On July 25, my dad died. There is no easy way to say that. He had a stroke while we were on our family vacation at a lakehouse, and after five days in a Wisconsin hospital, an ambulance transport home, and a day in hospice, he took his last breath as my mom, my siblings, and I sat by his side. Losing a parent is to feel unmoored. My dad lived a long, full life, and died peacefully, which are all things that should—and do—give me a lot of comfort. But still, the grief sometimes feels unsurmountable. I feel like I’ve aged ten years in five weeks. A song will randomly pop up on shuffle that reminds me so much of my dad that the opening notes are a fist clenching my heart, a visceral aching pain, and I miss him so badly it physically hurts. In a timely gift from the universe, Phoebe Bridger’s album Lost Weekend was released on the morning of my dad’s wake, and it’s all I can listen to. Much of the album is about her dad’s recent death; Phoebe gets me. I’ve spent hours with that little platinum blonde weirdo letting her mirror my feelings back at me through her beautiful haunting voice. If you see me bleach my hair and start wearing a skeleton costume everywhere, trust that it’s part of my grieving process.

I keep picturing my dad not just from a month ago, or from a few years ago just before his health really started to decline, but also of his younger, bright-eyed self. He was such a life force, full of stories and jokes and a mischievous streak that was never unkind. I like to remember him from six years ago, still feisty enough to get into a kayak with us or jump off the boat into deep lake water. Or in his early fifties when he was a health nut and exercise fanatic, capable of moving my heavy furniture in and out of my college apartments. Or I picture him in the prime of his youth, a young dad who loved to wear Hawaiian shirts and checkered Vans, his blond hair long and shaggy in his southern California era. How do you cope with a loss when the memory catalog runs so freakin’ deep?? I’ve never thought about this before but when we’re gone, we’re no longer bound by chronological time and all of our past selves roll into one big ball of memories, Katamari Damancy style. All of our selves, all at once.

I know that to experience this specific loss isn’t singular; in fact, it’s one of the most unifying human experiences we will all someday go through. I received condolence messages from grade school classmates who I haven’t seen since high school, all of us feeling reconnected as we face these primal losses. It was only last September when Kurt lost his mom, and going through hospice a second time in a year brought back so much deja vu, the kind you never want to relive. My thoughts are still scattered, my heart is still tender, and it’s still very hard to accept. I muscled through writing an obituary then a eulogy, sharing stories of Dad’s life, his career as an illustrator and art professor, and his family. Here, I want to share some memories of a place that my dad, my mom, my siblings, and I love deeply. This newsletter is very much about the places we go and the way they can change us as they become intertwined with our memories.

Every summer since 2012, my family has spent a week together renting a lakehouse on the Chain O’ Lakes in central Wisconsin. If you’ve been reading this newsletter longer than a minute, you’ve likely read some of my previous musings on how much this spot means to my family and me, a consistent, familiar backdrop to some of our favorite shared memories. The Chain is made of twenty-two connected, spring-fed lakes; the fresh water combined with the marl and limestone bottom give the lakes a turquoise color like something in a much more tropical location. There are sandy spots perfect for swimming, mucky spots perfect for fishing or freaking yourself out when your toes brush against something slithery, and two waterfront bars with dock parking where you can order cheese curds and beer from your boat, so it’s basically Midwestern paradise. I’ve traveled around the world to some incredibly beautiful places—Kyoto at sunset, the misty foothills of the Chilean Andes, the crystal glaciers of Iceland—but the Chain is still my personal favorite place in the world. So many of my memories are from this place, it’s braided into my life.

During our weeklong trips in Waupaca, Dad’s love of the outdoors was always out in full force. An outdoor cat at heart, he would spend the entire week outside, either sitting on the porch with a view of the water, or hanging out on the pontoon boat tied to the dock, basking in the sun. All he needed was a slather of Hawaiian Tropic number 4 (he never wore anything stronger despite his Irish/Swedish heritage, likely one of many reasons I’d always assumed he was bulletproof), a cold beer (or later in life, an N/A), and his music, which he blasted from a Bluetooth speaker Mom bought for him after he kept hijacking mine. Dad had fantastic taste in music, a knowledge across genres and an open mind towards discovering new artists deep into his seventies; his playlists jumped between Led Zeppelin, the Flaming Lips, the Rolling Stones, the Hollies, Lou Reed, Lord Huron, Chuck Mangione, Roxy Music, Neko Case, David Byrne, and on.

All of us loved spotting the local wildlife at the lakehouse, especially Dad. He’d pop his blond head through the sliding door to call us outside if there was a bald eagle circling the trees or a pair of blue herons wading by the shore. I love seeing loons, who have the best call, the classic soundtrack of the Midwest. There is a giant snapping turtle so big we joke that it must be some sort of ancient spirit like in The Neverending Story. I spent a solid twenty minutes floating in a tube watching a river otter swim around the reeds, both of us just chilling to a playlist of seventies soft rock.

Everyone’s top favorite, of course, are the boat rides. It’s the absolute best feeling in the world, to cruise along the water in the summer sun, watching the treelined horizon zip by beneath a wide blue sky, tunes cranking through the speaker, sharing a laugh with your favorite people. I especially love a little sunset cruise squeezed in before the grandkids’ bathtime, the sky like an orange dreamsicle, golden light glinting on the water’s surface, the darkened silhouette of old growth pines lining the shore. These moments are what make living in the Midwest worth it, something to store away in our back pocket when Seasonal Affective Disorder kicks in during the dregs of late winter: don’t worry, it gets better. It gets glorious.

I’m always homesick for the lakehouse after I get home. It’s not just the water, though I yearn for that view the other fifty-one weeks of the year. When Kurt and I walk through our door, dumping our bags in the entryway, our little house with just the two of us feels so quiet. I miss the warm chaos of my giant family, three generations of us under one roof. It conjures childhood feelings of being together, safe and taken care of and loved. I’m dreading the end of summer, the slow fade of cicadas and the first hints of the leaves changing. Dad was always summer to me with his Hawaiian shirts, sunbathing habit, and golden hair. Once the summer ends, it will be the first new season of my life without my dad.

