The Mission We Chose to Accept

The sign at the Bacolod airport welcomes us to the City of Smiles; a salutation befitting a team of 30 volunteers arriving to improve the smiles of local children. We are met at the airport by our hosts from the Rotary Club of Bacolod South. They will have to repeatedly coach us in the pronunciation of our home for the next two weeks – the accent is on the second syllable. The name of city where the hospital sites is decidedly simpler, Bago City.

The next day we arrive at the Bago City Hospital and are taken on a tour of the new wing. Downstairs, in our polished new corner of a very old, nearly crumbling structure, Carolyn Walchak, our head nurse, dispatches the medical volunteers, led by head surgeon Dr. Frank Walchak, to survey their operating rooms. Upon reconvening, they agree, this is one of the best-equipped hospitals they have ever seen; and they have been around the world and back. After we unpack the forty-one boxes that traveled with us from the States, we will have three working operating rooms and a fully functional recovery room - where before there were only gurneys.

The following morning we arrive at the hospital for clinic day. I thought it might be difficult to look at these faces - babies, children, teens and young adults, living six months, eight years, in some cases two or three decades with such a conspicuous deformity. But it wasn’t. It was immediately apparent that these are the faces of children, people, who need our love the most.



The children all have different ways of concealing their defect. One boy uses a handkerchief. Another pulls the collar of his shirt all the way up to his nose. We take their picture and send them through the halls to various screening stations to make sure they are fit for surgery. After seeing 69 children, we admit 66 children for surgery. Difficult decisions lead the doctors to turn away three children, because of physical or mental disabilities. In the coming days, eight more will arrive and we will fit each of them into the schedule, too.



While some children are older, I learn that if this surgery isn’t done on these before they are four or five-years-old their speech will be permanently affected. The consensus is that, depending on the health of the child, a cleft lip should be repaired by about 3 months of age. Cleft palate usually is corrected between 6 and 18 months of age. In the United States, these surgeries are performed as a matter of course to avoid lasting health and wellness issues. In countries like the Philippines, this kind of intervention does not exist. And in some cases, parents are led to believe the condition is contagious or even a curse. In the worst instances, they hide their children and disallow them the benefit of education or interaction with the rest of the world. The fact of the matter is that genetics and lack of adequate nutrition are probably the most likely cause of elevated incidence of cleft lip and palate in developing countries. And while we might assume these people need our help because they can’t afford quality medical care because they are poor, the reality is that unless these families could travel on a plane or sail a few days on a ship all the way to Manila, they wouldn’t be able to find a doctor or a hospital equipped to serve them.

Three children line up in the hallway, the first group up for surgery on the second day. Among them is Jelah, a little girl in a flowered dress sitting with her mother. She is six.



The anesthesiologist comes through the swinging double doors and walks over to the mother and daughter. The girl’s brow begins to furrow. Our doctor explains his part in the procedure, and assures Sheila, her mother, that he will be with her daughter throughout the entire procedure. He reaches down to pick up the child. Jelah’s misshapen mouth starts to contort into a silent cry. She clings to her mother and her mother, for a moment, clings to her. One last hug before she disappears through the doors.

Bravely, Sheila walks alone back to the post-op room where she, her sister Nancy and Jelah, will spend the night. I learn that they and five other families were brought to our mission by the Philippine National Oil Company. The families live in a mountain village near the new PNOC thermal energy plant. I meet Sammy, the community relations liaison. He tells me that their contribution to these families is part of his company’s “corporate responsibility.” In his broken English, those words are clear as day.

In the mountainous region called Barangay Mailum, outside Bago City proper, the Philippine National Oil Company built a thermal energy plant that opened in early 2007. The company had since adopted a policy of caring for the mountain’s people. Simply because they live on the mountain, residents are privileged to the PNOC’s outreach. Among their offerings is kalusugan – or health – regular outreach programs and surgery missions, which brought them to our door. Sammy tells me that they found these families through the schools in the area.

Two hours later, Sheila is called back to the same hallway where she was separated from her daughter. Putting on a gown and a cap and exchanging her sandals for hospital shoes, she enters the recovery room and shuffles from the far end to Jelah’s bedside. Kicking into mother-mode, she shows very little emotion but her actions speak volumes - touching her daughter’s sleepy forehead, smoothing her hair, kissing her cheek. All these women are mothers just like any other mother, speaking a universal language of unconditional love.

