Home for the Holidays: Postscript

I arrived home late last night. Home. My home. What a relief. I had a two-hour car ride to the airport in Baltimore yesterday, with my father at the wheel. I tried just listening to my headphones, but, ineveitably, he wanted to talk.

What did I really want to do with myself?

Write.

Who were my friends? What were their names? How did I know them?

I felt about fifteen years old. It's actually a harder question to dodge as an adult, and yet my friends are very much part of my world, and not his, and I don't like them colliding.

Did I really think I could ever work in a corporate environment?

Er, has this man ever met me before?

Jesus Christ, do we have to play last-minute twenty-questions? Isn't there an adage about the road to Hell?

The flight was stressful, thinking it all through. But I got home. To my city, to my place, to my bed, to my pets. To my life.

A life I value much more than I did just a short week ago.

Claudia Hunter is the Beachwood's pseudononymous holiday affairs correspondent. She just returned from her parents' home in Central Pennsylvania, from where she filed these reports:

* Home for the Holidays: The Preamble
* Home for the Holidays: Day 1
* Home for the Holidays: Day 2
* Home for the Holidays: Day 3
* Home for the Holidays: Day 4 (Christmas Eve)
* Home for the Holidays: Day 5 (Christmas)
* Home for the Holidays: Day 6
* Home for the Holidays: Day 7