On one of our last nights at the lakehouse, after another long, emotional day at the hospital, my family and I went to get dinner at one of the local spots we eat at every summer. It was our first time sitting down knowing that Dad would no longer be joining us, not just for the night but for every summer beyond. My eight-year-old nephew asked our server why there were dollar bills pinned to the ceiling, and we all laughed in surprise—after fourteen years of dining there, none of us had ever thought to ask about it. Our server explained that we could write a message on a dollar then push a pin through it, fold it around a quarter, and chuck it at the ceiling until it stuck there. Of course we had to write a message to leave behind. Now there’s a dollar bill pinned to the ceiling with Dad’s name on it, waiting to see us again next summer. Our past, present, and future all contained in this cozy, familiar place we love. We won’t let each other be forgotten.

Those are the little things that make me smile even as a fresh wave of grief rolls in, smothering in its heaviness. Dad is with me when I hear one of his favorite songs, or the next time I spot a blue heron wading in the reeds. At the end of the work day while the sun is still out, I’ve been going on long walks to soak in the last of the summer, my dad’s playlist in my earbuds joined by the backing vocals of cicadas. I even talk to the trees a little. I don’t want them to get lonely.

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Milwaukee is one of my favorite American cities, and easily the one I visit the most often since it’s only ninety minutes from Chicago. A larger mid-sized Midwestern city with its own unique culture that goes heavy on cheese, sausages, and beer—why these are a few of my favorite things! Wisconsin brings out a certain side of me, a side that considers buying a t-shirt that says “In dog beers I’ve only had one” every time I brake for snacks at the Brat Stop in Kenosha. Midwestern cities look at the brief but glorious summer as a perfect encapsulation of the saying “here for a good time, not a long time” and so we wring out every possible drop of outdoor fun between Memorial Day and Labor Day. We flock to the shores of Lake Michigan, we swarm beer gardens and restaurant patios, we play hooky to attend afternoon baseball games, and we go to street fests to eat various encased meats and dance to cover bands.

Summerfest has the shaggy spirit of a street festival on steroids, overtaking the massive Henry Maier Festival Park spanning three consecutive weekends starting in late June, culminating with the 4th of July holiday. In addition to being the world’s largest music festival, there is a Ferris wheel and a SkyGlider, a kids playground and water garden, exhibitions of BMX riding and amateur wrestling, and a shopping area for local vendors where you can buy things like a brandy Old Fashioned scented candle or a t-shirt that says “Wisconsin: home of cannibal killers and Happy Days.” The moment I walk through the entrance gates, I am greeted by a waft of sizzling Johnsonville brats. Kurt once ordered a burger and it came with a topping of prime rib. You do not go to Summerfest to extend your life; you go to live your life.

If Coachella is the decider of what’s cool, creating a scene to be seen in, Summerfest gives zero shits about appearances. I happily wear my middle-aged-friendly Hoka running shoes and know that I will blend into the judgement-free crowd. The lineup is genre agnostic and offers something for every age group, with children’s entertainment scheduled early in the day and hitmakers from the sixties, seventies, and eighties to lure in nostalgic Boomers. The nightly headliner performs on a mainstage separated from the rest of the fairgrounds and requires a separate ticket; my sister saw Nicki Minaj open for Britney Spears at Summerfest in 2011, a true time capsule. Otherwise, an affordable day ticket gives you access to everything. This year we saw Deer Tick1, The Family Stone2, Father John Misty3, Styx4, and Amy & The Sniffers5, all for a total of $33 USD.

Now if this lineup made you go “WTF?,” this randomness is the beauty of Summerfest. You might catch a popular band that you’ve seen in a late afternoon slot at Lollapalooza, then a one-hit wonder from the early aughts, a living legend like John Fogerty, or the number one cover band of Des Moines, Iowa. Summerfest can often give a “Puppet Show and Spinal Tap” kind of vibe, and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible. In 1995 during Pearl Jam’s set, Eddie Vedder brought the local Neil Diamond tribute band Lightning & Thunder onstage to join the band in a cover of “Forever in Blue Jeans.” Because of Summerfest, I have on accident seen the Friends theme song performed by the actual Bodeans more times than ever expected in this life.

The first time I went to Summerfest was in 2007 to see Weird Al. I was in the thick of my Lollapalooza era, in which I attended every day of the fest in the summers of 2005-2012, giving me a PhD in crowd tolerance and navigating a porta-potty in pitch darkness. While both festivals use Lake Michigan as a backdrop, Summerfest was a totally different experience, its crowds spread over the fairgrounds allowing an easy laid-back flow very much the opposite of Lolla’s sweaty shoulder-to-shoulder wall of humanity. It was still early on in my relationship with Kurt, and we spent that night dancing on a metal bench in the pouring rain to Weird Al singing “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota.” I remember feeling exhilarated, my face hurt from laughing, and deeply happy despite the sopping wet Gap windbreaker plastered to my body. We drove home that same night, grabbing a few hours of sleep before meeting our friends at the first Michael Bay Transformers movie showing on the IMAX screen at AMC River East 21, because this was what you did in the summer as a youth. Perhaps now you might call it summermaxxing: staying up late to crush beers, dance on surfaces and howl at the Strawberry Moon, escaping the daytime heat in the dark cool cinema gorging on popcorn movies and watching robots beat each other up, then repeat for three months. To quote Bryan Adams’ summer-themed hit song, those were the best days of my life.

I wish I had been better at keeping track of all of the bands I saw at all of those early festivals, countless days spent running between stages in dirty Chucks while sweating off my sunscreen. I might have stories like my friend Liz, who remembers seeing the not-yet-famous Lady Gaga play a midday set on a small stage at Lolla a year before “Just Dance” blew up. If I could go back in time, I’d tell my young self to start a music diary and keep track of every show I see, the date, and venue. Nowadays, I use my Instagram to document what shows I go to and where. I like to lazily scroll through my own grid and see a visual history of how I’ve spent my time, letting the images of green grass and amber beer bottles sweating icy cold condensation into their koozies reawaken my summer nostalgia.

