In a meeting room at St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island, our small group practiced injections on navel oranges, training to administer vaccinations to childen living in some of the poorest conditions in the hemisphere. Then, we were innocent, unchallenged, and unchanged. But our experiences were coming.

In Guatemala, I discovered that one of the lonliest places on earth was in the back of a taxi listening to the scratchy music of a mariacchi band on the radio.  It was as far away from home as I have ever been.   The driver dropped me off at a taxi stop in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere.   It was miles to the nearest town, and I had my ratty backpack and nowhere to stay.   I remember looking at the taxi sign and the empty, inky darkness and thinking, "Oh my God."   But I found myself.

I rode horses through shallow streams in the Dominican Republic. Traveled to villages in the steamy tropical mountains where I swore that I'd remember people actually lived like this. Dreamt of cold bottles of coke and the chilled water fountains in my college dorm.   Slept on a cot draped in mosquito netting. It rained every day, and in the muddy brown water flowing down the roads, I could see the changes coming.

On the top of a hill in a small town in Mexico, I lived with a doctor and his family, where I spent many nights with them around the kitchen table, drinking coffee and eating sweet rolls, or 'pan dulce'. Watching their smiling faces around the table, I would translate Beatles songs for them from English to Spanish as the doctor played his guitar.   He had played the songs for years but never knew what they meant.   Afterwards, we'd walk out into their courtyard, still singing and laughing. The stars were so close and bright you could clearly see the milky way.   One night, a neighbor came to the door in a panic. We ran down the hill to his clinic, and he asked me to help him as he delivered a baby.

Then I knew how I wanted my life to change. And it did.

When I see pan dulce in a local store, it reminds me of the sweetness of those experiences. I smile and remember the Beatles songs, sung in Spanish around the kitchen table. I see the endless brilliance of the Milky Way and remember those other people under the same stars.   I hear a mariacchi song on the radio while I'm on some errand in my car and breathe deeply. No one understands. But the memories feel so good. Those summers changed my life, my direction, me.

I want this for Tommy too. He'll resist. But it might be the best thing that could happen to him. Too.

When you find yourself
In some far off place
And it causes you to rethink some things
You start to sense that slowly
You're becoming someone else
And then you find yourself

When you make new friends in a brand new town
And you start to think about settlin' down
The things that would have been lost on you
Are now clear as a bell
And you find yourself

Yeah that's when you find yourself
Where you go through life
So sure of where you’re headin'
And you wind up lost and it's
The best thing that could have happened
‘Cause sometimes when you lose your way it's really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself

When we go through life
So sure of where we're headin'
And we wind up lost and it's
The best thing that could have happened
‘Cause sometimes when you lose your way it's really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that's when you find yourself

(Brad Paisley)

#service

When you find yourself