International Airport. Maybe it was because I had been away for almost four months (My highest record in the past was six days). People wearing cowboy hats and shiny belt buckles looked almost like aliens to me. The sight of the oil wells along the highways and the red burning sun sitting on the horizon brought back some unfamiliar familiarity. The sky was getting dark and we moved silently on the sun-stained orange highway. In an hour we reached our neighborhood, and Mom drove the car slowly down the winding streets, passing the shadows of high-roof houses one by one. The smell of grass from the freshly mowed lawns was floating in the air. It was the week before Christmas. The yellow, red, green, and blue little bulbs in the yard and on the door of every house emitted small circles of soft, cozy light in the fermenting holiday atmosphere. In many houses the curtains of the tall windows were drawn to the sides and the green Christmas trees with white-wing angels on the top stood inside the windows. The chimneys stood erect on the roofs, inviting and welcoming their white-beard visitor from the North Pole. As I watched the things outside the car window passing by, the strange feeling suddenly began to disappear, and something warm and salty was forming in my eyes. I turned around and looked at Mom again, as though I was making a final confirmation. Then the eyes could no longer hold the thing that was rushing out from inside of me, yet I smiled. I was home. ...