But there’s a moment that happens at every festival that needs no reminders, usually later in the night when the sky has darkened and the stage lights shine across the field. I recognize the opening notes of one of my favorite songs and the whole crowd starts to sing along. Maybe I’m walking back from the bathroom and I’ve had just enough summer shandys to feel loose but not messy, and I see Kurt holding our spot and make my way to him through the crowd and throw my arms around him like a CEO at a Coldplay concert, and I feel so full of love and the music and the beauty of a warm summer night, and we sing along, shouting the chorus upwards at the stars, fully alive and present in a perfect moment before it fades away like a firefly.

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Also, I am thrilled to have a piece in The Rumpus, a literary magazine I have read and loved for many years and edited by Roxane Gay, one of my favorite writers. You can read it here.

I’ve spent many long weekends in New York, but never longer. This isn’t on purpose; I love visiting the city and would love to linger longer, to spend lazy days wandering through museums, strolling through neighborhoods, and finding a personal favorite coffee shop where I could sit with a book and chill out. I have yet to chill out in New York. Since it is an easy two-hour direct flight from Chicago, I’m always in and out of the city in a flash, like a Hogwarts student clutching a sweaty portkey. It’s all about maximizing my brief time, how much I can see in forty-eight hours. Many years ago, I flew out on a Friday night straight from work at 5pm, landing late that night, saw two plays on Saturday then a Sunday matinee, tucking my roller bag under my seat so I could book straight to LaGuardia after Alan Cumming’s curtain call. I referred to the weekend as my Broadway marathon. I didn’t eat a single sit-down meal that weekend; it was bagels and coffee on the go, pommes frites out of a newspaper cone, a folded slice of pizza while perched on a stool. I approach New York like a Medieval Times knight approaches a joust—barreling in at full speed and hopefully avoid crashing out in front of a bunch of tourists.

These NYC marathon weekends, while exhausting, are also exhilarating, a force-feeding of art and creativity while leapfrogging from one theater to the next. I can keep a different pace in New York; something about the energy emanating from that city must radiate from the pavement through the soles of my sneakers like a wireless phone charger, keeping me upright hours past my typical bedtime. There is a magic unique to New York. Many years ago when my sister Lauren lived in Brooklyn, my husband Kurt and I drove twelve hours overnight from Chicago the night before Thanksgiving to visit her. We ended up in Manhattan at 4am as the Macy’s parade floats were being inflated behind NYPD barricades. At my sister’s apartment, we climbed the fire escape to what she liked to call her “infinity roof” with no railings and a panoramic view of Manhattan, and we sat up there late into the night taking it in like we were Fievel from An American Tail seeing the city for the first time.

I went on my most recent New York binge this past March, flying out with Kurt on a Friday morning and spending almost exactly forty-eight hours in the city, six of them in Broadway theaters. Upon arrival, we met up with my sister Lauren, who had been in New York for a day already, and the games began. We started with the very hilarious play Oh Mary! (the John Cameron Mitchell and Simu Liu edition) then headed to one of my favorite places in the world, Marie’s Crisis Cafe, a showtunes-only piano bar in the West Village. This will either be your thing or absolutely not, there is no in-between, but for me heaven is a place where drunk people can show off that they know all the words to “Satisfied” from Hamilton. I have lost many hours in this bar, singing along to everything from “Little Surrey with the Fringe on Top” to “Wig in a Box.” I don’t care how corny it may sound but I will never not cry when the whole bar joins in on “Seasons of Love.” Marie’s has a Vegas-like quality to it where you arrive bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, only to stumble outside hours later, hoarse, out of cash, and not sure what day it is.

As expected when drinking alcohol over the age of forty, the next morning hangovers entered the chat. We collected our groggy-eyed selves and stepped out for coffee and bagel sandwiches which for three people collectively cost $97 (winces in Midwestern) (not that Chicago is much better). The bagels were life-affirming and exactly what was needed to reanimate our zombie bodies, necessary to barrel ahead into another packed day.

Have you ever experienced a moment in your life when you suddenly felt extremely seen? For me, that moment was when it was announced that Daniel Radcliffe would be playing Weird Al Yankovic in a biopic, and ten different friends texted me the link because they know how much I am a fan of both these people. When I learned that Daniel Radcliffe would be performing in a one-man show called Every Brilliant Thing during our weekend trip, I bought us Saturday matinee tickets. This show was sweetly funny, emotional, and utilized audience participation in a way both surprising and tear-jerking. Mariska Hargitay is taking over when Daniel’s run ends this weekend, and I’m sure she will also be fantastic.

The final show of our lineup was the entire reason we’d planned this trip: CATS: Jellicle Ball. For reasons I can barely explain, CATS is a whole thing in our house, dating back to one of the last fun pre-pandemic nights in January of 2020 when we gathered a group for a rowdy showing of the widely panned CATS movie. We all wore cat ears and drank way too many Whiteclaws. During the opening trailer for Call of the Wild, the audience booed the dog. The entire theater got into it, creating callbacks to yell at the screen like it was Rocky Horror. At some point during “Magical Mr. Mistofflelees” I threw a ball of yarn across the row at my friend. After the movie ended, the projectionist came down from the booth to tell us that we were the most entertaining audience he’d ever seen, which is one of my life’s accomplishments.

From the moment I first heard about the current revival of CATS: Jellicle Ball, I absolutely had to see it. The show reinvents the fantastically weird Andrew Lloyd Webber musical by setting it in the world of Harlem ballroom. These two concepts—’80s spectacle musical and underground ballroom scene where voguing was invented—come together in this show in perfect harmony. I absolutely love to see pieces of art in conversation with each other, taking two concepts that flourished in New York around roughly the same time and giving life to something totally new. Also, it finally makes the plot of CATS make sense, in which each cat comes out and introduces him or herself, because now they also do dance-offs! Joy absolutely radiated through the theater. I hope I get to see it again with this cast, who are lightning in a bottle.

After such a high-energy show, we were surging with energy so we walked back to the hotel to quickly drop off our merch and playbills, then trekked to Alphabet City. Somewhere between the tiki bar and Crif Dogs, I had to peel out and go to bed.

