All Good

 

“California, here we come, right back where we started from…”

 

Woke up in Zurich, 20-minute train to the airport, 3-hour wait to fly to Barcelona, 3-hour layover there before boarding the 12-hour 4-movie flight to San Francisco. A remarkable 5-minute zip through Customs followed by a maddening 55 minutes before the baggage belt moved. Some 20 straight hours of travel, about one of which was spent sleeping, before the welcome return to my home and city. Might I be getting a bit too old for this?

 

Nevertheless, as enchanted to be back amongst the century-old wooden homes as I was by the centuries-old stone ones, as happy to see Montery pines and cypruses as I was to see Italian varieties, as delighted by the Thai take-out our daughter Talia brought to us as the next fresh pasta and caprese salad. “Right back where we started from,” at once so easily familiar, as if we never left, and seen with some fresh appreciation, moving from the delights of travel to the delights of the settled life. It’s all good.

 

Finally horizontal at 9:30 pm SF time and now awake at 5:00 am SF time. Back in my morning sweatpants and happy to reunite with my meditation cushions. A morning shopping, haircut, unpacking, laundry and perhaps a bike ride await, ready to begin the next chapter in this perpetually new and renewed life.