On the drive home, I told them that I wasn’t supposed to be here at my age. I was supposed to be in Ireland, on the edge of a forest, in a cottage with a cat, and a bicycle parked outside. I explained this place, where we are now, is a cultural wasteland. Mid-America, where people crawl to die. “You wouldn’t understand though,” I say to them, “you grew up here and don’t know anything else. I came here from California.”
As if on que, my grown daughters start singing Tupac’s California. Very effectively taking the sail out of my forlorn monologue.