Our last day in New York got cut short when we woke up to a text from United Airlines that our flight had been cancelled due to ongoing restrictions at LaGuardia, kicking off a flurry of internet searches and scrambling for a new flight so we could still get home before Monday (literally my third day ever at my new job). Lauren snagged the last seat on a direct flight, and Kurt and I rebooked on an early afternoon flight with a connection in Washington, D.C. Sunday was one of those nightmare travel days spent sitting at the airport while our rescheduled flight was delayed again and again. My and Kurt’s layover in D.C. shrank to a panic-inducing seventeen minutes, and when we were told we had no choice and must check our carry-ons, I was ready to say goodbye to my roller bag until whatever day we’d meet again. This is the risk of traveling balls to the wall with narrow margins for error.

Thankfully it all worked out; United held our plane for us in D.C., we boarded our final flight holding onto CATS on vinyl as a personal item, and we made it home by Sunday late evening. Our luggage even greeted us at the baggage claim carousel. Another Broadway marathon weekend survived, with the only collateral damage being to my liver and my bank account. I accumulated more souvenir plastic wine cups in Playbill yellow and a heaping dose of creative invigoration.

Perhaps most importantly, I proved to myself that I could still smash through the city walking 18,000 steps a day on five hours of crummy sleep to take in as many experiences as possible. This may not sound like a feat, but over the last few decades, I’ve had my right knee cartilage repaired, confirmed a labral tear in my right hip, and suspect a tear in my left hip which I activated while trying to learn the TikTok dance to “Texas Hold ‘Em.” I turned forty-seven in April and I don’t take my health for granted. Cue my elation upon coming across this recent article on CNN, “Engagement with arts and culture can slow biological aging as much as exercise, study suggests.” Talk about news I can use! These theater marathon weekends may be more beneficial to my health than I realized. Or maybe between the heavy doses of musicals and heavy pours of wine and cocktails, I’m breaking even. Either way, I’m glad to be able to get away for forty-eight hours of fun.

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At 7 a.m., it was already warm and sunny outside the tiny El Nido Airport, where Kurt and I waited at the sole Departures gate. I perched on a plastic chair, shazaaming P-pop1 songs on my iPhone and reflecting on the end of the tour. We had said goodbye to our group the previous night with rounds of hugs and offers of guest rooms around the world to stay in. Our time together was loaded with new experiences. I swam in the South China Sea and sang karaoke in a parked bus decked out with disco lights so frenetic I felt like I was tripping. I met indigenous communities and ate rice cooked in bamboo over a campfire. I saw wild monkeys and monitor lizards roam the beach, and watched a cat walk into a McDonald’s. My worldview was expanded and my tan looked good. Now we were moving on to the last stop. For our final few days in the Philippines, Kurt and I were staying with family members I’d never met in person before, and I was nervous but excited. Our propeller plane sped down the runway and I watched from my window seat as the leafy palms began to blur, the white sand beach and karst cliffs falling away like a trap door as we lifted into the sky. The water turned from sparkling turquoise shallow coral reefs to dark cobalt. I felt a little chill, thinking of all the underwater WWII shipwrecks of the Sunken Fleet near Coron. It’s hard to not constantly bump up against history here.

When I first began planning our trip, my mom texted her relatives living in the Philippines and heard back from her cousin Patis, who offered to host Kurt and me at her home in San Pablo City. She and I exchanged email addresses and I sent her our itinerary. I knew that she was a well-known designer and artist, so I looked her up on Google. The first thing that came up was an article from Vogue Philippines, causing my jaw to drop till it landed on my keyboard. My mom’s cousin is Patis Pamintuan Tesoro, the “Grand Dame of Philippine Fashion,” a renowned and beloved designer whose life’s work is focused on preserving traditional Filipino textiles and design. She left the bustle of Manila and created a home in the province of Laguna, complete with a garden, guesthouse, and atelier where she continues to design for a clientele including politicians and royalty. I was blown away by the fact that I was related to somebody so cool. We were staying with a legend!

One of my mom’s relatives made a detailed book of family history, laying out branches of the family tree and including marriages and birthdates, which was no small feat considering my grandpa was the youngest of thirteen. The pages came alive when we arrived at my Tita’s home and I saw her walls full of framed family photos. I could see her family resemblance to my grandpa, and it made my heart ache over all the questions I wish I’d asked him before he passed away ten years ago. We sat down together for lunch and I heaped my plate with Filipino food, many of the same dishes we have at family parties in Chicago. I loved hearing Tita Patis tell stories; I could listen to her talk about her life and her career all day. In her seventies, she is sharp and feisty and brimming with creative energy. She wakes up before dawn to draw and paint at the window desk in her bedroom, ideas already swirling in the early rays of light trickling through the calado, or lace-style latticework bordering the windows.

Her home was incredible. Nature, fresh air, and birdsong flowed easily in and out of the house through tall screenless windows. Copper pots filled with dried burning curry leaves kept the mosquitoes away; the smell was pleasant and earthy, adding to the sensory landscape. The dining room opened to the garden courtyard and a view of the trees scattering dappled sunlight across a patchwork tiled floor. Twenty-two rescue dogs live on the property, and they milled around us, ears cocked and furry heads outstretched for pets.

It is impossible to meet my Tita Patis and not feel immediately inspired to want to live a more creative, simplified life away from the city and surrounded by nature (I write this from home in Chicago having just witnessed a squirrel on the roof of our garage eating a churro scavenged from the dumpster). In the lush garden, stone sculptures wait to be discovered under leafy boughs and draping vines. Every inch of the house is art, from the wall-sized floral murals in our guest bedroom to the hand-carved figurine wooden door pulls. She showed us some pieces from her collection that were about to be loaned to a museum in eastern Europe; it was like living in an art gallery, museum, and living breathing treehouse all at once.

In the afternoon, my second cousin Nicky and his wife Lanelle took Kurt and me to the mall where we ran some Sunday errands just like the locals, shopping and eating in the haven of air conditioning. Back home in the States, malls are dying out; the one where I worked throughout college is now a ghost town where you can practically see the spectral figures of teenagers in Delia*s flared jeans haunting the empty food court. But in much of Asia including the Philippines, malls are thriving third spaces and centers of commerce; the one we visited even had a busker stage in the atrium because of course somebody is gonna be singing.

