately named Baxter, and I adore him, er, it. I haven't bestowed a name upon my I-Pod, but the affection is still there. It was the music coming from it's plastic covered body that lulled me through twenty-six miles of running in June, and countless hours of the same during the months preceding the calendar's sixth. And with these electronica thoughts came the voice of my friend Houston touting the logic of "brand loyalty" and purchasing something from a company whose products have proved themselves to you already.

And then I read a review on the I-Telephone, fit with pictures, which may have been the deciding factor. The esthetic side of my being was captured by the beauty behind the telephone's simplicity, timeless in form. The review went on to claim that it's, in their technical opinion, the best smart phone on the market.

And so, days later, I became a user. An I-Telephone user. It's been outfitted with a hand made sleeve from the ruffle I cut off of a dress that's now ruffle-less, as well as a few applications, including FIFA Soccer, entertainment for a bosses son while the adults ate chinese food and drank wine and talked about adult things.

Even without a mirror, I can recognize the glazed over look in my eye, somewhat unaware to what's going on around me, due to the I-Telephone frame of mind. That's to say, I get it. As my dear friend Aimi said, when I told her I was thinking of crossing to the other side of the telephone world, "It's life-changing, whether we want to admit it or not." And she's right. I could go on to tell stories of just how life changing it is, but there's a catch. I heard these stories from others...I sold these stories to people when I worked for Apple...and I didn't really get it until I had it in my hands, and didn't have to give it back to it's owner. So I won't bore you, and I won't tell you to go get one, either. I will just say that I am glad to be the owner of an I-Telephone, and not above getting lost in the stellar resolution of its glowing screen.

i'll take the rain.

I went on an Iranian culture kick when I lived in Florida. I read a book about the hostage takeover of the American embassy in Iran, and the 444 days that followed, which piqued my curiosity, and led me to more books in that vein. One was titled "Lipstick Jihad"; Her family had left Iran and raised her in Sunny California, in the midst of a strong Iranian subculture with Iranian food and tradition still in tact. To her sunny California friends she was Iranian. She wasn't sure who she was. She had pursued a career in Journalism, investigating things for others. When she told her family that she was going to return to Iran to live, for a time, with the family they had left behind, they didn't understand. They had chosen better for her, and brought her to a safe place, where she could grow without fear, and figure out who she was without restraint. Why would she need to go backwards, and re-claim the restraints they had spared her from?

I overheard friends talking the other day of an adopted daughter that had left her adopted family in a fit of rebellion to find who it was that had given her up.

My cousin and I were online looking up some records yesterday. You could pay forty dollars a month to have full access to a sight that will provide for you your families genealogy; your roots.

What happened? In the past? It's a natural curiosity. While running yesterday, over the headphones in my ears, I heard brakes squeal from a car nearby. I didn't keep going, but stopped what I was doing and went back, to see what had happened...What was the cause of the squeal, and the outcome?

I have this same curiosity toward the past of those that have influenced me. It's different than a genealogical curiosity...The filling in of a family tree; It more narcissistic than that. It's a desire to understand the past to better understand myself.

The past most blocked from my view has been my fathers. Much can be learned from talking to and getting to know one's siblings; My father's only brother committed suicide at the age of 23, in my dad's 18th year. I always loved meeting my friend's parents in college, seeing the source of many of their mannerisms and expressions; My grandfather died when I was three months old, and his mother when I was barely five years. Images of my grandmother consist of seventies print polyester, the aroma of stale cigarettes, and cat eye glasses. These are good images to have, but offer no insight into the shape she gave to the man I have been most influenced by.

Growing up, I made the best of what I had to work with, asking my father questions, incessantly. Who was he? How did he die? Why did you marry her? Why didn't she want him? How did it feel to be on that drug? Did you cry at your brother's funeral? Did your dad? Was your mom a good cook? His head would spin. "Damn-it Meredith. I haven't thought of most of this stuff in thirty-years", he would complain to me. "I am sorry," I would say. "But I still need the answers". And he gave them.

Exhausting my resources, I have moved on. Running a marathon in Seattle, I spent the four evenings I was there with my father's second cousin. I saw similar mannerisms, and facial structure. It was anchoring. Here in DC, I am staying with my father's first cousin, who was the best friend of his brother. She has offered me insight into his sibling, and, to the best of her ability, my overlooked father.

And separate from the family anchors, there is the place that gave him shape...The snow that fell on top of his sleeping bag while camping in the mountains as a kid, tent-less. This same snow he now loathes. The overarching pine trees, and the slopes where he perfected his, in my mind, perfect ski form. The snow below the skis is the only snow he now finds joy from. This part of the country, his part of the country, is beckoning me.

I have been to many cities. I've walked past Roman ruins, and along the water lined streets of Venice, through the height and bustle of New York City, and experienced the beauty of the Colorado Rockies. My family took me through the Grand Canyon, and I've lived along the beaches of Florida. But no city's beauty has captured me as much as that of Seattle. I can't get the images out of my head, and I have been drawn there since the Monday that I flew out.

He left this corner of the country at the age of eighteen, and hasn't often looked back. He can now be found in the middle of humidity of an Oklahoma summer, lying in the sun to soak up the heat he managed to avoid all of his first eighteen years, or in the middle of November, cursing the cold that's making its way in. And his daughter, the child that's arguably most like him, wants desperately to escape the heat, and flee to the corner he fled.

This makes him wonder, like the parents of Lip Stick Jihad, why? Why would you want to go back there? And in light of my curiosities, and desired understanding that makes its way out of the box of simple answers to historical questions, the answer for my dad is a simple how...How can I not want to go back, there, and live in the temperature and landscape and culture that has everything to do with you?