When I come home, it's always just in time: here is the dog, begging and fretful and sprawled on my bed and wagging her tail when she has the energy, cadging Pop Tarts and bananas and steak and whatever else she can get; here are my mother and father, who knew me before I was a peanut and who have liked me all the while and who will sit and eat and drink with me and let me be who I'm turning out to be. And I will go home from here to my other home with my people bolstered in and tucked up within myself. Where I carry them, that's my home.

And now the dog sleeps, and now I will join her.