My family referred to Laguna as the “provincial life,” where the pace moves more languidly and people have a closer relationship to nature. Here, carts pulled by carabao2 shared the streets with cars and jeepneys, and we spotted a tuktuk transporting a cow in a sidecar. School kids in Catholic uniforms gathered and gossiped on the sidewalk, and I had a flashback of our family photo albums and my mom’s school portrait with her sailor collar top. Nicky showed us around, taking us to a local gallery where we were lucky to catch a demo by the artist and potter Ugo Bigyan. (We bought a beautiful piece with ceramic birds and delicate flowers and managed to safely get it all the way back to Chicago intact in a giant ball of bubble wrap). It seemed like everywhere we turned while in the province, there was something beautiful and surprising to see. We drove to dinner, passing a rooster farm that seemed to stretch on for blocks, then arrived at the top of a hill just as the sky softened into a gorgeous pastel sunset.

Even though it was our first time meeting in person, my family members immediately put me at ease, urging me to try every dish on the table, filling in memory gaps from my attempt to learn the family tree, sharing stories new to me, and making sure Kurt and I had everything we needed. I was the Wasian American cousin, with paler skin and less tolerance for the humidity, but my nervousness dissipated quickly. I definitely never felt hungry; we were fed one delicious meal after the next, with desserts in between. But with precious limited time here, I didn’t want to say no to any of it. How could you turn down the chance to savor a fresh star apple, spooning its sweet pulp directly into your mouth? You can’t find that at the Jewels!

Before we left San Pablo to head back to Manila, Patis showed us around her home studio and atelier where we saw some of her designs in progress. Every piece is created and embroidered by hand, and it was incredible to get an up-close look at the fine detail. Patis is known for being a fierce advocate for cultural preservation, illustrated through her use of piña, a delicate fabric made from the fine fibers of pineapple leaves, throughout her designs. Her life’s work is documented in the book Filipiniana is Forever. It was a deeply special and inspiring experience to get this intimate tour of her workspace and home, and came to me during a moment when I needed it deeply.

When I was young, I always thought I’d find a way to be a professional creative; somehow, at some point, it would all work out. Shortly after I graduated from art school with a degree in Theatre, I took the jobs that paid the bills—retail, call center, receptionist—while I wrote and performed sketch comedy in midnight shows for drunk people and prom groups. Over the years, the distance between those two roads of paid work and creative pursuits felt wider and wider until I was suddenly a career HR professional who poked away at my manuscript in fits and starts.

While Patis has had a long, successful career in fashion and art, I was inspired by her motivation. Her work comes from her fierce love for preservation of traditional textiles and clothing, her strong belief in sustainability, and passion for environmentalism. We are all shaped by our environment and what we make of it becomes the legacy we pass on. I will likely always need a salaried job to pay my bills, but I can also look at the choices I’ve made not as two separate roads where I’ve wandered too far down the ‘wrong’ one, but as as a symbiotic coexistence. My joy and fulfillment comes from writing what I want to write. Maybe my choice to travel as much as possible and to document my experiences through writing is my art. (I certainly couldn’t afford back-to-back trips to Asia without the steady paycheck). At the end of the day, making something is what matters, whether it be those early morning sketches inspired by the jasmine blooming just outside the window, or for me, the personal essays born on dirt roads and jet bridges.

Time is never enough; though there were so many more stories I wished to hear, we had to go home. I was already thinking about when I could come back, how I could get my siblings to come with me, and is there any way to teleport my mom along with us to spare her the twenty-hour plane trip? Kurt and I spent our final night at a hotel right by the airport so we could show up the recommended four hours early for our morning flight. We packed our bags (why do dirty clothes magically gain mass?) and figured out how to shoehorn our giant ball of bubble wrap into one of our personal items. For the last time, I watched the view drop away from the plane window, this time the gleaming glass buildings of metro Manila. I had so many experiences to process, so many stories and thoughts to get onto paper once I got home. Not only that, I want to start painting botanical watercolors and learn K-pop dances. I want to finally finish my manuscript. I want to start planning my next trip. I want to continue filling my life with creativity, live music, books, and karaoke. How could I possibly do it all? I’m still not sure but I’m excited to try.

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I have a confession: I am little bit terrified of the ocean. How dare they be so vast and hold countless mysteries in their depths?! I was formed by my Midwestern upbringing and I’m all in on lake life; I love a body of fresh water with a mysteriously slimy bottom that definitely has no sharks, riptides, or venomous sea snakes in it. Before we left for the Philippines, I had some mild anxiety about our itinerary which included five days on the island of Palawan, an hour-long flight from the west coast of Luzon. Most of the trips I plan for Kurt and me involve mountains, hiking, driving, and camping—all very boots (or tires) on the ground. The Philippines, however, would be heavy on boating and floating. I had anxious thoughts around being peer pressured to swim in deep open water or jump off tall waterfalls by gangs of twenty-something-year-old influencers. To quote a wise elder (Popeye), I am what I am, and that is a person who will always have to hold my nose when I jump into the water. I haven’t been snorkeling in the ocean since I was fourteen years old, and I spent half the time staring into the blue void scanning for sharks while my heart thumped in my chest.

But the Philippines changed everything for me. Turns out I love the ocean! Our tour group was not filled with twenty-something-year-old Influencers, but a group of mostly retirees who were open to adventure, curious about the world, and not going to peer pressure anyone into anything except happy hour. Since my dream is to be retired, I found our new friends inspiring, and we shared some of the most epic Jenga games our hotel bar had ever seen.

Let me rewind back a few days. Palawan is sometimes referred to as the Philippines’ last ecological frontier, due to its rich biodiversity and conservation efforts being made to protect it. To experience some of these natural wonders, we started with a night-time cruise down the Iwahig River where massive firefly colonies live in the mangrove forest. Far from any city light pollution, the silhouettes of the mangrove trees were inky black against a dark blue sky. As the guide shined a single flashlight at the trees, colonies of fireflies would respond with a pulse of bioluminescence, glowing like strings of twinkle lights. As a Midwesterner, I am no stranger to fireflies; I get excited when I see them appear in our backyard at the start of every summer. However, to see these colonies light up an entire mangrove tree was worlds beyond anything I’d witnessed back at home.

