Pretend you have grown wings and are flying high in the night sky above the Homestead, in far upstate New York, about five hours driving distance north of New York City. (The fact that New York State geography is defined by its relation to New York City is annoying to you, but you accept it as part of the burden you must bear.) Feel the cool air on your tired body. Your wings rise and fall with a steady power. Your gaze is fixed on the distant horizon, where foothills begin their steady rise to the Adirondack Mountains. You look down at the only lights you can see, which are the headlights of a small truck, climbing slowly over hill and dale. The truck appears to be searching for something – not that you can tell, overtly, that the truck is searching, but it is something that you, with your extrasensory powers and ability to fly can sense.

Let us now descend for a closer look at this small truck. Fold your wings and dive downward. Swoop up as you draw near. What manner of vehicle is this?

Why, it is a Northwest Airlines baggage delivery truck. And where might you be heading, sir?

“I’ve got a bag to deliver to an address on Route 274.”

And is there a problem?

“I got no idea where the hell I am. I don’t even know if I’m on Route 274. There’s no signs.”

Are you worried?

“There’s no signs,” the truck driver says again. “It’s completely black out here. Does anyone actually live this far out in the woods?”

The truck driver pulls a small phone from his shirt pocket, flips on the cab light, and punches in some numbers.

“Hello? Are you the lady whose bag went missing at the Syracuse airport? Yeah. Well I’ve got it in the truck and I’m trying to find you.”

Pause.

“I don’t even know if I’m on the right road.”

Pause. The truck driver turns off the cab light and peers through the windshield, craning for a glimpse of something. Anything.

“Well,” he says. “There’s lots of trees.”

Pause.

“You’re standing on your front porch with a flashlight?” he says.

He flips shut the phone. “She says she’s standing on her front porch with a flashlight,” he mutters to himself. “She says she’ll guide me in. Jesus.”

Rise into the night sky again and peer through the darkness. The headlights of the small truck recede behind you as the driver makes his anxious and untrusting way further into the blackness. Will he find his way to the Homestead? For that is where he is headed, with the Matriarch’s lone lost rolling suitcase safely stowed behind him.
What is that we spy in the distance? Could it be? It is. Miles north, a woman stands on her front porch, holding a flashlight angled toward the North Star. It is the Matriarch, woman of light.

Behind you comes a cry of joy.

“I see the light!” the truck driver says to the dark silence of his cab. “It must be her!”

The Matriarch waits with the infinite patience of a woman used to guiding strangers to the Homestead. Her flashlight, freshly supplied with three “D” batteries, shines its light to the indifferent heavens. Now there is a crunch of gravel on the compacted dirt of the driveway. Now a man leaps from the cab, his arms spread wide. He envelops the Matriarch in a hug. He was lost, and now he is found.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “Thank you.”

The Matriarch smiles the calm smile of one used to this scene. Those who can bear the darkness of a Homestead night, those who can take the blackness without believing themselves lost and forsaken, those who can turn off the lamp when they go to bed and see no light but the light of a million stars clustered in the heavens, are few. And the Matriarch knows it. She offers the man her flashlight.

“Would you like it?” she says.

He accepts it as he would accept holy water offered by the Pope and cradles it between his fingers.

“Here’s your bag,” he says, retrieving it from its place behind his seat. “Good luck to you.”

And off he goes, red taillights receding in the distance as he rounds the curve at the unmarked intersection of Fraser Road and Route 274, here in the starlit Homeland, where few dare to tread.

Zip codes in which you have lived: 02114 (past), 55408 (current), and 05346 (also current). Apartments: six. Houses: four. Bathroomless one-room cabins in Vermont: one. Children, two of whom are now as tall or taller than you: three. Neurotic cats: one. Hyper dogs who remain meth-head-like no matter how much you exercise them: one. Broken bones: one. Trips to Italy: two. Times fallen in love: five. Eyeballs lasered: two. Days spent rising before 5 a.m. to write until you wrote a book good enough to be published: 5,476 minus approximately 1500 spent despairing of talent, lacking in work ethic, or too damn tired = 3975. Shoe size: ten. Minutes per running mile: the same sad nine. Ability to alpine ski, despite having attended a college with its very own ski slope: zero. Novels read: approximately 750. Trips to China: three. Times spent slapping then-four-year-old son in middle of night when you were exhausted and he would not let you sleep: one. Times spent despising self for slapping then- four-year-old son in middle of night when you were exhausted and he would not let you sleep: countless. Trips to Taiwan: two. Novels written (published): seven. Novels written (that will never be published): 2.5. Trips to Paris: one. Vows to stop saying the f-word in front of children: many. Times vow to stop saying the f-word in front of children has been broken: many. How much you used to pay youngest book-hating child to read, per half-hour: $.50. Best friends named Ellen Harris Swiggett: one. Marriages: one. Divorces: one. Trips to Portugal: two. Regrets: a few. Poems read before dawn daily: three. Friends and family members seen through cancer treatment: three. Trips to Spain: one. Shortest length of hair: one inch. Longest length of hair: three feet. Shade required to maintain hair’s natural color: L’Oreal French Roast #45. Trips to London: one. Pre-dawn times at which you typically wake and rise: 2:47, 3:20, 4:54. Strong cups of coffee drunk before dawn: .7. Men who, upon noting length of fingers, have asked if you can palm a basketball: approximately 18. Times heart has been broken: four. Trips to Mexico: nine. Pairs of tomato-red suede pants: one. Times spent dreaming that you are driving up an increasingly vertical road until your car tips backward and you fall into a bottomless void: at least 46. Times spent dreaming that you are short one chemistry class and therefore cannot graduate: at least 37. Letters written to grandmother before she died: approximately 570. Lindt Milk Chocolate Truffles consumed: approximately 2100. Times spent practicing Chopin’s Prelude in F Minor without noticeable improvement: approximately 233. Trips to Bhutan, Morocco, Macchu Picchu: none. Yet. Times daily you think how lucky you are to be living this big fat life: at least three.

