thoughts during the journey homeward from Tampa

These all are harbingers of the onrush of older age: when I am tired or overwrought, I run my hands all over my face (maybe to hide the fatigue or fright I used to wear more openly and willingly, like a Girl Scout badge for Strength in the Wilderness of the World); I reconsider the martini at the airport based on the early hour in the city I am flying home to (where once anywhere near noon in my destination city OR departure city OR layover city would have been enough reason to take my place in the lineup of throat-clearing, awkwardly displaced travelers in a bar where nobody knows your name and you know you will likely regret you came, if not when a stranger begins detailing his last week of fishing triumphs to you, then when the martini rises sourly in your throat during takeoff or landing or turbulence); and I spend three and a half days with my father and do not once feel throttled by rage fueled by grief (and feel, instead, only the originating grief, and though it is far less bearable than the rage, do not wish to exchange it, preferring and choosing the inevitably forward motion of truth).