Home

Here's Domelandia. I grew up in a geodesic dome my dad started building in 1976 and has continued to add onto. In fact, this Memorial Day weekend he and ma are knocking out the kitchen wall to add a breakfast nook. The dome is powered by solar power and propane and in the winter months is heated by firewood taken from the land. A brainiac once told me that our 120 acres wouldn't withstand constant firewood harvesting. He was, after all, a forestry graduate of Colorado State University and knew about these things. But after 32 years of thinning the forests, the woods are healthy and robust and new grass peeks through the thinned patches and there are overgrown copses blocking light twisted with mistletoe disease that are waiting for the chainsaw.

The well water (delivered to the dome by a solar-powered pump) tastes funny to me now, although when I was growing up the unfiltered water tasted sweet.

I'm staying in my suburb home this weekend and resting, and letting The Kid rest and get over his illness from last week, but I'm thinking of home and how wonderful it would be to sit on the porch after a long day of knocking out the kitchen wall.

The Old Man's cell phone is programmed with a number called "Home," and it isn't my cell phone number, it's the phone number of his parents, the same phone number they've had since he was a little kid.

We're in our thirties but Home is still the place we grew our inches and left to go to college and now visit rarely.

This weekend my heart's with my family, those bums.