Home is supposed to be comfortable. People are speaking my first language, doing things the way I grew up doing them, and so therefore I should be relaxed and feeling coordinated, fitting in. I'm only feeling shy and amazed.
My brother picked me up from the airport in his Ford Excursion. I'm used to traveling in Toyota minivan taxis throughout Lesotho, where you're stuffed inside with about twenty other passengers. Matt's Excursion felt more spacious than an empty house.
My other brother, Brian, greeted me when I arrived with a condescending "Did you get smaller in Africa?" He's like 6'4", and takes a lot of pride in the height he had nothing to do with accruing, but that's OK, I'm not bitter. It's just that everyone else I've seen for the past two days is also giant. Men, women, children, even animals. Everything is so well-fed and full-grown here in America.
My mom's house though, the place is so roomy and decorated and filled with fascinating books and electronic gadgets. There are so many plants in the backyard and flowers in the front. The apples and bananas in the fruit bowl are surely genetic mutants -- they're thrice the size of any in Lesotho. And the Friday newspaper is ten times as big as a month's worth of all the papers in that whole little country I just came from. Everything about America seems big, and I so small.