Likewise, these children speak a universal language, all crying for Mama in the same language. Jelah awakes and strange faces hover over her, taking her stats, her blood pressure, her temperature. In about an hour they will transfer her back to the post-up room.



The steamy post-op quarters are packed with beds and families. Jelah’s bed is near the bathroom. I soon learn that Jelah was here last year, the last time a mission rolled through. She was sick, though, and had her surgery postponed. I hadn’t known before that she was one of our priority patients.




The next day, Jelah’s hair is pulled back with two rows of small butterfly clips. Her mother and aunt had reconfigured her bed, placing the pillow at the foot so that Jelah could face the window, instead of the crowded hospital ward. Evelyn Abad, our mission director, helped make arrangements for me to travel to Jelah’s house when they got discharged.

In the van with Sammy and two other families, we travel the road to Jelah’s house, which is alternately paved and unpaved. The unpaved parts look to me to be un-navigable but the van rumbles over mud and rocks. Between the landscape and the ride, I feel like I am at an amusement park. It is surreal. On the left, we pass Jelah’s school. It’s a long cement building with a blue roof surrounded by trees and a yard that children play in. Then the van stops opposite a muddy path. A large colorful turkey is guarding a gate on the left. We pass the clucking, strutting bird and enter the lot. On it sit two bamboo huts. One is Jelah’s family’s and the other, the larger one, is her aunt’s. There is also an outhouse, a chicken coop, a pigsty and a little shelter made from two planks propped against each other in which resides their fighting cock. Sheila tells me the cock belongs to her husband. It has had two wins.



The landscape they’ve created is gorgeous. Sawed-off tree trunks are laced with orchid blossoms and palm-fronds, and lush bushes are out back. The rest is the beautiful evidence of existence. A clothesline is strung between the house and the fence. Vegetable plants wiggle out of the earth; and a table where they eat lunch is near the fence. Their roofs are made of rusting corrugated tin and intricate bamboo lattice work lines the sides of both huts.



In Jelah’s house, their grandmother, Anacorita, has already started boiling water for the next meal in the stone fireplace in the kitchen. Sheila tells us that she and Nancy share the cooking responsibilities for the two families. When there’s money they will eat fish and rice. When there’s not, they’ll eat the vegetables they grown in their yard - and rice. Jelah’s father works in the sugar cane field, making what amounts to about two dollars a day. He also built all the structures on their lot.



Adjacent to the kitchen is a small sitting room. No more than three or four people can fit standing up. The walls are lined with kid’s stuff. A picture Jelah made for her grandmother’s 70th birthday hangs on one wall and her toys are shelved on the other. There is a photo of a smiling Jelah and her brother standing outside the school.

In Nancy’s home, I notice they have one light, a long fluorescent bulb bolted to the ceiling. And plugged into a power strip, they have a television. Charlotte’s Web is on.

We ask Sheila if there is anything they need or want that maybe they can’t get or afford. In Tagalog, she says “Ako magkulong wala, ako ay majkasia.” AnaMer, the head nurse who accompanied us from the hospital, translates, “She says she doesn’t need anything; she is content.”

I realize that it’s true. They don’t need anything. They have hope. It’s why they send their children to school. It’s why they teach them English. It’s why they brought them to us. It’s the hope that their children have it better. And I keep thinking that it’s possible that we’ve helped raise her level of contentment by treating her daughter’s cleft lip and palate. We exchanges kisses and hugs. But we will see them on Saturday. They’ll be coming to clinic.

As it turns out, all but six of our patients return to the hospital for a final check-up before we check-out. There’s a giddiness among our team; the doctors, with lab coats over their signature Rotaplast t-shirt and khakis, are reunited with the patients they treated a few days earlier. In the short hours when patient and doctor were together initially, a life was changed. A disfigurement corrected, and what could have been a lifetime of embarrassment, shame and exclusion was put on a different course entirely. The parents and children are very grateful. One of the older children shakes the hand of every person wearing a Rotaplast shirt.



Jelah sits in a plastic chair. A doctor, using a flashlight, sits opposite her, looking into her mouth, examining his work on her cleft palate. This doctor, like the others, is impressed with the children’s rapid healing. He marvels at Jelah’s progress. I stand nearby wishing I could be there in a few weeks, months, to witness these faces after more significant healing and to see these children settle into their new image. I snap a few pictures over the doctor’s shoulder of a very brave Jelah sitting in her chair. Sammy is with them. He asks me when we will meet again. “I don’t know,” I say, “hopefully someday.”

