Week in the Hills
I’m sitting at the end of a row of identical plastic seats in the San Jose airport sipping free Internet from the air. Twenty minutes ago my mom and Stephen dropped me off with hugs and faretheewells. I am bound for a layover in Atlanta and an arrival in Boston late tomorrow morning.
I’ve spent the last week at my mom and stepdad’s house in Los Gatos. It’s up in the Santa Cruz mountains, quote disconnected. Cellular reception and the satellite internet connection are notably weak. I slept lots, read half of Peter Watts’ Rifters trilogy (available as epub books with a cc license), and fixed a car while I was there.
It was nice to see my my grandmother too, she lives with them up in the hills. Before I left she gave me twenty dollars to take my girlfriend out to lunch. She had trouble pronouncing Xue’s name.
“Shoe Lah? Sue? It sounds Chinese or something.” “It is Grandma, Xue’s Chinese.” “You never told me!” “You never asked. Love you grandma, bye!”