I had a very pleasant drive home today, after eight weeks working and living in Pennsylvania.

I love Connecticut. I love the way the grass burns brown in front lawns in suburban neighborhoods built in the 50s. I love being thirty minutes away from the ocean, if I drive fast. I love the smoke smell left on my clothes after backyard bonfires, I love midnight runs down familiar country roads, I love how nothing changes in this crazy town. I love being wanted here, because I am now a stranger with stories to tell.

We are all grown, our group from high school. We are in Texas doing engineering; we are working three jobs; we have dropped off the radar; we have graduated and have lived in Boston; we have lived in opposite sides of Pennsylvania, and have never visited each other; we are moving to New York, getting our equity cards; we run our family's community theatre for twelve years, and many more to come. We marry our high school sweethearts; we are engaged, and then not; we have kids, they will grow up, and will play setback at our kitchen tables, and steal lawn gnomes, and go cliffjumping at the reservoir, and throw each other fully clothed into the pool, like we used to do. Some of us look old. Some of us are actually going gray (sorry AJ). We have responsibilities of our own, apartments of our own, wives and husbands, book deals and broadway breaks, and we do not stay in touch, but seem to wander back to a small, familiar house on Middletown Road, and weave through each other's lives just enough to remain friends.

I wonder about how much I belong to this town. I wonder how much I belong to anything anymore. It all seems like a lot of floating around, from house to house, from city to city, from lover to lover.

I am reflecting on the person I have become in the past twenty-one years. I am reflecting on the choices I have made in the past eight weeks. I wonder if I've stayed true to myself. I wonder if sometimes I've compromised being a good person. I wonder if it really matters.

I miss us. I miss talking about the small things. I miss curfews, bummed cigarettes, bonfires, first loves, I miss virginity and I miss innocence, I miss having a defined black and white as to what is right and wrong.

Sometimes I'd like to take you all with me. I want you to know things. I want you to tell me things about who I am now, because you all knew so well who I was. We lived together for eighteen years. We saw each other every day. How did we walk away from each other after that?

It's all so strange. A part of me was eternally happy here, with you all, never knowing anything outside the seven of us.

You made Connecticut lovely.