This just in from Pennsylvania... Me! Just got back. It was okay. Not the family part. That was grueling. A storm of anxiety and insecurity. I thought that I had pullled off a major coup with my present to my parents: I goot them Ken Burns' History of Baseball on VHS. They liked it a lot, and it's right up both their alleys. But their VCR is on the fritz, so we got back from my brothers, popped in the tape, and got static. Before I head back down there Christmas Eve (What was I thinking???!! Why did I say I'd come back down for Christmas???!!) I'm going to buy them a new VHS. My stepmother asked about my dog about thirty times, and only asked about my Ex eleven times, so I guess I got off easy. My favorite family moment was when they were gushing about my step-nephews' new baby, that he had brough by this morning. "Aren't babies wonderful? Don't you love babies, Drew?" To which I replied, "Absolutely! I love babies. But I doubt I could eat a whole one." There was silence for about a minute after that.

But, what made the trip so wonderful was I always forget, and every time I go home I remember, just how much I love Pennsylvania in the winter. The moon was full and glowing in the sky; Orion was riding high; the air was cold, but for no good reason that I can determine, you don't mind it; there was frost on the fields glistening in the moonlight; the palate of colors in the winter is like a Turner canvas; the stars were so many there, they seemed to overlap; the moonlight dancing on the Delaware River made me want to weep. Y'know that exhilirating feeling you're supposed to get walking through New York, that "Gosh-here-I-am-in-the-greatest-city-in-the-world-and-if-I-can-make-it-here-I-can-make-it-anywhere-and-I-feel-the-very-heartbeat-of-this-great-Metropolis feeling? Well, I haven't felt that in years. But walking from my parents back door to my jeep parked in the driveway and I want to dance and burst into song and my eyes tear. Just like when I'm in the desert; just like when I'm wading in a stream in Multnomah Gorge; just like when I'm paddling a canoe through the Okeefenokee Swamp; just like when I'm on the beach; just like when I'm swimming in a swimming hole; just like when I'm walking with my dog along the edge of a cornfield; just like when I smell the inside of a barn; just like when I find a barbeque on some dusty back road; just like when I'm sitting at Dilly's in Centre Bridge having a hotdog and a coffee milkshake.

"Greeeeeen acres is the place to be!" Let me put on my muu-muu and climb a phone pole.