dear abby,

I think today felt like some sort of weird milestone of a day. I say this because suddenly, I found myself sobbing on LaSalle and Grand. They say that you aren't a New Yorker until you've cried publicly on the subway. I'm not trying to be a New Yorker and I'm certainly not trying to do any (additional) public crying, but this was kind of like that. I'm so grateful for my roommate, who reacted perfectly, and to his boyfriend, who was so sweet despite his terror at seeing a girl he's known for 5 days bawling. My roommate is effusively kind, hilarious, and incredibly intuitive. They gave me space and then swooped in, first listening, then when the time was right, cracking jokes. It wasn't a pretty sight, but they picked me up.

Later, we decided: I'm okay. You're okay. And we repeated it a lot to each other because we know it's true.

this is just so you know.

A few days ago, I decided I would try to write something before going to bed every night, whether it's a few lines of thought on the internet or on paper, or an e-mail to a someone. I don't know if this will work out well because I usually get around 6 hours of sleep and those 15 minutes in the morning seem super valuable. However, today:

• I am "officially" missing someone (see above photos, which can be explained by "There's gotta be some way that you can measure my head so that it's bigger than yours." Conclusion: no, there is not a way that this can happen). Sometimes missing someone happens all the time, but hits you hard all at once.
• Listening to Sara Bareilles' "The Blessed Unrest." I really like that album name. 
• I'm pulling out all the stops to get permission to adopt a dog we have fallen in love with. 
• I answered some very weird questions in clinic today. Residents always think that if they aren't sitting down with you to literally teach, you aren't learning very much. But that's not true, and I pick up a lot of lessons from watching the ways all different doctors treat patients, sometimes with kindness, sometimes without.
• I think that's it. I've been thinking about Abby the dog and how to teach developmentally disabled people about health. And that's it.

every now and then...

International travel is wonderful. I think that's a non-descript way of phrasing my love affair with putting some things in a small suitcase and dragging it from country to country and ignoring its horrible stench that is inevitable toward the end of an extended trip. It's this purple suitcase that gets placed gingerly in the overhead compartment and thrashed around in flight. It's thrown in the rack above the seats on hot, stifling train rides. To me, it is a reminder to minimize the things I require and maximize the things worth remembering. A book, a pen, and a notebook. A plane, a train, a bus, the back of a truck. That's it.

I still dream of the countries I want to go. But recently, I've been thinking that I should take the next few years to really explore my own country. My god, I love this country. The song America the Beautiful gives me chills in a very nerdy way. Iceland, Thailand, Argentina became Montana, Seattle, national parks (all of them). So that's what we did on June 7. Traveling in America feels luxurious. I love the languages of all the countries I've been, but when you are fluent (and at the very least, adequately competent) in the language of a place that is already unfamiliar, it's just easy. I will never forgo the struggle, confusion, and joy that comes with being far away and not knowing exactly what it is I'm doing or have just agreed to. But right now, I'm delighting in being able to learn and listen to stories with a greater depth and dimension than I could when I was trying to simultaneously piece together the unfamiliarity of places, strangers, and languages.

I have a lot to say about the strangers who began to feel like family, the old friend with whom we got drunk from one beer and laughed so hard, the dogs that made us want more space in our small city apartment. I have thought a lot about the stories that left me incredulous, that seem so distant as I lay in my own bed on a quiet summer night. It's these stories that remind me of the remarkable diversity of experience that we've all had, that somehow led me to bright city lights curtained to stay out of my room so I can finally sleep. It's for these stories I found myself sitting around with strangers, next to someone whose steadiness I need by my side in a Montana mountain. No city lights, but all the stars that have ever existed. Listening.

why I think it would be ok to move your kids around the world.

A conversation with a 3-year-old:

Me: Do you like living in Burr Ridge?
S: There's a pool.
Me: Do you like it more than Chicago? Or do you miss Chicago?
S: They are close by. There's a pool in Chicago too.

There's such incredible resiliency in kids. And in adults too. But sometimes we forget.