There and Back Again

1. New York greets us with blowing snow and darkening skies. She is in character for my return and I dream out the window of skating on frozen ponds and sledding down snow covered hills.
2. The old furnace has been softly rumbling on for sixty winters. At night I can hear it through my pillow, as familiar and comforting as a mother's heartbeat to her child's ear.
3. Her appetite is coaxed back to health with some good, home cooking.
4. By the end of the week the freezer is full of foil wrapped meals, neatly labeled in large block letters identifying the contents.
5. Large dairy farms dot the southern Pennsylvania landscape. Each huge barn is a different design and each farmhouse a testament to years of hard working families. Many of them incorporate a light colored stone in house and barn, making them appear invincible to time.
6. On the highway, we pass the startling scene of an accident only minutes old. People are running from vehicles toward a rolled-over car to help out. Dozens of them frantically swarm around it, tossing baggage aside to free the occupants. While the scene itself is horrific, my throat tightens at the goodness of humanity and the nature of man to run toward danger to help one another.
7. Our beloved mountains. They are not mine by ancestry, but they have adopted me in and I love to see them as we near our Virginia home.