I was born in Missoula. We moved to Massachusetts when I was a baby so my father could attend graduate school at MIT. When I was growing up, it felt like we were garrisoned in a remote outpost, removed from family and home, due to circumstances beyond my control. The one thing that we got to do was return to Montana every summer and get reacquainted with relatives I had not seen since the previous summer. This was always a trip I looked forward to, although it was the arrival that I liked rather than the trip itself. The trip was by car, in hot weather before air conditioning, three kids in the back seat with me in the middle (my little sister in front between my parents). It was especially wonderful to arrive in Missoula to my father's family: grandmother, aunt and uncle, and many cousins. I am back in Missoula now, staying with my cousin Debbie, and having long conversations that are going past midnight. I am, for a while, not in the outpost but back where I began. I cannot know what it is like to grow up in the place your family is from. In both Massachusetts and Montana I am at a place apart. Montana has my roots and my kin from birth, and Massachusetts has my children and the family I have made from close friends, and my heart is suspended between. For now it is wonderful to be here, and it will also be a great thing to get back to my outpost, my home, in Massachusetts.