I don’t quite remember the name of the conference where I met Libaan. It was in DC, about eight years ago, and had something to do with international diplomacy, but that’s all I can really remember about the conference itself. But I remember Libaan. He was wearing a yellow tie and wore his name tag on the right side of his shirt. He smiled, all the time. I couldn’t help but introduce myself.

Libaan was a visiting student from Mogadishu, in DC for a 4-month study-abroad stint. It wasn’t long until he found out that I was from Toronto. His face lit up:

“You’re from Toronto? Do you know Dixon?”

I chuckled. For most people in Toronto, Dixon Road is just one of those streets you take when getting to the airport. Nothing special. For me, however, it was home.

My parents moved into a building at the corner of Kipling and Dixon, in the northwest of the city, in 1992. The apartment was the first piece of property they had ever owned together, after renting for years in New York and Toronto, and it remains where they live now, eighteen years later. Those six buildings in Etobicoke — a neighborhood that the city of Toronto calls Kingsview Village, but most residents simply call Dixon — were home for me until I left in 1999 and several summers after that as I went through college, and still feel like home every time I go back to visit my parents.

Dixon is a popular home base for immigrant families. Back when my parents first moved in, the area was populated predominantly by Somali immigrants. The proximity to the airport and to many excellent community and municipal services (including free day camps, sports lessons, settlement helpers, English classes, and more) makes the neighborhood a natural first stop when arriving in Toronto. Since the wave of Somali immigration, the neighborhood has seen influxes of newcomers from all across the world, most recently a large Mauritian community.

I knew Dixon, and I knew it well. When I told Libaan, he couldn’t contain his excitement:

“Back home, everyone knows Dixon. When things aren’t going well, and we want to leave, we tell ourselves, ‘one day, I will move to Dixon and everything will be okay.’ Dixon is where I will move with my family one day to start a life in Canada.”

To me, Dixon was an apartment that my parents owned that was much too far from downtown where so many of my friends lived. I had never thought of it as a place of hope, a place of aspiration, or a place where people felt like they could start a new life.

Libaan helped me realize that I was going back home not just to an apartment in dire need of renovation, but to a place that held so much promise for so many people:

“When you go home, tell everyone in Dixon that I say hi. Tell Dixon that I am coming, soon.”

I never did find out if he ever made it to Toronto, but I was sure to send the neighborhood his regards.

(Photo of Somali children at the complex taken in Ohio by Abdi Roble as part of his amazing Somali documentary project.)

We were raising money to build a school in Ecuador, and had decided to tour the country in a van, performing in sixteen towns and cities along the way, asking the audience to donate to the school-building cause.

The crowd was sparse when we started setting up for the first show in Market Square, and by the time we were scheduled to begin, the audience consisted mainly of friends and family who had come by to support us. Slowly, however, the crowd started to grow. As we sang and danced on stage, people emerged from shops, called their friends, and started to sing and cheer and clap along. By the time we finished the whole set, there were dozens of new people joining in the applause — strangers who not only helped by giving donations, but who helped us start the tour with enthusiasm, optimism, and excitement.

After the show, we met people who wished us well on our way, who were going to make sure they told their family and friends in the other cities where we would be performing; people who had never met us before but with whom we made a connection simply because they had stumbled upon music in a courtyard and had decided to stick around.

The rest of the trip was filled with other similar surprises, but it was that first show in Market Square that set the tone of the trip.

It’s just before 11am here in Victoria, and I am sitting here in a mostly-deserted Market Square after spending a few days on campus for my 10-year high school reunion. There are no performances taking place in the courtyard today, but a group of young people are playing hacky sack in the corner. They are quite good.

I have taken a seat on the green bench beside them as I watch them keep the bag up for almost a hundred touches. They keep trying to break their previous best, and from time, I am joined by an interested tourist who sits down next to me. We applaud their every effort.

The young people smile every time we clap, and try harder the next time. I sit back and enjoy the sunshine from above and the talent in front of me.

(Photo of Market Square by Beaster725.)

I was never really interested in creating visual art, but I did take a liking to many of the students in that class, and was enthralled by the large, unencumbered studio space where the students created their work. By the third week of classes, I was accompanying art students to the studio in the late evenings — the doors were never locked on any of the buildings on campus — as they went to finish their assignments.

