Leaving

Austin take note: the Syracuse airport has free wi-fi.

I'm at the gate and the plane should be boarding before too long. Being dropped off by my dad (who does not drop me off at the terminal, but parks and walks inside with me while I get checked in) brings back memories of all those tearful partings when I was a little girl. When was the first time I hugged him goodbye without crying? I guess it's been a while, but it's still sad.

It's been a wonderful visit. Last night my stepbrother and his wife and stepsister and her boyfriend took me out to Buffalo's, in Baldwinsville - or B'ville, as the locals seem to call it. Driving there from Syracuse is roughly equivalent to driving to Pflugerville from South Austin. So I thought it was funny when I asked a guy I was talking to if all his sisters and brother also lived here, and he responded that most of them do, but one lives out of state and another one lives in Syracuse.

Lots of little bitty towns close together in upstate NY, and they seem to adhere to this strong localized mentality. Which I suppose is natural if you stay where you were born and grew up. My stepbrother and stepsister ran into several people last night that they'd gone to high school with in B'ville; the guy I was talking to was one of them.

When I was little, well, you could put a little girl on a plane by herself. You could also go through security and accompany her to the gate and wait for her plane with her, which my dad always used to do. He always met me at the gate, too, when I came to visit. I'd come out of the jetway and he'd be there waiting. What a lovely thing that always was...

I wish I had deeper roots. I love Austin. It's home; and the houses and buildings and accents and landscape and flora and fauna of other places - beautiful though they may be - are a bit alien. Austin looks right; they do everything the way it ought to be done; it's home. But my people are so far away (sigh).

And the Austin airport doesn't have free wi-fi. I hope they'll look into that.