Here is a tiny story of American immigration, set down here exactly (or as close to exact as I can get it while going against my own nature and resisting completely the instinctive urge to embellish and embroider it, re-tell it in my own way – as told to me in my childhood by my maternal grandmother).

“Your great-grandfather, my father, Paul Ajas, was French Basque, raised in the Pyrenees Mountains of France. He was sixteen years old and living at a Catholic boarding school not far from his family’s home. His mother had been sick, and the day came when he overheard someone from his village in the headmaster’s office, asking for him.”

‘And he knew that his mother was dead,’ said my grandmother,  ‘and he walked out of the classroom, and he walked down the mountain, and he walked right past his family’s home without stopping, and he walked to the sea, and he stowed away on a ship bound for America.’

And a few days into the voyage, he was discovered. The captain put him to work below decks, and as the ship approached New York Harbor, he was locked up, so that they could return him to France upon their return.’

But he managed to get free from the hold, and in the middle of the night he made his way up to the deck, and there he saw New York City before him. And he dove off the side of the ship, and he swam to the shore, and there he hauled himself into the city.’

And when dawn came he approached a man in the streets and asked him where might he find work. And he spoke no English – he spoke only French – and the man answered him in French.'”

And that is the story of how my grandmother, Reine Eugenie Honoree Ajas Kirsch, came to be born in America, in New York City, which to her eyes, and all her life long, was the only real city in the world.

A few of the long-standing rituals without which I fear I might float away:

A daily to-do list, made each morning at dawn and returned to throughout the day, only three of which, in twenty-five years and to the best of my recollection, have ever been crossed out in their entirety.

Picturing each of my beloveds and blessing each in turn,  also at dawn.

Toffee-making with my daughters the entire month of December.

A Thursday late-night phone call with my best friend as she is driving home from her classes.

My mother telling me that “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

An annual birthday email from a friend of 30 years’ standing.

The filling in, week by week, month by month, year by year, of three blank journals, one for each of my children.

A daily long walk with my dog or his cousin.

The Y every other day, and the people I always see there and never speak to, but nod to in respectful greeting: the tall bald man on the stairmaster, the blond woman on the bike, the elderly woman with the bright orange tennis shoes, the two loud men side by side on their inclined treadmills from 5:30-6:30 a.m., the always-pleasant man at the check-in counter, the multi-tattooed weightlifting woman.

One small mug of hot strong coffee at dawn, with heavy whipping cream stirred in.

While waiting for our food in restaurants, playing rummy (and losing, continually, to the best rummy player I know).

Music, of all kinds, at all volumes, at all times of the day and night.

Listening to my father mispronounce my name (yes, I am his  daughter, and yes, he has mispronounced my name all my life) as Al-Oh-Sun.

Waking my children at 6:45 a.m.

Making sure that as much as possible in my life happens in threes or multiples of three.

An annual trip to Minnetonka Orchards, where the cider doughnuts and cider brats are  eaten in abundance.

Two narrow photos of eyes, brown and hazel, belonging to two girls who live in this house.

A photo of two street signs, taken by my best friend, at the intersection of Joy St. and Mt. Vernon St. (points to those who can name the city)

A 2/3 eaten box of Oreos, hidden under a plastic grocery bag so no one else will find it.

A black stapler.

A poorly functioning Nokia cell phone.

A mostly-used tube of Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm.

A black curly-haired dog curled on the floor.

An ivory mesh bag bought at Value Village in Richfield.

A washed and ready-to-return empty Cedar Summit Farms heavy cream bottle, for which I will receive $2.50 if and when I actually return it to the store from whence it came.

A 2008 summer medical form for Camp Icaghowan.

A letter written on Batman and Robin stationery.

A “Swank Loves Retro” business card.

A nametag reading Lenny Faedo.

A Polaroid photo of a beach ball covered with stars.

A Polaroid photo of a doll’s head propped between the toes of a man’s foot.

A tiny plastic stake that reads “Cerastium, Snow in Summer.”

A large plastic bottle of Target brand Baby Lotion, the pump of which no longer works, a fact which necessitates complicated maneuvers in order to extract the lotion.

A check for $65 from Laptop Repair.

A black Precise Rolling Ball V5 Extra Fine pen.