roots

I'm going camping. I'm chopping off the last three days of my work week (fine by me; they're the freshmen move-in days) and my much-missed brothers and my parents will be driving down to meet my sister and me, and screw the rain in the forecast, all six of us are going to claim a site on Skyline drive. We're going to sit around the fire and read to each other and climb trees and stretch our legs and play cards and tell jokes no one else thinks are funny and pass around the pocket knife and the hatchet and hope for a clear patch through the clouds one night so we can discover the stars. Then by this weekend one of us will be gearing up to go to South Africa for four months, one of us will be starting a last year of college, one will be substitute teaching, two will be looking at houses in the next town up (WTF?), and me, I'll be catching the other half of the embrace that had to be cut short last night, and I'll be quite occupied, thanks.