By the fourth week of classes, I was still accompanying the art students to Ondaatje Hall, but was no longer spending time in the studio. Instead, I would sneak into the anthropology classroom and spend hours in the dusty room, only crawling out late into the night to head back to my dorm to get enough rest so I wouldn’t look too sleepy the next day.

The back of the anthropology classroom had four bookshelves full of ethnographies and theoretical texts, and I was addicted to the contents of those shelves.

Other than the bookshelves, the classroom wasn’t much to look at: a chalkboard, a few long wooden tables with wooden chairs, a sink, a coffee machine, some cabinets full of chalk and coffee supplies. Yet, I would spend a few nights every week, after dinner and evening activities, sitting at one of the tables in the anthropology classroom, coffee mug by my side, hunkered over books.

I’m not a bookworm — when I was much younger, it may have been difficult to tear me away from a good read, but as I’ve grown up, I still enjoy books but am no longer obsessed — so my fascination with the academic texts in the anthropology room wasn’t because of a love of reading. If that was the case, I would have spent hours in the campus library. Instead, my addiction to ethnography was due to a person: Nico Bethel.

I’ve written about Nico before; Ihave written about her unique teaching style and her love for the subject. To me, Nico wasn’t just a teacher. She was also someone that fostered passion, that made me (and many of her other students) not just fans of the subject, but passionate about all things anthropology. She made me want to learn more, want to read more, want to excel. She didn’t just teach: she ignited passion.

A few months ago, my friend Sacha wrote a blog post about dreams of wild success. When it came to writing a response to that post, I stalled: I couldn’t actually pinpoint what exactly would feature in my dreams of wild success.

I’ve been thinking a lot about high school, recently. My ten-year high school reunion kicks off in a few days, and this has me thinking of what I learned from my two years at Pearson College, and how those two years influence and inspire my life now.

That’s when I figured out my answer to Sacha’s question:

In my dreams of wild success, I ignite passion.

Whether it is as a teacher, a colleague, a friend, a competitor, or anything else, success to me is knowing that I have helped someone become invested in, inspired by, and engrossed with something that they love. Success is helping people discovering what moves them, and helping them use that discovery to make their life more fulfilling, exciting, and happy. My dreams of wild success involve enabling others to not just dream of, but also accomplish, their own visions of wild success.

Success, in my eyes, is doing what Nico Bethel did for me over ten years ago: making me fall in love with something so hard that I would spend my nights sipping coffee and reading books, forgoing sleep, all while the art students created masterpieces in the studio next door.

(Photo of Ondaatje Hall at Pearson College by Gabriel, Jo-Ann, and René Haché.)

Unlike most, I’ve always been partial to the bottom bunk, but for my brother I would make the sacrifice — my little brother was my new roommate, and I was ecstatic to share my space with someone else. (We eventually switched bunks, when he was old enough to climb up the ladder and sleep without the risk of falling off the bed. I didn’t push for the change, but I definitely welcomed it.)

My brother was my roommate until I left for school out on the west coast when I was 17 years old. For the seven years we shared a room, we argued very little, and never really fought over anything that would usually come from being in such close proximity. Part of that may have been because of the special dynamic we share, but a large part of it is because we’re both incredibly at ease living with other people. Having a roommate was not an exercise in compromise for us, it was a natural state of being.

The two years I spent in British Columbia brought with them ten more roommates. College came with more roommates (housemates, apartmentmates, bedmates, etc.), as did my first few years out of school. By the end of it all, I had spent fifteen years with roommates, from the ages of ten to twenty-five; living with people had not just become the norm, but had become my preferred way of life.

I’ve been living alone for the past few years, and while having space to myself has its perks, I’ve recently learned one important thing: I’m not good at being alone.

I don’t mind being alone, of course, but it isn’t a natural state for me.

This doesn’t mean that I need to have someone there, all the time, talking to me, doing things with me — instead, what feels most natural is knowing that someone is there, is feeling a presence (whether that be a housemate in my apartment or a study buddy in the library or friend walking a few meters away as I stroll through the museum) of someone I know, not too far away.

I don’t need to come home and tell my housemate all about my day, but it would be nice to know that someone just might want to tell me about theirs, from time to time.

(I keep flowers all around my apartment as a way of bringing life into my home, but it’s not the same. Maybe I need to get a pet?)

It’s not that I don’t like being alone — I’m just not good at it.