In the end we admitted 74 children and performed 124 procedures – that’s 74 children whose lives will be different because of us. As many as 148 parents can smile a little more broadly when they see their children off to school or watch them playing in the yard. Almost 300 grandparents and countless aunts and uncles, cousins, neighbors and friends will be more contented because a little one they love will have a better life. And then there’s us, the 30 volunteers, who get to leave this place knowing that this is what we did and that our work will endure, enabling these children to live better than they could have before.

Photos...

For photos check out my Flickr page.

On the plane, everyone asks us – the group of Americans, two Aussies and a Kiwi all wearing khaki pants and white shirts – why we are going to the Philippines. The woman who sits behind me asks if we are Homeland Security. When we tell them that we are on a medical mission, that we are fixing children’s cleft lips and palates, they thank us and offer advice that they think will serve us in Bago City, fruit to try, candies to look for, foods to sample. It’s sugar-land, they say.

After taking a group picture, gathered around a banner on the tarmac outside the airplane we’re escorted to our vans. The poverty of the place is immediately apparent. A young man stands at the sliding door of our van, offering a stump that used to be a hand in a plea for money from the right-off-the-plane westerners.

The city could have been less than welcoming, even inhospitable. The air is heavy with muddy dampness made thicker by the black car exhaust being coughed out of the public jeepnies, the tricycles – mopeds with sidecars, trucks piled high with sugarcane, taxi cabs and private cars. Pigs and fowl and fish and fruit and pickled eggs lay in the open polluted air in stalls along the roadside. We certainly stand out, inside the hospital and out. The Philippines could have been an unwelcoming place, had it not been for the people. The people – catching a glimpse of us as we pass in the store or in the hotel lobby – smile through closed mouths as their eyes follow us as we pass. They never fail to return a smile. Teenaged girls take pictures of us from across the room and flash peace signs when we take a photo of them. Parents take their children’s wrists and make them wave hello to us. And everyone uses ma’am to address us (which sounds a lot like “mom” given the accent.)

You Can Come Back but You Can't Go Back...

You come back. Everything’s the same but nothing’s the same. It’s hard to come back from two weeks away. There is change, even if you don’t feel it. I am colored by experience. I am as influenced by my experience as I am by where I live or have lived, who brought me up, and what I learned in school. Even the smallest thing has an influence. We are what happens to us. So, I have to imagine that leaving for somewhere literally on the other side of the world in itself is something extraordinary. Though its reverberations haven’t been a tsunami, I believe the wave of experience is still washing over me. And what I have seen, who I have met, and who has touched my life and whose lives I have touched will stay with me. I will keep them with me.

I feel like I have been laid up for the past two weeks, coming out of a shell. Except my shell was first a Philippine Air Line jet and second a hotel that smelled like sage, I think, and had geckos attached to the ceilings in the hallways at night. At least my room was air conditioned.

I keep telling everyone. In retrospect, it was a great experience. While I was there it was a smelly hospital, a polluted city, early mornings and bad food. But we did something good. Really good.

There were times I felt dispensable. This mission could have gone on without me. A mother would thank me only because I had the same complexion as the surgeons who fixed her child’s cleft lip or palate. I would take her hand in both of mine. Then I’d ask if I could take a picture.

We went to visit the house of one of our patients, Jelah. She is six. We actually rode with when they were discharged from the hospital. We were with them the van on the muddy unpaved roads in-route to their village in the mountains. We passed Jelah’s school. I thought her house must be nearby but I didn’t want to van-ride to end. What was I supposed to do once we were there? They hadn’t been home in days; they had been sitting by their daughter’s bedside in the hospital. I guess she didn’t go to school that week. I wonder what the children in her class will think when they see her, cleft repaired with dark crusty stitches holding it together. She didn’t smile at all while we were there. I hadn’t seen her smile even once in the hospital. I wouldn’t have smiled either if I were her. I would have been scared witless. I was always a scared kid, especially when it came to strange people and doctors. And if strange people dressed as doctors bent down to take me from my mom down a hall through swinging doors, I damn-well would have been crying too.

Her mom asked me if I had any children’s books. Jelah had been reading English off the back of the bottle of rubbing alcohol. I didn’t. I had a stuffed cow and two sacks full of groceries.

