Greetings from Charlotte. Gate C19. It was C14, but now it’s changed. There have been delays and outright cancellations galore; apparently something about storms in the northeast. (“They’re having weather up there,” one man said to me by way of explanation back at C14 about half an hour ago.) I, who live my life blithely, now, out on the coast, know nothing about these things called “storms,” or “rain.” There is sun out there, there is heat that makes us scurry inside all day till the worst of it has passed, but in all the recent months I can recall with plain memory, there has been none of this, how-you-say, rain. So I show up here in Charlotte, a bird with her head freshly plucked from the coastal sand, a gal who’s been living on sunlight and lame metaphors like that for too long.

But tonight I go back to the Homeland. And it feels so right. Pittsburgh, where accents are harsh, and no one is friendly in a false way; they actually mean it. I am looking forward so hard to the green up there, and to the hills and the windy streets and the ugly/beautiful rusted out architecture. And my family, whom I haven’t seen since Christmas. My nieces. My sisters.

Apparently, this flight is one of the only ones running tonight. Around me, the airport is filled with cranky travelers, but not me. There’s one of those phones ringing at a gate-desk nearby. It rings and rings and rings some more. There never seems to be anyone around to answer those phones.