I never thought I would be as homesick as I was those last couple of days. Going home on the plane, I stared at the map on my miniature television set for the last three hours of the trip. I carefully watched the speed of the aircraft. Once we were over land again, we slowed down quite a bit. Do planes work that way? I honestly don’t know. I suppose as a pilot you just put the throttle all the way up and turn the wheel half an inch every few hours. They serve us chips and a ham and cheese sandwich, an hour and a half before we touch down. I don’t like ham and cheese. I ate it.

My time is shot to all hell, at this point. I arrived home at six in the afternoon, yesterday (Friday). I felt fairly energetic, ready to drive around and see some friends. But first, I told myself, a quick nap.

I woke up at four in the morning. Damn.

I counted on my fingers. In Italy, it would be ten in the morning. I slept in. Sort of.

I felt too awake to fall asleep again. I went downstairs, made a toasted blueberry bagel with peanut butter. I’d been craving one for the last few days of the trip. It was good. Maybe not as good as it was in my mind, but good all the same.

I checked my email and whatever else. Not a lot to find. Everyone knew I was gone. Not a single missed call on the cell phone. Fair enough. I stumbled around the house a little longer, then went to sleep again.

My parents are on their way out west, now. They left about a minute ago. I waved them good-bye as the Ford Explorer pulled out of the crackling driveway and off toward the road. There is a sleepy haze in the midday air: a beauty that I do not want to disturb. I go back inside, so that nature will have one less person to deal with, for the next few hours. I pass the tiger lilies that grow in front of the steps that lead to the front door. Their orange curling forms are like a distant memory of some wild and dangerous corner of the world that I will never see.

The lilies only come out this time in midsummer, then die after a few weeks of thrusting their color into the air, and spend all those eleven months building themselves up again. I remember them well, from my childhood. They would always bloom just as we were leaving on a trip, the whole family, to go out west, or to some country far away. But these days, I do my own sort of things, and my brother is busying himself with summer research at a fine institution in Lexington, Virginia that I will be attending in the fall. We don’t go on vacations together anymore. Maybe never will again. There is moist warmth congealing somewhere behind my eyes. I don’t know why. I didn’t enjoy the vacations that much. But the weight is piling on top of me, as my days and years tick by.

I’m a sensitive sort of guy, I suppose. Girls say they like that. They’re lying. I know one that wasn’t. I haven’t seen any others, really.

This summer, as the lilies rot on their living towers, I am here. I will be here to watch them fall away, rather than returning with my father and mother and brother when they are already dead, after a month’s driving around the ragged countryside. The lilies were a mystery to me, then. But as I look around this place where I have spent so much time, I can almost feel the mysteries evaporating at my fingertips. I am running out of questions. And wishes, too. I looked at the clock on a drive home, a few weeks ago. It was one eleven at night. I did the little kid thing, and began scouring my head for a wish. Nothing came to me. Whether it is because everything is right or because everything is wrong, I don’t know. That’s one of the few mysteries left. Then it was one twelve, and I let my mind soak in the music again.

That’s the thing. The only mysteries remaining, the only questions still slogging through the mire of my brain, are those that will not be answered.

I think back to my younger days, now. All the strange things that seemed to swirl in the air, that you knew you would have one day but you didn’t know when and you wanted them all at once, all together, tied up in a bow and placed at your feet as the snow swirled down outside the fogged windows and the smell of pine seeped into you and the colored lights danced about the hard wood floor. The things you didn’t know about.

There were the stupid things, of course. Alcohol, drugs, sex. The mysteries that would take off their masks before you all too soon, uglier than you ever had imagined, less satisfying then your young mind had fathomed. Vices. Spits on which any man could roast himself without even realizing it, until the timer went off and you were sliced up and put on a shining white plate. Who had their steak medium well? the waiter asks the rich men at the table as they sip their wines. And you, sir, ah yes. You had the well done steak, I believe? Well done it is. Not an ounce of juice, not a hint of flavor left in this one, sir.

Not all the mysteries were stupid, though.

Italy is a grimy sort of place. It has a barren fertility to its countryside, and a loving filth to its cities. Some streets are lined with thousand, two thousand year old statues. Some streets are filled to the brim with ethiopians running around trying to sell you fake and/or illegal merchandise, that scatter like insects when the police trudge down the alleyways. There are museums. There are beautiful age-old facades of Roman temples. There is good beer. There is good food. For me, there was an overwhelming sensation of not being anywhere near the place that raised me. It hit me for the first time on the second day of the trip, as I gazed up into the inside of the Pantheon’s dome. I was stunned. They say it used to be painted blue and gold, to represent the vault of heaven. The colors have long since faded. It didn’t need the colors.

One night, a drunk girl accidently called my hotel room. She was American, as well. I have no idea who she was. Someone staying at the same hotel. She told me to stop touching her vagina. I told her I wasn’t. She said that I could if I wanted to. I didn’t want to. She hung up.

The younger of these two dogs is sleeping at my feet, spread out on the flesh-colored carpet of my room. We’ll be spending a lot of time together in the coming days.

That car pulled away. I never expected a piece of myself to be torn off by the ones that created me eighteen years ago. I thought most everything had been severed that could be severed. I was wrong. I felt the ethereal umbilical cord tug and snap as that old forest-green car rolled down the driveway and into the swimming glow of the sunshine. I am left with half of it, dragging behind me, covered in dirt and graffiti reminding me to be courteous and kind and intelligent and successful, with small side notes like to turn off the stove and lock the door when I leave the house, to use a condom if/when I copulate, to focus on my studies when I go off the school, to watch the horizon for opportunities and threats, to choose my friends carefully and to choose no enemies if possible, to clean my room, to wash behind my ears, to keep myself. Yes. Keep myself.

They have the other half of that fleshy rope. I could tell you what was spray-painted on their half, but it would only be speculation. Maybe I’ll know, if I ever leave my son home to himself for two weeks with two tamed canines and drive off with an elderly version of the young girl I fell in love with, our gray hair tumbling over our faces from the wind streaming through the open car windows, thinking of moments other than the ones we occupy.

As I ease on the accelerator… Will I wonder who my son is? Or will I know?