Going home always brings about that balance between awkwardness and familiarity, the things that remain unchanged mixed with what has, even if it has for years. A certain stiffness comes from being with people who you could barely distinguish from yourself, to not knowing simple things about the other's life. Miranda sold all her horses but one, I forget the name. Dad might ask about my spiritual wellbeing; what will I say?

We drove by the old farm, the one lost through divorce, the one that Mom goes back and forth and back and forth on whether they should keep or sell the part of it they still own, beside the unkempt neighbours living in the house we grew up in. I tell myself I'm over it, but I can't stop staring at the tall Poplars Dad built our treefort in, where Stinker fell out of the laundry basket as we tried to heave her up, and we thought she had broke her legs.

I sense the same awkwardness between my parents and their parents. We went to a Thanksgiving meet at Grandma's, where my aunt kept looking over at Eden and I, and I knew she had to be thinking about me when I was Eden's age, me when I was ten and would only wear one pair of black Wranglers and my greasy hair in a ponytail, playing with her kids. Kyle had a crush on me and I was so mad. Katrina explained we were cousins, so he couldn't. We had Pioneer Days a few years consecutively where we played dress-up and slept in an old grain bin with the mice and leaky roof, cold yet wishing for days before electricity.

I moved away when I was eighteen. Get me out of this town. Dad went from autobody man to preacher, evolved into a man who uses his entire body to convey his messages. They left the farm, I went dancing on Saturday nights and drank and developed liberal ideologies. Am I still the same person I was? Who do my parents see me as? I envy my cousin, twenty-five and sprawled over her mother's lap, both of them sighing at the same time, in the same way; we joke about their inter-joined personalities.

When my Eden is twenty-five, I want to know all about her spiritual ideologies and difficulties with men. I want her to sprawl overtop of me and I want her to know me completely.