The next day, after a long bus drive over winding roads along the northern coast, we visited the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, a UNESCO Heritage Site. To reach the park, we first rode traditional bangka boats to a remote beach, then took a short walk into the forest where we boarded a second, smaller river boat that took us into the cave system. Talking inside the caves is prohibited in order to protect the delicate ecosystem that is home to hundreds of bats and swallows. We were given audio devices with a single earbud so we could listen to narration during the tour. It felt like if nature were a Disneyland dark ride as we slowly floated away from the last rays of natural light that drifted inside from the entrance, traveling further into the cave system. Above our heads, tiny bats went about their daily business of echolocating and napping upside down; we were warned to keep our mouths closed anytime we looked up so as not to accidentally get a sample taste of guano. When we reached the deepest point of the cave system, the tour guides turned off their flashlights and we sat for a moment in true, pitch-black darkness.

I loved these two excursions, as a fan of both fireflies and cave exploration (The Descent is one of my all-time favorite horror movies), and felt primed to finally dip my toes into the ocean. However, right before our first day of island hopping, I was laid out with my first bout of traveler’s stomach. I’m not sure what took me down, whether it was a reaction to my anti-malaria meds or if I’d flown too close to the sun with the heaping amount of pork I’d consumed at every single meal for the past six days. Thankfully, we had prepared with an extra toiletry bag stocked with Imodium and Pepto Bismol (this bag was all the encouragement Kurt needed to sample every street meat in Manila). I spent a night sleeping at the hotel while the rest of the group went to dinner and a reggae bar in Port Barton, but eleven hours of sleep proved restorative because I woke up feeling refreshed and ready for a day on a boat.

I’m so glad I fully recovered in time for one of the best days of the entire trip. The sun was out, the water calm and sparkling, the sailing smooth. Music pumped through a Bluetooth speaker and I hadn’t listened to this much Bob Marley since his Greatest Hits CD was in regular rotation on my college boombox, but it was absolutely perfect. We stopped at a sandbar to wade and search for starfish, and I dunked my whole body underwater to cool off. Ninety degrees and high humidity is much more tolerable when you can jump into the ocean whenever you want. Onboard, the crew poured us generous servings of a rum and sun tea mixture in plastic cups, though later in the day they began pouring it directly into our mouths.

It was eye-opening to realize how long it’s been since I’ve swum in salt water; I forgot how different it is, the invigorating sting of it on your lips and skin, the care to wipe droplets quickly from your eyelashes. I felt reborn as a tropical mermaid (who still has to hold her nose underwater). I’d only remembered the heart-thumping childhood fear of the ocean, but I’d totally forgotten its otherworldly beauty. Once I dipped beneath the surface with my snorkel mask, I didn’t want to come back out. It was like living inside an episode of Planet Earth, a living, thriving coral reef a few feet directly below my face. Clown fish frolicked symbiotically in sea anemones; one by one we surfaced and sputtered to each other “Finding Nemo!” “Sea turtle! Sea turtle!” I heard a guide shouting, so I doggy-paddled my way over and caught a glimpse of it in action, so fluid and graceful in the water, so very awesome just up until a crowd formed and some idiot from another group started chasing it down and touching its shell (people can really ruin everything). Back on the boat, the good vibes returned as we danced to Charli XCX and Bad Bunny, trying to capture all the laughter and sunny skies on our phones, bottling up that good feeling.

Our second day of island hopping was a few days later in El Nido, the northern tip of Palawan. The beaches in El Nido were the pinnacle of all of my expectations of Southeast Asia come to life in vivid, bursting color: karst cliffs rising from turquoise water, white sand that feels like silk between your toes, palm trees towering against cloudless blue sky, the contrast of lush green vegetation growing against limestone rocks. I read that Alex Garland was living in El Nido when he wrote The Beach, a book I loved in my early twenties (it’s better than the movie). I thought about this as we visited Hidden Beach, a lagoon tucked between limestone cliffs, reachable by swimming through a narrow passage. Kurt and I followed one of the crew through a shortcut, an opening in the rocks accessible during lower tides, and the reveal at the end of the short tunnel was one one of those moments you don’t forget, a vision of a perfect tropical paradise so stunning I whooped in elation like goddamn Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach.

Our boat guide for the day, Jason, was also a lowkey professional photographer/Instagram husband who encouraged us to hand over our phones for individual photo shoots. Jason was also master of the “human drone” technique—running up and down the sand, swooping an iPhone in and out before spinning it towards the blue sky then refocusing back on a waving group of happy, slightly tipsy and sunburnt tourists. Back on the boat, we ate a lunch of rice, grilled fish, pancit, lumpia, fresh fruit, and turon (bananas sliced and wrapped in spring roll wrappers then deep-fried). We bought beers and ice cream bars from a man selling them boatside from a cooler strapped to his kayak. When we sailed between islands, Kurt and I climbed the ladder to the top deck to take in the view. I’ll never forget that feeling when Taylor Swift came up on the Bluetooth speakers and I sang along “Keep it 100 on the land, the sea, the sky,” pointing to each above, below, beyond. There was nothing I would change about this moment, my hair crispy with salt, my shoulders dancing on the knife’s edge of tanning and burning, having just enough of a San Miguel buzz, blissfully happy, seeing the world.

On our last day in Palawan, we went to Vanilla Beach to stake out a spot to watch the sun set over Bacuit Bay. The beach was loaded with backpackers; suddenly everyone was in their twenties, a medley of European accents, a herd of galloping selfie sticks. Our little group held onto a table with a view of the horizon, sweating and sizzling in the intense sun while the crowd thickened, excitement building. As the sun began to dip closer to the water, a DJ started spinning. Quickly, we learned why sunsets in Southeast Asia are an event as anticipated as a club opening. The sun looked like a blood orange, the sky fiery red, a dazzle of gold on the ocean like glitter on a runway. A perfect postcard, a goodbye parting shot to leave us wanting more. Palawan, you won me over with your pristine beaches, your karaoke bus bar, your balut stands in the street corners, the sweetest pineapple I’ve ever eaten, the crowing of roosters waking us up every single morning, the people who keep the music going all day and all night.

