A Single Spot on a Very Large Map.

Clouds from thousands of miles away gather and swirl. The tighter the circle they collapse into, the darker the color they become on the radar screen. And somewhere in the mass of moving lines and transforming hues is a single spot on a very large map.

If I squint hard enough, I can pinpoint where it is that my daughter lives and breathes and works.

The middle of the universe isn't always where the straightest lines intersect. Nor is it the place where the masses congregate, as witnessed by the light they project into space. The center of the universe is where your heart pulls you - time and time again.

Wallace Stegner said something like this, "Home isn't a place.
It's what you can take away with you." I'm not exactly sure what those words meant to Wallace when he penned them, but the idea I get is this: Home isn't so much an address on a street, it's more like the amount of stuff you can store away in your soul.

While it's only been a few months now since our daughter has found a home away from home, and only three since she's been on that tiny island in the middle of that great big sea, I keep looking at that map and seeing that little island in the middle of an ocean of blue with mighty clouds swirling. And it's that map that makes her seem so far away from us.

To be clear, there's no way I would want this girl of ours to be anywhere else - doing anything else. But there is still a little vacuum in our little world. And I guess that's the way it should be. The silence of her absence is a reminder of a lot of great things - things that seem noble and right to our family. But I guess the truth of it is this: Home isn't just what you take away with you, it's also what you choose - for the very best of reasons - to leave behind.

On a Long Drive to Ogden.

On a morning like this, a thousand or so years ago, my mother would prepare one or two of us for a journey that seemed endless. Cream of Wheat bubbling on the stove somehow signaled what the day would bring. And for me, there was always dread. Soon after muscling down a few spoonfuls of mush, a well-kept Buick would ease into the driveway and our grandfather would walk towards the house, hoping we were ready to make the trip with him to Ogden.

Ogden was the birthplace of our grandfather and the home of his aged, widowed mother. And every few months, our grandfather would collect a few of us to drive north and make that tortuous visit where we'd receive a skinny kiss, hear our own mother's name mispronounced, smell the smells of an old Victorian house and drive back home again.

While our destination wasn't really that far away, we knew it meant sitting with our grandfather, answering a few questions, watching as he'd roll down his window just enough to flick an ash or two from his cigarette and feeling like we were stuck in a time warp, with the clock turning backwards. The trip - when I look back - wasn't so long or so awful, but it wasn't anything we cherished or looked forward to either. But that was a long. long time ago. And how I wish I could sit next to my grandfather today as his shinny Buick crept north on the interstate.

If I could make that drive just once more, the traveling would be a little different. We'd talk a little more because there's a lot I don't know about my grandfather and the hard-edged life that he spent his entire life trying - and succeeding - to iron out. I wouldn't fidget so much at my great grandmother's house and we'd be able to stay a little longer. I'd ask her more questions too, I suppose.

Most of all, I'd just like to be there - in the moment - to touch the cloth of the seat the car, to look at my grandpa again and to be a part of him and his experience and his family. But how was I to know how quickly life would pass on and change? After all, I was just a kid.