Whether.....

I learned last night from my friends Toni and Elizabeth that it's been very hot in L.A.  Toni emailed me that she was sitting on her patio (where I've sat quite a few times myself) "listening to classical music with an overlay of chirping crickets."  Bang. Homesickness.  Then I realized I was homesick for my old house, which my daughters and I refer to nowadays simply by its number--"270."  For a fraction of a second, I forgot about my new place and was sitting in the candlelight at 270--a place I haven't seen for almost a year and will most likely never see again. But then I started missing lunches with Toni, and the fabulous meals we've had in the dark on her deck and I wished I could be in Elizabeth's living room with my fellow memoir writers reading from our pages. I only have a week left here in Virginia where it's raining and by tomorrow most of the fall color will be a brown mush on the ground and I know now that whether it's balmy or baking when I get back to L.A.,  it's the climate of friendship that's pulling me home.