It’s warm, I tell ya. It’s 40 minutes ’til midnight, and 73 degrees, per yahoo weather. Feels like 85 to me. A good night for sleeping with a fan blowing on the bed, which I enjoy anyway.

My brother and I are spending the night in my grandparents’ house in a small town north of Bakersfield CA. They’re not here, except very strongly in my mind and heart. As you read in my birthday post, Grandma’s in a care facility. Papa died in October 2002. I miss them both tonight. They are present in every creak and corner of this old place.

I’m at the kitchen table with a laptop, and over my right shoulder, deep in shadow, is the place where Papa sat and watched TV for decades. How is it possible he’s not there? How can the world change so much as to cast off someone so present, so real to me, and yet still contain this room, this table, and me? How can such a different world, so much the same, still turn?