14 posts tagged “home”

A very good weekend, indeed.

• I lost my Jimmy Buffett "virginity" on Thursday night. Dad took me to the Buffett concert at Riverport - my birthday present. It was a seriously good time - the peoplewatching is second-to-none. Things seen: a blender powered by a Weed Eater motor, a flagpole with both Buffett pirate and Mizzou flags, and several of my dad's coworkers. The music was solid, the liquor flowing - it was everything it is purported to be, and if anyone ever has the chance to go to a Buffett show, do it.
• I bought a new-to-me car - a 2006 Chevy Aveo with about 33K miles. It's a nice, very small car, with fairly decent gas mileage... and nothing falling off the bottom of it. I can actually hear myself think in this car - the last one was desperately needed about $1000 in repairs, including a new muffler, new central exhaust, and new axles and boots. Anyway... it's silver and it needs a name. I have not yet ascertained my car's "gender," but suggestions are appreciated.
• I went to services with my dad on Friday night. Mom wasn't feeling that great, but we were on Oneg duty, so someone had to go. It was a very small minyan - maybe 15 people. A funny moment: it is our tradition that the pre-b'nai mitzvot children (under 13) undress the Torah before it's read. On Friday, I was the youngest person there, so I was goaded into undressing the Torah, which I haven't done in almost 10 years. Quite a bit of teasing ensued.
  
• After services, I spent some time with Zach, which was really great - I've missed him a lot this year, and haven't seen him since he was in Chicago for a protest at the end of October. So we went for a drink and then hung out at his dad's for a while, watched the end of the Cardinals game and caught up.
• Saturday was mostly a study day, and then we went for dinner with Aunt Ruth for my birthday. She made a pie for dessert, and I stayed around for a little bit after my parents left, just to talk to her about things.
  

I should be heading back to Chicago in a little bit, just waiting for my iPod to charge... this week is not going to be an easy one in any sense of the imagination!

I always feel a little guilty about complaining about my life. Knowing how much I have, compared to those who have so little, and that the struggles in my life are almost always trivial in nature.

It's rare these days for me to really, really want to be somewhere else. I don't mean that in the sense that I hate Chicago in the winter, and I want to be somewhere warm. Today, the only thing I really wanted to be doing was getting in my car and driving back to St. Louis. Stephanie's home this weekend to sing for a bar mitzvah, and I don't know when I'm going to see her again.

And it's Teen Camp weekend. I haven't missed one in three years. A bunch of my kids are graduating from high school this year. A bunch of my kids are old enough to go for the first time this year. It's hard for me to be away, especially when I don't know what the summer's going to hold for me yet. I don't know what place camp is going to have in my future life - I know that it can always be in my life if I want it. But it's going to be really hard to keep it up over the next couple years. It's always been such a happy part of my life, the one week of my year that I looked forward to, really, the happiest place in my world. Sure, there were times when my involvement was painful, but if there was ever an easy decision to be made, it was always, "Go back to camp." Camp is a happy, happy place, even when you're not sleeping and your camper is running around you in circles and you smell like... camp. It's an easy, easy place to be.

I feel like there isn't a single part of my life that's easy. There's not a single part of my life that isn't a struggle, and I feel like there are so many days when I've got to come out fighting. School is hard, friends are hard, talking is hard, everything is hard. I do alright keeping it in most days, but today was not one of them. I cried on the way home from dinner. I couldn't hold onto it anymore, and there is nobody here to talk to about it.

I apologize for my half-formed thoughts. I just want something in my life to be easy again. I just want to go home.

A new term starts for me on Monday - I'm finishing up biochemistry, starting Neuroscience and Genetics, and taking online courses in Ethics and Epidemiology. I'm excited to be in some new classes, for the challenge and the thrill of new material.

I'm also excited, even ready, to go back to Chicago this weekend. It's still not home, but it is where most of my life is now, which is simultaneously great and also terrifying. It's got the highest density of "my people," in terms of people who get me and understand better than most (with Lacey being the obvious exception) what my life is like. It's only just been in the past couple of months (weeks?) that I've felt like there was anything keeping me there besides school.

It hasn't been that long since I've been that happy in a place - I love Columbia, and there are days when I miss it so much that I ache for my places there, sitting under "my" tree, sipping coffee at Lakota, watching Thursday night TV in Lacey's living room. But it's not home now - most of my people aren't there anymore and when I go back, I'm going back for visits, to see the few people who are left and to be in my places.

