I have arrived.

On Friday night, I sat in a semi-circle with family and talked and listened through stories of past, present, future. My aunt's eyes glittered through stories of our ancestors, I laughed across memories of Ireland, Hayley pretended to half-heartedly muse about her future (though I know she's secretly dreaming on her own). And when Alyssa arrived, I sat in a huddle with my two sisters and felt whole: complete in a way only sisters can afford.

Early Saturday morning, I packed half my life in the car and began a road trip north with my sisters.

We sailed past Santa Barbara, stopping in Goleta for camera film and a tide pen (due to my spastic driving, Alyssa ended up with coffee all over her light shirt. hehe)

Along the coast, we watched the waves snake north and caught glimpses of gulls, tourists, vultures, and cows (to Hayley's delight).

After resisting the urge to side-trip to Buelton (where I hear you can feed ostriches), we reached SLO and jumped onto the 1, where the ocean again greeted us--like familiar friends.

Lunch in Morro Bay: a town riddled with lovely little antique shops and slow-moving old men, who smile when the occasional tourist winds into their path. Site to see: Morro Rock--a huge, impossibly out-of-place "mountain" of a rock, perched on the beach of Morro Bay.

We ate sandwiches and pizza from a corner-in-the-wall Italian place and got back in the car, heading to Hearst Castle.

Hearst Castle, with its gold-plated floors and its Romanesque sculptures and is Mediterranean aura, was breathtaking, if not a little out of place on the peak of a San Simeon mountain. Birds circled--what I thought were hawks turned out to be vultures--and the air was warm, but not sticky-hot like the beach tends to be. In fact, the heat seemed to radiate not from the sun but from the Castle beneath our feet--a heat begging relief in the clear Neptune pool or in a recline in one of the sofas of the large main house.

I really did feel as if Mr Hearst sampled the best parts of Europe and painstakingly molded them into the hillside. The man definitely knew his art.

After Hearst Castle, we stopped for coffee and ice cream in Cambria as we headed south to slide onto the 46, in an attempt to avoid the windy northern path of Hwy 1. Hours later (after singing at the top of our lungs every song we could find on Hayley or Alyssa's ipod) we arrived in Monterey. We waved at the sign for the school and drove around for a glimpse at the town before having dinner on the beach.

San Francisco saw us slouching into bed at 11pm in a hotel by the airport, exhausted but eager to finish off the trip in the morning with a drive through the city before I had to put my sisters on the train in Oakland. When I heard they'd been picked up in Bakersfield and were headed home, a huge part of me yearned to go with them. But that chapter has drawn to a gentle close: I turned city-ward, to where Zak welcomed me with an embrace, and the next chapter opened:

the poet now resides in the heart of Oakland, gearing up to start the next adventure at Mills. Last night I slept in an inn on the water, by Jack London Square. I can hear the waves whispering outside my window and I am at peace, even though the next few hours sees me moving onto campus and entering a nearly foreign world.

I miss my sisters. I miss my family and the closeness of our bond.
But I love San Francisco, and hopefully I will learn to love Oakland as well. I am overjoyed with the nearness of Zak.

hello, Home.