so it is before the walls of minas tirith, the doom of our time will be decided.

The letter says I'm to be posted in Jakarta.  All subject to security clearance approval, of course.  It's a good thing we cleaned out at least some of those old boxes in the garage this winter: my mother has to dig through all her old address books.  She sounded strange on the phone telling me this but I think I can guess why.  I've never spent a whole summer away from her (only half of one at most); this is a country whose chapter she has personally closed on a bitter-sour note, the country where people die too often, where she buried my father.  I don't think she thinks this is really happening.  I know that she will never go back.  But I also know, and have known since Melbourne, that I will.

I'm going to start reading Kompas (floods, as always, crippling the city). 

Thinking about going back makes me all sorts of queasy and this is an embassy they have to close from time to time because of threats and forty hours a week might kill me but God, oh my God.  I am so ready for this.