As the view outside the cabin window became more and more familiar, so too did the mounting sensation that maybe I wasn't ready to go home after all. Suddenly eight months didn't seem quite so long, and seeing the bay from above, looking very much the same as when I left home, put perspective on how little had changed while I was away.
Part of my longing to return home was a fear that everything was happening without me. Being on the road felt like being on pause, frozen in a fish bowl while life continues on its merry way without you.
And though some things had changed (like the addition of this fantastic little parklettes in the Mission), most had not. Tartine (my first stop when I got back!) hadn't. Neither had places Camino, Port Costa, or Santa Cruz, neither had my friends, nor much of anything else that really mattered...
It was a soothing discovery, and one that I thought might have me regretting my desire to come back. But it was quite the contrary. Of everywhere I'd been, and everything I'd seen, San Francisco really had everything I had loved, and everything I had missed. There is probably a city somewhere in the world made perfectly for every person, and I'm back home in mine.
