Dear Linc,

Spencer reads my blog.

“You talk to Pop lately?” she asks me today. It’s a nice question because I have no one to talk like siblings with.

“Not in a week,” I say glumly.

I miss living at home, not because it’s so hard on my own but because I miss Pop and Ma. Lately I have even begun to reminisce about my teenage quarrels with him.

He would say: “Don’t talk to me!”

And: “What is wrong with your attitude?!”

I took him seriously, was rightfully humiliated by his justifiable rage, even if that rage were underscored by his accent. I now look back with as much shame as I do fondness. He said “talk” like “took.” He overpronounced: “at-tit-jude.”

Maybe one of these days someone will write a novel and steal these qualities about him. Fine, it’s just as well, because all I care about is how much I miss living with him so much that I even crave his anger.

Good luck tonight, sir. I have another CAL gig. I’ll be working until ten. I can’t wait to go home and sleep, yet I feel like I just woke up. The repetition of daily life is oddly always so sudden. I’m here and yet I’m always asking how I got here.

Joe