Time. Place. Space.

This evening Andre said we've driven 3800 miles. Or, to be exact, he has driven those miles amazingly. I have traveled them. Yet every night, we sleep in the same bed, brush our teeth in the same sink, put Sam and Phuphu's "cookies" in their special places.

When I put the leashes on Sam and Phuphu, open the door and step out, urge Sam to jump, and set Phuphu on the ground, we're in a different place. Tonight I sit again at our table, and we're in St. Helena. Rain patters on the metal roof over my head. The dinner dishes are washed and put away, everyone else is sleeping inside; outside my door Jay's home is dark until he returns from work late tonight.

Earlier this afternoon, he met us at the end of his driveway. The one with white rail fence on either side. We turned from the main highway through Napa—Route 29, onto Zinfandel Lane, and then onto Silverado Trail. Finally.

We had ventured through myth already. San Diego. Los Angeles. The far edge of San Francisco. Places and highways marked in memory by the harmonic poetics of the Beach Boys, the forever of movies, books and tv.

We cruised through walled freeways, under graffiti trimmed overpasses, sandwiched between cars and trucks, buffeted by semis, knowing that somewhere out from the nerved-up moving center of Us, there was a Hollywood sign, there was a Watts neighborhood, there were hillside homes with fabulous views, there were homes with barred windows, there was Griffith Park, there were clubs, dives, malls and all the other known and unimagined elements of city and suburban life.

Still, almost every moment of California has been a surprise. I couldn't begin to describe what I feel "in the air". I'll admit I'm uneducated and unprepared; barely studied a topographical map. Palm trees in the mountains, mountains in front of other mountains stippled with snow. Miles and miles of fruit trees, nut trees, crowded close together, stretching as far as I can see. A patch of trees in bloom, rows of tiny white wrapped saplings extending forever, thousands of trees buzzed flat on top.

Low gently folding green hills, windmill farms suddenly materializing—some in motion, others absolutely still. Here and there windmill parts like fruit fallen from the tree, tumbled to a stop on the slope. Vehicles flowing together through close hills that open suddenly to a distant bright horizon. Then another city, bridges and flashes of ocean, gray ships in gray water.

Then the slow fantasy created by the grape. Castles, haciendas, clean modern structures, long driveways, fences, gold-lettered signs. The thrill of familiar names. Then the epic poem of the grapevine—the eyes see the bare trimmed Y of the winter vine repeating itself support by support, line by line, acre by acre, mile by mile. All that wants to sprout, travel, curl and burst under the sun sublimated. Waiting.

But for me in these past weeks, and now, there has been fruition. The connections between family and friends across space and time are ever, invisibly flowing. Supported by talk or letter, prayer or imagining, time spent together. And here I am, passing through the familiar and strange. The pin on the map that signifies family or friend becomes a blooming place when we meet, to be marked in the heart after we depart.

This afternoon Jay stood at the end of the driveway in his robe, pajamas and slippers. The 90 degree right turn off the road into that driveway seemed impossible. We began it, but had to stop, halting traffic behind us. That panic, until Jay clearly and calmly directed all 36 feet of us plus the car through the white fence (less than an inch from the fence!). Andre unhooked the car, then Jay brought him through the next 90 degree right turn until we were parked—victoriously. Jay was smiling confidently through it all.