This trait has its perks: I’m incredibly good at making friends with strangers (as anyone that has gone through the archives of this site already knows), I establish good relationships with my neighbors and colleagues, I’m comfortable in large groups, I’m remarkably easy to live with (so I have been told), and the friendships that I make are close, deep, intense, and long-lasting.

The perks of needing people around, however, are often outweighed by the perils: I have trouble with transience, and don’t understand making acquaintances for the sake of appearing friendly — I expect people to continue to engage long after we’ve met. I share too much, and care too much about what others share, often to the point of seeming overbearing and intrusive. I send a lot of messages (without expectation of a response), but this often overwhelms people. I regularly ask to see people and spend time with them (I’m an Asker, not a Guesser, so I ask without expectation), and this sometimes leaves people with a sense of obligation to do things with me.

The big trouble with not being good at being alone is that, by its very nature, it inconveniences the people around you. In some cases, it confounds, frustrates, and upsets them too.

Maybe, in this post, I’ve come across as too needy, too dependent on others, so I feel as though I have to repeat this: it’s not that I don’t like having personal space or that I don’t cherish my solitude — it’s more that I don’t like the feeling of not having someone to reach out to when I need to reach out. I don’t need to go out to dinner or play mini-golf with someone to feel connected; I just need to know that they are there, somewhere. For me, a lot of that comes from physical proximity.

I love reading a book and enjoying the quiet. I much prefer reading a book and enjoying the quiet when someone else in the room is reading a book and enjoying the quiet as well.

It’s a little like a security blanket, I guess.

After fifteen years of having a roommate, after a lifetime of being surrounded by friends and colleagues and family who always wanted to do something to the point of occasional social exhaustion, I’ve become used to having people around me, all the time.

Over the past few years, things have changed. A heavy travel schedule and other changes in my lifestyle have meant that I don’t get to connect with people as much as I would before. Living alone and working from home means I have to make more of an effort to see people. My life has become more solitary, and I have been learning to adapt.

I’ve been adapting well. I’ve been enjoying my tea breaks looking out the window, my solitary picnics in the park on sunny days, my dinners with a book. I enjoy these solitary diversions, but in the end it still feels unnatural, uneasy.

The past week, I’ve spent the majority of my time (when I wasn’t forced to interact with people for work) alone, either in my apartment or out and about in the city. I avoided my email inbox, Twitter, Facebook, my phone, and consciously created distance between myself and the world around me. Solitude seems to serve me well when I am unhappy or need time to reflect.

It was a good week of reflection, but I’m done with hiding now. I realize now that over these past few days, I was getting better at being alone. I wasn’t good at it: it still didn’t feel natural, but I stopped, for a while, feeling uneasy. I was alone — by choice — and I was okay.

I’m probably not going to break my apartment lease to move in with a new roommate anytime soon, and I don’t see myself going back to a lifestyle where I was on-the-go, doing something with someone all the time, so I guess being alone is something I need to start getting used to.

It’s time to give up the security blanket. Like anything else, maybe all I need to get better at being alone is a bit of practice.

(Photos: Reya, Dana, Gianni.)

Back just under two weeks; it feels as though I never left.

7.43am and I am switching collector lanes filled with traffic for express lanes filled with slightly less traffic. A far cry from when I did this commute living downtown, where I stuck to the Gardiner, and traded the skyscrapers of downtown Toronto for the greener pastures (yes, I literally mean pasture down the street) of Brampton on a daily basis.

But no. Having moved midtown, the highway 401/400 basketweave looms ominously about me each day, and being a local, I know full well to be in the express lanes heading westbound at that point. Surrounding me on the bridge above and in all three conduits of traffic about me are streaming lines of metal, some insightful 1970s urban planner’s idea that this would be brilliant. Capital!

The radio trades traffic reports for the latest and greatest hits. “Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars?” An actually interesting lyrical construction. However, I also Googled that, and a dozen hits in that minute came up on Twitter alone. Seems like there’s a lot of people who need a wish right now. But right now, as I’m wont to do when the signs for Pearson show up, I’m just hoping that the traffic thins out.

In the back of my mind, the year at Hopkins, the jet-setting, the worldly friends with worldly mind-sets from the world over, all sit as memories. I’m not actually heading back to my clinic. I’m meant to be taking the MARC down to PAHO and working on some files about human health care resources in Barbados… but no, this is yet the same, unchanged, right down to the signs warning of licence suspension (or as my American friends might say, “licence… or license, even”) for being caught driving 50 km/h (yes, kilometres, not miles) over the limit…

My reward for getting to work early is a mailbox filled with mail, results, and a Medical Post. Here, routine is good. You don’t want to be hitting an abnormal results bonanza.

