The Place Between

"I've been all over the world since you called," my mom gushes into the phone to an old friend.

This is a bit of an overstatement, unless you also believe Montana, our home state, and Oregon, where we've been on vacation, make up the entire world. Disclaimer--we don't live in Montana, and we didn't vacation in Oregon, but I don't want to give away my actual location. I mean, God, you already know where I go to school. I don't want to issue a bona fide stalker invitation.

Um, so we have been traveling a bit. Home and all else kind of blended together; driving sleepily down the highways I would lay claim to towns. "Chesterton," I'd think, "We have one of those, too," before realizing that it was my own. And that I'm in my piece of the world after all.

When I think about it, I realize that I have a certain fondness for journey films anchored in the distance between. Cold Mountain, Seven Years in Tibet, Far and Away, even A Little Princess. And I remember being twelve and coming home from Cape Cod and blinking with the exhaustion of home sickness, eyes trailing lines on a map. And then you get home and settled in and it is only a matter of minutes before you look at your couches, your sunny walls, and sigh to leave again.