Thunder, The County, Sean. Memphis. Rounded-out inside.

Wanna get breakfast? It's 6:25 am and one of the first things I say.

Well, not the first, I've already shared my upon waking deep thought for the morning about the big changes he's upon, and also greeted him a happy US-in-the-World-Cup Day.

Kelly you are a fucking dump truck he says and I say when I answer something like dude you have no idea, like you cant even comprehend the amount of food I ate on my vacation, or for that matter the canyon that must be in my gut it's got to be as big at least as one of those little ones in Colorado, you know like the ones next to a big mesa? I am laughing a little it is early but I am up inside, and the laugh is not the cry-ey laugh kind just a chuckle.

I dont get the irony of mesa meaning table til now.

Last night I think I was driving us both a little crazy. I'd been on his couch all day, and it was a big day, for him at least, and I was priming my self since 9 am to drive to Brooklyn and pick up my bridesmaid dress then make the final truck to the beach. Finally at like 8 at night or something I heard the thunder and went out to sit under the sky on his front step where I feel like I've sat a million times and had to take some time to make my case, which is to say just sit quiet a while with the Nature and me, which is to say the same thing. To sit quiet awhile, find the without, find the within.

The sky was blue but wild pungent yellow behind the clouds. It felt so Maryland and in all, it was good, satisfying to be home. It's funny when you leave a while you come back and see all the subtle quiet things you take for granted. Sitting in the thunder heat with that yellowgreen sky put me in mind of Mandy, who I've seen sit like that a million times. Just watching, feeling the ripe. I had the shift feeling of light air happen then, like some ether layer of me rustling about then settling back in to me again, which actually is recognition, and realized yet again how many little things quantify a place. I went in after a while and looked at my brother with must have been that blank look on my face which is how we do, me and him, without knowing it when we are trying to cover where we've been. What we dont ever get is blank for us means the same thing as transparent and the only one in the world who can read that layer of see-through on me is him. And maybe mom. He laughed it is the laugh that always made me used to feel embarrassed because I always confused it as laughing at me, but I am older now and get that it is just laughter because he knows. Do you want some ice cream I said and he laughed some more and then said Kel, why dont you at least drive to Brooklyn and get your dress? Get out and do something at least take a drive you dont have to drive all the way home. We are afterall suburb kids, taking drives is what he know to do. He doesn't say that part about suburb kids that is mine for right here. Yea yea that's good that's what I'll do I said But you'll have to go right now just get in the car and motor before it's closed he answered and so that's what I did.

I touched down at BWI the night before, texted him I'm here, still on the plane. His car was waiting outside the black and metal mechanics of the baggage claim, under the cement that feels post-apocalypse underground and smells stale and like gas and where you cant even see a single plane. I love it there though and am happy to see him and Jamie waving at me, then I get in, and Jamie apologized immediately for being distant which I didn't notice then went on to say she just got a call from the Vice President of her company in Texas, he needed to talk to her ASAP about an opportunity. I wanted pizza so Seanie immediately drove us to the closet mall, it was near 9pm, and him and me ate pizza from a woodfire oven while she sat in the car on the phone.

Memphis is a long way away, and it all happened so quick, and I can write about it on here becasue in an hour or so from now we'll meet his friends downtown to watch the US soccer game and he will tell them then, and by this afternoon I'm sure most of the family will have found out becasue dad will likely have talked to uncle Tim. They are leaving Thursday, wont even be at the family reunion this weekend. Yesterday I didn't feel a thing today I feel a little like my heart is being taken from me, but all the same I know without any question that for them this is the exact right thing. It all happened so quick, Jamie is in Manayunk CraigsListing their apartment and doing all she can in 48 hours to tie up with her current clients there. He and I sat on his couch most of the day yesterday tightening his resume and other contacts and cover letters and stuff, and watching soccer on tv.

When I got on to route a hundred to head towards Brooklyn Park I couldn't shake that huge rounded feeling of something about to happen, but being in the calm right before it is to come. I knew this feeling wasn't about my brother, that this is more about me and his news was precursor of what's to come. Memphis is his big thing and what they've been waiting for and what we've all been secretely holding our breath in hopes that it wouldn't come, which is selfish but true. None of us knew they'd get transferred that far. I support him a hundred percent though, like I said some things are just right and you know it, you can feel it the way the tide of it fits curved and rounded, and retreats when the energy of it finally comes to fruition, and feels like relief and peace in your soul.

I drove to Brooklyn Park next to the biggest Maryland clouds, full of thunder and white scary lightening smelling ripe as cloves but never dropping any rain. Just passed the beltway where you pick up the harbor tunnel I got of to go south on route 2, and curving round the roundabout I had the most natural sensation of being on my way to visit Gram. It took me a full few seconds to realize, no, no she's dead now, has been a full 13 years and her house in Brooklyn on Church Street sold that summer, 97, first time I went traveling right after in fact I'd gotten home. And there was instead of the sweet ache just a settled feeling of mmm-hmmm, of acknowledgement, of all things passing, and for way more than the first time I had the sense again of much my whole time on the Eastern Shore seemed like a dream. Not the surreal, make-believe way, but in the way of waking so that you cant remember a darn piece of what went on the night before behind your eyes. And how you know it was important, you can feel it, but it's over now so may as well go on and greet the day. And how if anyone or thing could go ahead and show you, hit repeat on the dream button so that you could watch your dreams with the waking thoughts of day, how you wouldn't believe it was in all true, anyway, because the regularly conscious part of you slept all the way through. It's how I felt coming home, like home back to Anne Arundel county, like it's not been a day or more since I've been away--forget those 12 years on the shore. It's how I felt, foreign, when I unlocked my car.

In the beginning of the journey that Liz Gilbert goes on in Eat, Pray, Love she spends a month or more, I guess actually like 4 months, eating her way across Italy. It's healing to her soul. That's how I've felt, where I've been, from the first night in Yachats at the Adobe with Gretchen when she ordered us, literally, 4 entire enormous plates of food. We laughed and ate and ate and laughed the rest of the month away. It's felt so good to just eat. Good, savory, sweet, ethnic, rich, fatty, delicious food. It feels good, too, to be home.