Culture report: No beta-streptococcus group A isolated. Scrawled note on the bottom from colleague: Discussed with patient. Sign.

Mental Health Final Summary… flip through five pages of reports. Impression and plan: His diagnosis remains as anxiety disorder NOS, with ADHD… medication is zoloft 50mg od and risperidone 0.5mg bid. Will be following up with psych. Sign.

Dear Doctor: we (the government) are getting correspondance sent to your address on our database returned. That’s because your byzantine computer system hasn’t got the update from your central mainframe. Sigh outwardly. Make mental note to fax address change form.

Somebody has low iron. Scrawl “call back, 1 week”. Sign.

Ooh, this is a fun one. No gonorrhea or chlamydia. Sign.

It’s truly like I’ve never left. Even down to the toilet telling me that 1.6 gallons is equal to 6 litres per flush.

Yet I wonder at the monotony of the rat race. I wonder at the people who do this in and out for thirty, forty, fifty years even - who ply the streets and 401 from home to office and back again. And rarely leave Southern Ontario, or even the GTA! If that.

Am I that different from them? When does that transformation occur? When does the routine cease to be the semi-nomadic, plunk roots down in places for months to years and move on? And if that transmogrification never occurs, what happens to my loved ones and I then?

That said though, I’m here… and as the changeable message signs proclaim on the drive in, “Express moving slowly; Collectors very slow; beyond next transfer.”

For the time being, I suppose that’s where I am. It’s kinda nice; but it leaves me longing.

8.45am, Stethoscope armed around my neck. It’s go time. For the thousandth time.

Lawrence Loh is a family physician from Toronto, who has gone back to school to specialise in public health and preventive medicine. He is currently completing a Masters in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Mary.)

He grabbed my arm so tightly that I was forced to stop and look at him inquisitively.

“Hear what?”

“The laughter. The happy children,” he answered, face aglow.

I had to admit that no, I hadn’t heard the laughter, and that I was skeptical that there would be any children and this small, deserted shopping mall at 11am on a Wednesday morning.

Henry just smiled.

He had just walked out of the hearing aid clinic when I first met him. My grandmother was inside for her appointment, and I was sitting in the waiting room, oblivious to my surroundings, when Henry grabbed my arm.

I later learned that Henry, now in his late 70s, had been having issues with his hearing since his wife passed away about a decade ago. Last year, he decided to seek medical attention for the problem. Today was his first day with his new hearing aid, and he was jubilant.

Henry sat down next to me, and continued to hold my arm as he closed his eyes and listened. Partly because I wanted to know what he was talking about, and partly because he looked so peaceful, I decided to follow his lead.

I closed my eyes, and listened.

Seconds later, faintly, off in the distance, I heard it: the muffled laughter of playful children.

Henry must have noticed the unconscious smile forming on my face:

“Hear that? That’s the sound of happiness.”

I nodded, eyes still closed. He went on:

“It’s everywhere. Sometimes all you need to do is listen.”

(Photo via See-Ming Lee.)

UPDATE: This update isn’t completely related to the post, but I recently found this video of baby Jonathan getting a cochlear implant and being able to hear for the first time. It melted my heart.

Airlines and transit systems all have the same goal in mind - get people from A to B. The time spent travelling through the system itself should not be any longer than it has to be. That wasn’t the case this morning when I joined a sardine-packed Metro train holding at Metro Center in downtown DC. Announcements were made. Something about track failure. People left, as did I.

Rerouted myself on a different line. Another Metro train put me a twenty minute walk away from PAHO. Drained and a little lazy from my long commuter train ride in, and fully aware of the steady drizzle that was starting up, I hopped in a waiting cab.

“Could you take me to 23rd and F please?”

“No worries.” Steady, measured tones of a foreign accent - one that evoked memories of friends from west African countries. Surging forward past pedestrians on K Street. He turned to me. “Do you know what the word improvident means?”

I smiled, and hypothesised that it could very well mean something about being unable to provde for one’s needs. Perhaps the idea of providence, improvidence, the opposite. He held up a book he was reading, and handed it to me.

“Chinua Achebe. One of the most famous Nigerian authors.”
“Oh, so are you from Nigeria then?”
“No, Sierra Leone.”
“Ah yes, Sierra Leone. That’s bordering Ghana, right?”
“Yes, Ghana and Liberia.”

