Turning 33

I am 33 today. It’s been 33 years of adventures interspersed with stretches of education. I’m poised to receive my doctorate in medicine and my certificate as a private pilot. I’m unattached, a great skier – both snow and water, and without debt. I don’t own a house, a dog or a cat, but have found my favorite guest rooms along the way.

In these past 33 years I have studied my way through 28 years of education, 13 of those spent at universities, visited 17 states in America, 24 foreign counties, and worked 4 jobs, including the requisite barista. I can make a mean latte J. I can also take your blood pressure. How’s that for service?

I’ve walked on the acropolis, over the canals of Venice, seen the Tour Eiffel, l’arc de Triumph, Big Ben, the David, and the works of Monet, Rambrandt, and Picasso. I’ve lived in the Kenyan Bush, carried water on my head, found my favorite café in Toulouse, rode a hydrofoil, yachted around the San Juan Islands, and surfed the Pacific Ocean. I used to keep elegant scrape books filled with the train tickets and museum tickets, left over foreign currency, and other useless memorabilia; hoping to keep the feeling of mystery and accomplishment, as if those things made up my identity. I’ve become quite the nomad, never waiting long enough in any one place to set down roots, rather frantic to move from one adventure to the next, always seeking the next thing to fill the emptiness inside me.

I’ve purged a great deal of those useless trinkets, but have also kept and framed a great deal of them too. There’s a photograph of a young African boy, shirtless, with the dirt road stretching out behind him that hangs above my bed. My brother’s friend took the photo and my dad gave it to me. It captures most everyone who walks into my room for the first time, and I venture a guess that it haunts them. It drove home the point, the other day, that in all my travels and knowing and seeing and doing, the places I want most to be are the ones with my dear friends and family. The clear turquoise Mediterranean waters are no match for the family cabin in the summer with the sun, the water, the dock and family dinners.

I’ve been lucky enough to live near family these past 6 years. I have fallen in love with my cousins’ children and now want my own. Perhaps it is because I have already been to France 4 times that I no longer feel the need to go back; however, I think, its because to laugh and cry and hug and be with people holds greater reward. I matter because those around me invest in me. I love because I am loved. I give because I have been given much. Maybe I’ve finally learned to stop running and be still.