When we went to her house, Jelah’s brow was perpetually furrowed. She didn’t speak, but I bet she was thinking, great, now these white people followed me from the hospital to me house.

I am going to send her books.

New House...

I realized that whenever I picture my family, I see them in the house that they don’t live in anymore. Talking on the phone, I pictured my brother sitting on the couch with his computer on his lap, in the living room. The dark living room with the floor to ceiling windows that I was always afraid I was going to catch glimpse of a stranger looking in. For some reason I was always scared in that house. But, then I realized that I didn’t actually know what it looked like where he was sitting.

My parents’ new house is actually pretty, but it doesn’t smell like our house. The garage smells like townhouse garage. The carpet actually looks like ours but they tell us the color is slightly different. The stairway is open and overlooks a small dining room, where our table and our piano don’t actually fit together, even though they are both in there. It would be the perfect spot for a bigger piano. If you took out the table. I was actually wondering before they moved whether my mother’s dream for a baby grand would be sustained. It looks like it’s still a possibility. Her office room is across the entry-way from the dining room. But the size of her office furniture creates a configuration that doesn’t exactly honor the chi of that small room.

The sink in the kitchen is on one side of an island that looks over the counter into the living room where our ginormous television now resides. It is the focal point, but makes for great viewing from the sink, especially if you aren’t wearing the glasses you ought to be wearing. We can only really sit in four of the six chairs at our old kitchen table because it now sits pushed against the window in the eat-in. It didn’t stop us from partaking of a game of scrabble.

My parents’ bedroom is great, big and pretty. And the room they stashed my brother in will serve until he moves out. Down in the finished basement, my father has gotten very excited about what he’s making his room, as my mother has her office on the main floor. He’s fashioning a hideout of sorts. He’s calling it “Lar’s Lair.” It makes me think of Dr. Evil. And considering his proclivity for invoking German words – “Frau!” – his love of (hairless) cats, and “number 2” I’d say we aren’t far off.

My family has lived in Wayne for 23 years. They still live in Wayne, just the other side of town. The “Valley Section.” But this changes everything. Different supermarket, different take-out, different bus stop back into the city. On Sunday, my guy and I drove around parts of our town that I had never visited before. Incidentally, he went to the university on that side of town. He was the one showing me around. It may as well have been a different town. It all felt so foreign. Again, I just wanted to go home.

Later in the afternoon, I took him to the other side of town. Down the turnpike, a left right before the diner, down the curvy hill, and right into our old neighborhood. I showed him the house that my first neighborhood friend lived in. Her parents still live there. She’s married now. My father helped her with a mortgage on the townhouse she bought. I turned the corner and could see my house down the block. There were three cars in the driveway. And all the windows were open. “Which room was yours?” my fella asked. “The one up there on the left.”

Before and After...

The last time I went away my dad told me he thought I was brave. Well, that was after. He told me he thought I was brave because all I did was wave goodbye as I walked to the gate. If he had told me that before, with that, I couldn’t do what you’re doing head shake that makes me question everything, I might have actually considered that there was something to think about. Something to be wary of. That I was getting into something big for which maybe I wasn’t ready. But I didn’t. And really, I got a kick in the ass. I was totally unprepared. But, it was the most important experience of my life. It was Spain and I went for a semester. I usually tell people I lived in Spain for six months, because “semester abroad” sounds so conventional and protected. It was really hard for me. I blame the language, I guess.

On one particularly difficult first night, I was in the bathroom of a restaurant. The brave face slipped off and I started crying. A tall girl with a dark bob and red lips tried to console me. I remember ranting, trying to convince her that I really was brave. That I have done things for myself that were courageous. I was really trying to convince myself. Stop crying, you’re such a baby; I am sure that’s what I was thinking. How are you going to go back out there with this wet, red face? But, I was talking about my surgery. Which seems so silly now but I thought that if I did that, I could do anything. If I would elect to go under the knife and have the courage to change something that I knew was holding me back in a profound way, I felt that made me brave. Well, Spain took that “if I can do this, I can do anything” place once it was all over. If I could spend six months in a foreign country, isolated by the language barrier and by my own self-perpetuating distance from people who would have been my friends, I could do anything.

So, I can do this.

In the front of my mind the worries are the flight, the length of it, in coach. Arriving run down and having to be on. The lack of sleep for the duration of the trip. Whether my aunt and uncle will include me when they make their plans for our days off. Those are the things I am worried about?