The new year has been a strange mix of happiness and panic, stress and frustration. But I can't think, except for an afternoon here, an hour or so there, where I've been genuinely unhappy. And there have been a lot of situations where I've caught myself working without a net, and doing things I never thought I'd do. And there are some times when I catch myself thinking, "What's happened to me?" It's happened a lot since I've been home, when I think about Chicago and the things that I miss there. And the people that I miss there. I've never really been one for missing people, so that's a really, really scary phenomenon for me. I can't really iterate how terrifying it is to feel like that.

Anyway. I'm ready to go back to Chicago to await the spring and see everyone and learn new things. It's a big new term for me, but I'm going to try my hardest to stay uncomplicated and happy, to be the friend that I should be, and work hard and go to sleep tired every night.

It is still obscenely cold in the Chicago area. My mother reminded me a few days ago that, when we came up to look at apartments in July, how cool I thought it would be to be this close to the lake. I was so young then, and naïve. The lake is where the cold comes from!! The lake is where the wind comes from!!

Setting aside any problems I have with wind chill...

It's going to be a long night of pathways, carbohydrate metabolism, and electron transport... wheeeee... Not a whole lot has happened the last couple days, in any respect. We're all so bogged down with exams and just exhausted. I hosted a study group for embryology last night, pretty chill but still fun. I'm going to be eating leftover pasta con broccoli (St. Louis style, oversauced to no end) for the rest of the week. Sent Martha home with leftovers, and let Faye take a bowl yesterday, and there is still enough pasta to last me until at least Thursday.

I'm ready for the break. I'm ready for the week away, the week away from *everything*, putting some real, physical distance between school and my "school personal life" to figure some things out and steady myself a little bit. I'm ready to see my parents and some of my friends, and establish a normal sleep pattern, if only for a few days.

In the meantime, pathways, pathways, pathways...  

So here I am at my parents' house, for one more day. My mom had knee surgery this morning, so I opted to drive back tomorrow, just so I could be an extra hand around the house.

I've actually been pretty sick since I've been back from Columbia. Not like "go-to-the-hospital" sick, but the "Spend the next week high on the behind-the-counter Mucinex, chugging Tylenol Cold, swiping your mom's prescription sinus medication, and whatever else is lying around, really" kind of sick. So now that I'm mostly out of my OTC-induced fog, I'll take a few minutes away from my physiology notes and talk about what's going on.

Other than being sick, it was not a bad Christmas. I cooked a beautiful turkey, and then carved it myself. I got a GPS system and some other things as gifts. I took my parents and sister to Wicked on Saturday, as a gift for my mom and sister. It was good, albeit nothing like the book. I enjoyed the book tremendously and expected something a little more similar. I was surprised, but not disappointed.

Ooooo... I got to see "Charlie Wilson's War." I don't know how Aaron Sorkin does it, but I love him for it. Go see the movie, really.

Hmm. Yep. That's it.

I spent the last few days in Columbia, seeing friends and mentors, visiting old haunts, and remembering why I love the place so much. It's a constant for me - it will always be there. The Columns and Jesse Hall, Memorial Union and the walk along the white campus - they'll always be a part of my history. It's a place that pulls me, calls out to me. And yet, even more than ever, I'm wondering: what is home?

Is it where I live? North Chicago?

Is it where I'm from? St. Louis?
 
Or is it where I feel like I'm the happiest?

I spent four years of my life being Melissa in Columbia. I didn't even have to try - it just happened. Sure, there were things that changed while I was there, and I evolved with them. There were changes when I went back - but it still felt exactly like I remembered it. The campus, the town, the roads, the people were all still there, with a few exceptions, of course.

I spent four years of my life being Melissa in Columbia, and I just don't know if I'll ever find myself in Chicago the way I did. It wasn't the same "finding yourself at college" that everyone else seems to go through. I moved away and there are days when it feels like part of me is missing. I'm not unhappy in medical school, or with my social life where I am now, but I never feel like crying when I leave. I never feel like I'm tearing myself away from something. It makes going back for visits a little scary - what if I go back and decide that I just can't be happy anywhere else? To be sure, it won't happen until after I finish with medical school, but I can't guarantee in the least that I won't end up there forever.

There are days when I really love it here. There are more of them lately, since I've joined my synagogue and I'm starting to learn my way around. It's nice to feel like I'm starting to build a support network that includes people who aren't in medical school. I'm blessed to have been welcomed into two great communities, one that supports my learning, and another that helps me to retreat a little bit from that life, even if only for a few hours a week. The days when I can take time to learn a place make me feel like I'm in control of my crazy life, and I love the days when I have a few hours to walk around in the city or on the North Shore, just to get a feel for where I am.

