It's been three weeks of travel but I am back home. How quickly it's over! And all I can do is marvel how friends these days look like their parents, not like the youngsters I once knew. I too, have changed: I seem to have shrunk, which is obvious only after standing next to a young man I used to know as a kid. 

Sad stories, too, have come my way these past weeks: former classmates in ill health, at the hospital, or, worse, dead and gone. On the bright side, I may have contributed to a heightened sense of joy in a handful of people. It's good to become reacquainted with people far away, gone from my life yet dearly remembered. Now that I am home, there's stuff to attend: bills to pay, duties put aside earlier until my return, starting up my veggie garden. Still tired with jet leg but I'll have to get going . . .