Seattle 113, or Graduations

I went back East this weekend. Funny, how I've begun saying back East instead of back home, how even the locals in Seattle say "back East" though they've never lived there. I still have homes scattered across that dear right coast - Mammy and Paps' house, the whole of the Pioneer Valley, my parents' house in the Adirondacks - but no single, central Place Where My Stuff Is. If I ever get to show my kids where I grew up, it'll be a drive-by sighting, at best. If they haven't totally McMansioned my old neighborhood.

It was a weekend of celebration - for my sister, graduating magna cum laude from a school that's pushed her into new creative realms, for me, finishing my first full-length manuscript. The two of us rock out at what we do - photography and poetry. She's got the awards to prove it.

The graduation itself was boring, like every other graduation, punctuated by that tiny thrill of hearing my sister's name be called, with her honors. The rest of the time, I played hangman on the back of the program with Youngest Cousin, now almost fifteen, and - it must be said - officially taller than me. There was a picnic after, in the sunshine, where we sat with platters of cheese and sushi rolls and salami, our shoulders and arms cooking to a parchy pink. My sister's friends stopped by to introduce themselves; we recognized several from the photos in my sister's exhibition. We helped her break down her photos and sculpture and pack out her room.

And when it was all over, the caravan of family pulled away from the rural Pennsylvania campus, and headed home. Wherever that was.