And there are moments where I hate it. They're mostly just moments, fleeting, frustrating spaces in time, usually when I'm lost in an unfamiliar place or when I have a great story to tell, but I can't just wander over to Lacey's, or when all of my Columbia friends are going out to dinner. I can almost forget sometimes how much I miss Columbia and the life I had there, or how far away I am from my parents and my Aunt Ruth. I hate those moments when I feel so far away from everyone I really care about, and I curl up and cry for a few minutes on my bed.

Wednesday will make it six weeks since I've been home in St. Louis. I won't make it back until the first weekend of next month. It will be the longest time I've ever been away from home. When I was in high school, I had these grandiose dreams of leaving St. Louis to go east for college and the rest of my life. Now, it's the place I want to be more than anything. I know that I have to get over this - this was supposed to happen. I'm supposed to grow up,  move on, and build a life of my own. But Chicago isn't home yet, and I'm not sure if/when it will be.

Camp was incredible, as usual. We had a lot of new campers, several on active treatment. Lots of my mini-campers (the day camp for 4-5 year olds) graduated to "big kid" camp this year, which was wonderful. They're still so tiny and adorable. One of them caught the biggest fish in camp history - a large mouth bass that weighed in at about 15 pounds. The fish probably weighs about a third of what the camper does (he's really, really tiny), and if you asked him how big his fish was, he says, "It went from my head [touches top of head] to my knee." Really, really cute.

When I got back on Saturday, I went out to dinner with the family, said goodbye to Stephanie, and then went over to play Quelf with Barry, Dan, Liz, Huey, Aaron, and most of the unit heads. It was the perfect culmination to camp.

Now comes the moving preparations!

Much has happened! I have a job!!!

Last Wednesday, I started getting calls for many of the jobs I put in applications for. For most of them, I had to go through an initial screen. I'm going to bullet the list to make it easier to follow.

• One of them was a research tech job in St. Louis at Washington University School of Medicine, in the bone marrow transplant unit. I interviewed for that one on Thursday, and they had one other person left to interview. I should hear one way or the other pretty soon.
• Another was a research tech job for a company in Kansas City that is working on developing new allergy tests. It was an okay job, probably kind of boring, but with really good pay. I have no idea how that one went.
• I had another one in Kansas City for a clinical lab that does diagnostic testing for immunocompromised patients (i.e. people who need organ transplants, HIV patients, etc.). It seemed like a cool place to work, but also very routine once you got trained on how to do everything.
• I was also supposed to have an interview with AmeriCorps St. Louis yesterday afternoon, but it got cancelled, and that's fine because I had really only just gotten back from Kansas City and needed to pack for the next big adventure.
• I was also submitted for a lab technician job at Pfizer and found out yesterday that I made it through the first screen.
  

The job I actually have is absolutely incredible. I got an email requesting references for this job at Kansas University School of Medicine, and since I was going to be in the area for the other two interviews, I called the administrator and asked if I could schedule an interview since I was going to be in town anyway. She said yes, and scheduled me for the first appointment in the professor's book. I got there about a half hour early and read the stuff. The interview went pretty well - he actually encouraged me to take the credit for most of the shit that I did for my capstone lab from fall semester, and was pretty impressed by my combination of work experiences. He gave me a tour of the lab, and then took me back into his office and asked if I was still interested, to which I replied, "ABSOLUTELY." And then he proceeded to offer me the job.

It doesn't pay as much as any of the others, but it's really an incredible experience. It's in a brand-new (opened in December) state-of-the-art research facility. It's a part of a medical school, which means networking out the wazoo. He's going to let me pursue some of my own projects, connected to the grants, of course, and also to present posters at meetings and seminars which the lab will pay for me to go to! And since I'm going to try to move across the state line, I'll be establishing Kansas residency and I'll stand a much better shot at getting into the SOM when I eventually reapply.

It's all very exciting, and a little crazy at the same time. I had some problems related to my background check (nothing with me - someone has been using my SSN or something like it to buy houses and cars and things - AWESOME.) and so I'm still waiting for them to officially offer me the job, but it's nice to be able to stop looking for a little while. I'm going to Rainbow next week and I'm going to have to check my voicemail pretty rigorously for being at camp, which sucks because I hate having huge amounts of outside influence while I'm at camp. It's really  my vacation. But, I've got to do it! I also have to go to KC to actually find a place to live, and then pack all of my things on a very limited schedule, as I'm nannying and then pretty much moving, and then taking a few days before I start.

But, I'm superexcited, in spite of the craziness!