Before embarking on this trip, I secretly feared that it would be a challenging time for me. I feared the heat and humidity, the bugs, getting sick, being overwhelmed by the noise and chaos of Manila traffic. But I’d underestimated the emotional connection I felt to the Philippines once I arrived. Sometimes I’d glimpse the skyline of palm trees and it would take my breath away how it looked so like the backdrop to my grandpa’s photos that I could envision him standing there, young again and waving at me. I felt like I was traveling back in time and space to a place I’d never been before but my blood knew it by sight. While I wouldn’t stop being a Midwestern lake lifer, I’d unlocked something inside me; these parts of me all co-exist.

Next: back to Luzon before saying goodbye!

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While I was out of the country, I competed in the first round of the March Sadness Essay Tournament and lost solidly. But you can still read my essay on The Wallflowers’ “One Headlight” which went head to head with Ani DiFranco’s “You Had Time” which ultimately made the Final Four, so at least I lost to one of the best!

Kurt and I landed in Manila on a steamy night in mid-February, arriving at our hotel with just enough time to run up to the rooftop bar for a quick nightcap. I raised my bottle of San Miguel Pale, my grandpa’s favorite beer, toasting to the backdrop of Manila’s city lights. We made it here—finally!!—after twenty interminable hours of air travel, a journey so long that the woman sitting in front of Kurt watched two entire seasons of White Lotus. Long haul travel is a young person’s game; my left shoulder wasn’t right for days after spending twenty hours in the middle seat.

“Why the Philippines?” Before, during, and after our trip, this was a question that I was often asked, from Americans as well as curious Filipinos. For me, the answer was easy: I’ve always wanted to see the country where my mom was born and spent her childhood. Before she immigrated to the United States at twelve years old, my mom was born in Davao in the southern region of Mindanao, then grew up in Quezon City just outside of Manila. My maternal homeland always felt like another world to me, given its location on the other side of the globe. Outside of my own family stories, I didn’t grow up with much Filipino representation in pop culture. Big Bird traveled to China and Japan, but not the Philippines. I’ve long craved seeing the real life place that is the backdrop to my mom’s childhood photos. As I’ve gotten older, it became clear that I needed to make my long overdue pilgrimage to the motherland. I wanted to immerse myself in the sticky heat that my mom recalled as the most formative memory of her childhood, to see the volcanos where she picnicked off banana leaves, to hear the birds and ocean waves crashing on white sand beaches. I wanted to start creating my own memories and have my own relationship to this part of the world.

My and Kurt’s first morning in Manila was sensory overload. Our hotel was in the historic area called Intramuros, the “Walled City” built during the Spanish colonization in the late 1500s as a defensive fort. The stone walls have withstood WWII and now, school kids gather on the walls to play pickleball or make dance videos for TikTok, which we observed with amusement from our hotel room window. After a filling breakfast of longanisa, caldo de arroz, and garlic rice, we stepped outside the Arctic bubble of the hotel air conditioning into the hot hot heat. Humidity draped over my body like a damp pashmina. Sweat pricked out of every pore. I mentally girded myself for the upcoming fourteen days of tropical sun beating down on our Midwestern skin at its peak winter paleness. Palm fronds the size of elephant ears swayed in the breeze against bright blue sky. Even in the metro heart of the city, plant life exploded with lush abundance.

After strolling up and down the stone wall for a bit, passing cannons and TikTokers, we left Intramuros for nearby Rizal Park. Hordes of scooters zigged down the street and zagged around tuk-tuks. Brightly painted jeepneys, the most popular form of public transportation in the Philippines, picked up and dropped off passengers. I quickly became enamored with their graffiti-style paint jobs of Catholic iconography and chrome wheels; while they originally came from the repurposed U.S. military jeeps left behind after WWII, in their present day form they looked to me like if the Baz Luhrman version of Romeo + Juliet was reincarnated into a four-wheeled vehicle. Tuks tuks parked along the curb, drivers chatting or relaxing with their flip-flops kicked off, waiting for their next fare. Some tried to wave us into their passenger seat—”It’s a Filipino Cadillac!” one driver joked, gesturing to his e-trike as he showed us a laminated map of the tour he could give us.

Even though it was my first time visiting the Philippines, so many details were immediately familiar, things that have been a part of my life for so long they are a part of me: the accents ringing through the street that sounded just like my grandparents, the capiz shell lamp in the corner of a restaurant that was just like the one that hangs in my grandma’s sun porch in Chicago, the tang of sinigang, the sweetness of puto (Filipino rice cakes) with a pat of butter on top, the singing and dancing everywhere. Kurt and I went to a bar that advertised karaoke on Google Maps, and I participated in the national pastime by singing a Kesha jam. While it felt like a milestone for me as both a Filipino American and cofounder of a karaoke Club, the handful of locals present were mostly uninterested, their attention focused on snacking on sisig and swigging bottles of San Miguels while a gecko skittered across the wall.

When I first began plotting out our trip to the Philippines six months earlier, I got quickly overwhelmed; getting around a country made up of over 7,600 islands begs a lot of logistical considerations, and I knew that driving in much of Southeast Asia can be an heart-palpitating experience for those not accustomed to it. Ultimately, I chose the easy route and booked our first ever group tour for ten out of our fourteen-day trip. During the tour, Kurt and I could go full passenger princess and sit back and enjoy the ride. We met the group on our second night, who came from all over the world: England, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Spain, the Philippines, California, and us two Chicagoans. Our group got along quite well; it felt a bit like international summer camp for adults, and we all had a love of travel in common so there was never a shortage of things to talk about.