The next five minutes to Foggy Bottom seemed too short as we launched into a long spirited discussion about where I was from, what kind of work I was doing at PAHO, how he liked DC, how he was always impressed about Canada and the fact that despite separation fears, the English and French seemed to have built a country together. He told me of his own homeland; shared his ten years in DC, and even got a prolonged chuckle out of me at times.

Alas, through the spaghetti tangle of cars, buses, bikes and humans on 23rd Street heading southbound, our time finished up as I talked of friends that had done work abroad in Ghana and Liberia, and of the fact that I commuted from Baltimore to work at PAHO three days a week.

I could see his eyebrows raise at that very thought.

“It sounds like I am the last part of your very long journey, my friend,” he said.

“Yes, you are. And thank you, for that.” I pointed at a side street. “You can just drop me off here, it’s close enough to walk,” I said.

He pulled to the side. $7. I gave him a twenty dollar bill.

“Do you have anything smaller?” he asked, fiddling through his notes.

“No, sorry,” I said, showing him my wallet. “I only have twenties. I’m really sorry.”

“That’s okay. Well in that case, I suppose you should just go, my friend.”

“What? No, no. I’ll get you some change.”

“OK my friend. Thank you,” he said, smiling and waving.

I ducked out of the car - into the drizzle - down into the food court at GW. There was a line at the convenience store desk. Some dude was trying to buy a pack of cigarettes, but his cards were constantly being declined. The store clerk quickly made change when the register finally popped open (after the fourth card was accepted.) Despite the delay, I think I waited in line all of two minutes, tops.

I quickly took my ten-five-and five singles combination and bolted up the stairs; burst through the door onto the street. A sea of umbrellas parted in front of me; a horn sounded as the light turned amber; the sound of a Metrobus accelerating rapidly to rush on through.

I considered the dynamic activity all around me, disoriented, temporarily forgetting why I was standing in the rain with cash in hand.

And then I remembered, and it all suddenly became clear.

He was gone.

Lawrence Loh is a family physician from Toronto, who has gone back to school to specialise in public health and preventive medicine. He is currently completing a Masters in Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Baptiste Pons.)

We used to play a game, a few friends and I, when watching sports on television together. We would put the basketball or baseball game (never football — football was sacred, not to be played with) on mute, and pretend to be in the broadcast booth, providing play-by-play and commentary as the action unfurled in front of us. In the most elaborate of these scenarios, we would each take on a persona complete with fake names and backgrounds and see just how long we could keep up the charade until someone broke out in laughter.

Some people idolize sports pros and Hollywood stars. Me? I have a healthy respect for athletes and actors, but I’m more enamored with sports broadcasters and movie critics.

It’s a bit strange, or so I’ve been told very often, to have favorite sports writers and commentators. Many people find it odd that I can easily recognize the voice and mannerisms of broadcasters like Mel Allen, Harry Caray, Ernie Harwell, Suzy Kolber, Pat Summerall, Marv Albert, Chuck Swirsky, Michelle Tafoya, Dick Enberg and Bob Costas. And yes, it may not be normal that my favorite television programs are shows where writers sit down for half an hour and just talk about sports: Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption. That’s okay with me.

Last night, I heard that Ernie Harwell had passed away; the news got me thinking about why I have such a fondness for the people who are the voice of the game.

I think that the reason sports writers and broadcasters, like movie and food critics, appeal to me so much is because they are, in essence, storytellers. Their role is to observe, analyze, and then tell a story to an audience. These stories, whether in print the next morning, on the radio in real-time, or even on a commentary show a few days later, make the athletes and their feats accessible to a larger audience; they provide historical context, professional anecdotes, and personal opinion that make the game feel richer, more alive.

Don’t get me wrong. I have an incredible appreciation for the people who create and entertain: the chefs, the athletes, the actors, the novelists, the architects, the directors, the artists, and the musicians who make our lives more exciting every day. I just feel that without the people who tell us about these creators and entertainers — that is, without the people who provide access and context to the work through narrative and opinion — our experience would be less full, less intense, and less rich than it is now.

Ernie Harwell was one of those people that made my baseball experience that much richer, that much more full and intense. He will be missed.

If you want to know more about Ernie Harwell, read this beautiful tribute to Ernie written by Nick Pontikis.

