Some things never really do change...

Yesterday felt like the first day of summer.

We left town on Friday night, splurging on a hotel in Spokane so we would have the luxury of arriving in Bozeman before dinner, as opposed to our usual habit of rolling in around midnight. It was completely worth it. We lingered over coffee downtown, and Suzannah played on the red wagon slide in Riverfront Park. It felt so good to wander along the still-quiet sidewalks downtown with my baby, the sun on my arms, anticipating the relatively easy drive through the mountains.

This is the beauty of the road: all of my anxiety vanishes. I do plenty of hand-wringing before we actually leave on any of our trips -- about packing, or expenses, or driving, or any number of things I won't bother to disclose here because I don't need to make myself sound more neurotic than I already am. But once we're on the interstate, it all falls away as easily as the signs in the rearview mirror. Driving out of Coeur d'Alene, the lake huge and brilliant and blue, the mountains rising before us, I realized that nothing could compete with the sheer perfection of this day. I wasn't worried about whether or not I should have signed my teaching contract or any of the things that stress me out in my daily life. I wasn't thinking about all the "what-if's" of my Future (yes, with a capital F). There was only the road, the sunshine, the water. The warm coffee in my hands, the satisfying bulk of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest on my lap. There was my baby boy's soft, fat feet kicking happily in the back seat and his big sister examining her new robot Band-Aid with no small amount of pride, recounting -- again -- the story of how she fell down and skinned her knee at the park, how Daddy kissed it.

The clouds rolled in between Missoula and Butte, and we drove through hard rain on the Butte pass, rain as loud as hail that drowned out all attempts at conversation. Montana rain smells sharp and clean even from inside the car. I miss these summer storms -- the booming thunder, the flashes of lightning in the nearly-black sky, and afterwards, the sudden sunshine.

By the time we pulled into the driveway at my parents' house, the clouds had parted over the hills and the sun was shining on the wet grass. After dinner, Matt asked if I felt like going for a walk, since Suzannah was busy playing with Grandma and ALL THE TOYS! and Isaac was asleep (because my second child does this bizarre thing where I lay him down and he smiles and babbles for awhile and then just -- goes to sleep. It's weird. I'm still trying to understand how that works). Suddenly, though, all I wanted to do was put on my running shoes and jog up the highway alone in the cool evening air.

I've jogged that highway at dusk many, many times. It's one little thing I do for myself when I come to this place I still consider home even though I haven't really lived here since I was eighteen. Every time I pull off I-90, my town looks a little different. For awhile, there was a shiny new bank every time I came home. Then, when they decided there were enough of those, they started building strip malls with all the same big chain stores and restaurants you'd find anywhere else in the country. I suppose Bozeman needs The Gap and Cost Plus World Market and Costco and little teriyaki restaurants or whatever, but I hate change, so I try to ignore it. Plus, part of me turns into the crazy lady that wants to yell at all the teenagers in town, "Oh, poor you, you don't think there's enough shopping here? Well, when I was your age, you know what the brand-new thing in town was? WAL-MART. And it was a BIG FAT SHINY DEAL."

My parents live south of town, and when we first moved to Bozeman, there wasn't much between us and town besides fields and farms. Subdivisions have grown up there in the last several years, though, as well as a few churches and some traffic lights. (Hey, kids. When I lived here, I could drive all the way to Main without hitting a traffic light. That's eight miles away. A four-way stop was good enough for us, and you think you need a four-lane road now? And a left-turn arrow? Get off my lawn.)

But there are still a few fields left near my parents' house. In the winter, you might see a bull elk and his harem just off the road as you drive into town. And in the summer, when I jog up the highway, if I stop where it curves a mile from the house, I have a view of Gallatin Valley and the Bridger mountains that looks more or less the same as it did ten years ago. And the air smells just as sweet. And it's so quiet.

It felt so good to turn off the tree-lined lane that leads to my parents' house and on to the highway, to run in the cool evening air, the gravel still damp from the recent storm. The sun had settled warmly over the foothills and my shadow stretched to the other side of the road. I ran a mile-and-a-half towards town before I decided to turn around; by then the sun had set and the wind had picked up again. I jogged home in the fading light, feeling surprisingly energetic for having spent the entire day in the car.

I burst through the front door to see Colleen, one of my oldest friends, sitting on the couch. She was chatting with my parents, and she rose to give me a hug before she demanded that I find her some cookies and milk. Then she made fun of me for giving her milk in a little green plastic cup. ("Gee, Shar," she said. "This is different from the glass you might have picked a few years ago.") This is the friend who sat next to me in geometry in the ninth grade, who stood up in my wedding, and who still winds up eating cookies at my house at strange hours. The year after Matt and I were married, we were all in town for Christmas. She let herself in to my parents house at some obscene hour of the morning that week, and we woke up to her body sailing into bed with us.

"Hey, Sweetie. I hope your husband has pants on," she said.

"Uh, all good here," said Matt, who was vaguely horrified but probably not all that surprised.

Last night, after Suzannah went through her usual bedtime antics (equal parts stalling and showing off for company), Colleen turned to me and said, "Hm. A bossy, particular, intense little child who looks exactly like you? Weird."

It was another little reminder -- in the form of a hug, a few insults, and lots of laughter -- that some things never really change, and that feeling? That's home.