I’d traveled to the Philippines to feel closer to my family’s history, and I found it during our guided walking tour of Fort Santiago. My grandparents were in their late teens when Japan occupied the Philippines during WWII. My grandpa survived the war by hiding out in caves in the jungle. My grandma had been working in a government office in Manila and was forced by necessity to work for a Japanese Imperial officer. Both of them tragically lost family members to the war. It is estimated that 100,000 civilians were killed during this time known as the Manila Massacre. While I’d grown up hearing my family’s stories, most of our tour group had been unfamiliar with this period in history. I wasn’t surprised by this; I hardly remember hearing about the Philippines when I learned about WWII during high school; there is no Steven Spielberg movie covering this part of history. So I was glad that this was recognized at the start of our group tour because it shapes so much of the fate of the country, gives context to many of their present day challenges, and helps people understand the resilient nature of its citizens. A white marble cross in front of a chapel marked the burial spot of six hundred bodies recovered from the dungeon we were about to enter. The crowd was solemn even as multiple tour groups ducked their heads to fit under the low stone entrance to the dungeon. After we shuffled through the cramped space, taking everything in and reflecting on the immensity of the losses that the Philippines had suffered, we re-emerged outside on the sunny riverbank. Our group was quiet, reflective, taking it all in. I was glad to be here and pay my respects to the family I never got to meet, but deeply sad for what they suffered through.

Our group’s last night in Manila ended on a more joyful note. We had dinner together at a Filipino heritage restaurant, complete with a generous buffet of local dishes and entertainment provided by a troupe performing traditional folk dances from each region: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. It was so interesting to see the cultural influences reflected in the music, clothing, and dancing, from the Spanish ballroom style in the north to the delicate hand movements reminiscent of Arabia in the south. For the final number, the dancers invited audience members to join them at Tinikling, which involves hopping over bamboo poles being shuffled and tapped. I volunteered to give it a try, and I didn’t embarrass myself! Hopefully I made my ancestors proud.

As we left the restaurant, a little sweaty from the Tinikling, a little flush-faced from the wine, we passed the Church of San Agustin lit up at night, and I felt so happy to be in this place, in this moment, traveling with Kurt and with new friends. It had taken until my late forties to make it to the Philippines, but something about this trip, this night, this time in my life, all felt meant to be.

Next: from Manila to Palawan…

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It was 2017, and Kurt and I were on a weeklong trip based in Reykjavík with a group of friends. For a few days mid-week, Kurt and I peeled away from the group for some alone time on a road trip along the southern coast. Iceland is called the land of fire and ice, which is dramatic but accurate. There are active volcanoes, rivers steaming from the hot lava running just beneath the surface, sprawling glac…

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On the first day of the year, I went to a movie theater alone. I wanted to experience the finale of Stranger Things with a crowd, so I reserved a ticket online while Kurt opted to stay home to watch the Bowl games. I’ve never spent my New Year’s Day at the movies before; in earlier eras of my life it was a holiday for recovering from hangovers, or getting drunk again while watching college football. The movie theater was packed, and I disappeared anonymously into the crowd with my popcorn and soda, my laughter and jump-scares blending in with the communal reaction. My late forties have transformed me from a sarcastic cynic who grew up drinking Gen X haterade to an unabashed sentimental sap who lives on the knife’s edge of sad or happy tears, so you can imagine how I handled the scene with the kids shelving their D&D binders one last time. It was basically the Bellagio Water Show coming out of my tear ducts in seat H10. Nicole Kidman said it best, heartbreak DOES feel…

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I love to break up the seasons into micro seasons, and after the chaos of Christmas is over, it’s time for the Season …

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My earliest Substack newsletters were a mix of things: travelogues, listicles, an ode to my favorite tent. For the last three years, I’ve enjoyed having this space to document my hiking and roadtripping adventures and share my photos, and I’m grateful to have accumulated a small but growing audience of supportive readers. Subtack is a place where I can hone my writing and also be a little less precious about perfectionism. And I especially love the freedom to pepper my essays with as many niche references as I want, without an editor challenging me on how many people will remember that one random line from The Wizard (1989) starring Fred Savage.

After ten years on Wordpress and t…

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In August, the mood struck me to revisit one of my most beloved places, the tiny, fictional Pacific Northwest town of Twin Peaks. Maybe it was the fever dream quality of late summer fading into the crispness of early fall, or the loss of director David Lynch earlier this year, or the way a murder mystery pairs really well with a glass of red wine, but the timing felt exactly right to cue up what would be my sixth or so full rewatch of the early nineties television series.

I was eleven years old when I first became intrigued by Twin Peaks. From the opening shot of a bird perched on a Douglas fir branch, I fell in love at first sight with the Pacific Northwest. The moody landscape with its misty coastline, thick pine forests, and snowcapped mountains felt practically exotic compared to the flat prairies of my Midwestern childhood. (This would also be the gateway drug that later got me hooked on the Twilight books, of all things.)

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The reason behind our trip was to catch Deer Tick and Drive-By Truckers with an opening set from Thelma & the Sleaze, playing at the historic Longhorn Ballroom as part of a Jubilee celebrating the venue’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Deemed Texas’ most historic music venue, the ballroom first opened in 1950 and at one point was owned by Jack Ruby (yep, that Jack Ruby). The venue sat between Dallas and Oak Cliff in a non-jurisdiction area, which allowed the owners to skirt around segregation laws and made the club a haven for Black artists who played R&B, the blues, and soul. In 1978, Merl…

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I thought about this a lot, especially when a gold metal mechanical bull rolled onstage. As Beyoncé sang “Tyrant” astride the spinning bull, I remembered that while dealing with my injury, an actual thought that crossed my mind was whether I’d ever ride a mechanical bull again (I chickened out from asking the orthopedic surgeon).

The first time I ev…

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In late April, the day after my forty-sixth birthday, I went to see Charli XCX’s Brat Tour at Allstate Arena in Rosemont on a Monday night. If you are from Chicago, the last two facts in the preceding sentence probably made you grimace a little bit. Allstate Arena is tenuously connected to the city by a patchwork of public transportation options that involve an unreliable bus. It’s usually f…

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Our next stop was Osaka, commonly called the kitchen of Japan, with its own regional saying “Kuidaore,” “eat until you’re bankrupt.” Upon first impression, Osaka had a grittier feel than cosmopolitan Tokyo, which appealed to my ‘second city’ heart. Osaka was easy to get lost in. I was trying to take us to a Studio Ghibli store; Google Maps kept telling us we were standing right next to it but there was no store in sight. Finally, we realized that we were in the …

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Other ways to support: share this newsletter with friends, leave a note in the Comment section, or click the heart button to give me an algorithm boost!

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