(Photo of Ernie by Joel Dinda.)

So I jumped.

As I fell head first towards the murky river, my heartbeat quickened and the light breeze felt like a cold blanket across my body. I remember clearly the blood rushing to the top of my brain, leaving my fingertips and toes numb and tingly. Barely a second had passed since I had leapt off the bridge but it felt like hours; my abdominal muscles tightened and the loosened repeatedly dozens of times. And then, as I could feel on my skin the small droplets of water jumping up from the river, my body relaxed, my arms extended and prepared for immersion into the murkiness.

My fingers had just broken the surface of the bitterly-cold water when the bungee cord yanked at the harness attached to my lower body, pulling me back up towards the bridge. And then back down towards the river. And then back up again. And down again.

I bounced through the air until the cord had lost its elasticity and I was brought back ashore by the boat waiting downstream. That was ten years ago, and it was my first time bungee jumping.

When I got back to shore, a friend of mine that had accompanied me but refused to jump started asking me dozens of questions. The first one: “were you scared?”

No. I honestly wasn’t scared. Bungee jumping was fun, thrilling, but it was not scary. Neither was white-water kayaking. Nor singing a solo at a concert hall with two thousand people in attendance. Nor climbing the escarpment rockface at Rattlesnake Point. Nor giving a speech to a room of dignitaries like Queen Noor and HRH The Earl of Wessex. Nor giving CPR to a heart attack patient after patching up a chest wound. Nor deciding to pack up all my belongings and move to another part of the world for work, or for school, again and again over the years.

Those things don’t scare me. Usually, I’m pretty unfazed in the face of pressure; many of my friends tend to believe that I’m not scared of anything. They believe that, while I may worry too much, and take things too personally, and put my foot in my mouth more often than I’d like, the one thing that I don’t have is fear.

They’re wrong, of course. I’m afraid of a lot of things. (And I’m not just talking about my uneasiness with revolving doors.) In fact, I fear more than most people, I think. I’m afraid of being forgotten. I’m afraid of being misunderstood. I’m afraid of falling in love and not being loved back. I’m afraid of never being good enough. I’m afraid of never making a positive impact. I’m afraid of being mediocre. I’m afraid of disappointing my friends and loved ones. I’m afraid of hurting people. Most of all, I’m afraid of growing old alone.

Everybody’s scared of something.

Fearlessness is elusive: even the most confident person has an insecurity hiding in them, somewhere. Having those fears, those insecurities exposed can feel like plunging into the water below and not having the bungee cord around to pull you back out. Even the hardiest of people — the people who don’t think twice about jumping off a bridge attached to an elastic band — have trouble bouncing back when they face the things that scare them the most.

(Photo by tranchis.)

That road trip, of course, took twelve days and included performances in 17 different cities across Canada. During the day, we would drive, in the evenings we would perform, and at night we would party, and occasionally sleep. I was surrounded by 12 people and two dogs that I cared for very much, and the trip was more of a two-week adventure than simply a drive across the country.

This morning, perhaps as you’re reading this post, I’m in the middle of a ten-hour, 600-mile drive from Washington DC to Toronto. Driving alone, in an SUV full of kitchen appliances, clothes, books and furniture, across the border and back to my parents’ apartment.

By the time you read this, I have already given back the keys to my apartment, picked up a cup of coffee, and started the long move back to Canada.

There are many things I’ll miss about the metro DC area: my apartment with its lovely fireplace, balcony, and granite countertops; the Tidal Basin in the early morning when the birds are ruffling through the trees and nobody is blocking my view of the Jefferson Monument; the playground in the square near the fountain where I’d always hear the laughter of children; the walk to and from Boccato Gelato; lazy afternoons by the Georgetown Waterfront; free concerts at the Kennedy Center; the cavernous but still beautiful Metro stations; playing hide-and-seek in the Air & Space Museum; flying kites on the National Mall; reading in the sun on a hot and humid afternoon in the middle of the Botanic Gardens; the handmade cufflinks in the antique market at the Eastern Market; and of course, all the amazing and wonderful people that have made my time here so special.

This morning, I’m driving back to Toronto on my own, leaving all these fantastic things behind. Not because I’m tired of them, or because I need a change of scenery, or because I’m unhappy here.

Then why?

Because when you’re in one place and your heart is 600 miles away, the only thing that can cure it is a solo road trip back home.

(Photo by Stuck in Customs)