I have researched cleft lips and palates a little on the internet. It’s not easy to look at. I am going to see more than 100 children with this deformity. More than 100 children that we are going to save. This I am not worried about. How am I not worried about how I might react to them? How am I not worried about seeing them cry? Why aren’t I worried about crying this time?

I think about my surgery. It’s hardly an accurate parallel but it’s an interesting one that I just recognized. How I viscerally jumped at the chance to help these children. “I have to go, you have to take me with you,” I told my uncle two Junes ago. Maybe I am not so different from those children. However unwarranted, I felt trapped in a body I hated. I felt shunned, most likely by my own design. I felt deformed and vivid and spotlighted. I was held back, shrouded because of how I thought I looked. Too often, I asked, why me? I hated myself.

I can’t imagine what these children’s lives have been like so far. They live in a society that conjures images of curses when a child arrives, beautiful and new, with a hare lip. I’ve seen it reported that these children will live their lives marginalized, handicapped and deformed. I love them already.

I am told that the Philippine people have some of the warmest hearts in the world. I actually know a handful, and I can corroborate that assertion. I imagine that in spite of their ordeal, these children, and their families will be smiling, before and after.

A Shot in the Arm...

I just got a shot in each arm. They are sore. I’ve gotten the first in a series of vaccinations against hepatitis A and B, mandated by the organization I will be traveling with to the Philippines in less than two short months. I am going to the Philippines on a mission with a group of doctors and laypeople who are donating their time and expertise to treat children with cleft lip and palate. Surgery.

On this trip, all the non-medical volunteers are assigned a duty. I campaigned for and was awarded the responsibility of photojournalist.

Another shot in the arm.

I’ve started writing query letters, for lack of a better word, to local publications who might want to assign me to cover this “local girl goes to far away land to do something good” story. I have always been intimidated by the query/assignment/asking-for- permission-to-write-for-a-publication-that-someone-might-actually-read process. But I realized, surprise, I am a professional writer. I write and I get paid for it. It’s what I do everyday. So why can’t I parlay that into writing in a print medium? There’s no reason why I can’t. And my friend Violet said the only way I could fail at this would be by doing nothing. I guess that’s true in life in general.

So yesterday, I got nervous. I saw headlines, in my mind of course. A group of Americans who were in the Philippines doing volunteer work with local children were the victims of…” I can’t fill in the blank in writing. But you better believe my imagination has no problem. But, it’s not like I am not going to go so I’d just better get over it. This will give you an idea of what I’ll be doing:

On October 8th, I will board a plane at LaGuardia Airport. Two days, five planes, and a bus ride later I will arrive in Bago, a small Philippine city. I’ll be one of a few lay-people assisting a team of doctors who will treat at least 100 local children born with cleft lip or palate.

Our team of 31 doctors and volunteers will spend the better part of two weeks holed-up in a treatment hospital where we will tend to children, before, during and after their surgery. Many of our patients will have traveled great distance, having endured considerable heartache, bringing them to the door of our temporary clinic, awaiting surgery that will change their lives.

Cleft lip and palette are two of the most common birth defects in the world. But, in countries like the Philippines, the condition often goes uncorrected. In the United States, healthcare providers and the public healthcare system subsidize the cost of reconstructive surgery. These programs are often not present in developing countries. And if left untreated, these children are shunned and ridiculed, often denied an education, forced to stay in their homes. They are also prone to serious upper respiratory problems, hearing loss, speech and dental problems.

Our trip is being run by Rotaplast International, a non-profit dedicated to bringing this surgery to children worldwide. Since 1992, the organization has visited 16 countries on 111 missions, serving 10,042 children. This is not the only organization that is sending volunteers overseas to aid people in need. “Voluntourism” is an emerging trend with an estimated 75,000 Americans traveling overseas to take part in this type of short-term mission, according to the International Volunteer Programs Association. Reports suggest that catastrophic events like 9/11, the Asian tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina have contributed to an up- tick in interest in voluntourism.

But what attracted me to this trip – one which I believe is a once in a lifetime experience - is the opportunity to go to the extreme - giving my two-weeks vacation to work in a field hospital during monsoon season in a tropical nation with the goal of doing something that will forever alter the lives of these children and their families. I believe this experience will change me as much as it will change the lives of the children we will be treating.

A Note, A Chord, A Melody, A Song, A Symphony...

I’ve always lived life as a series of interludes. A short combination of moves that leads to the next dance. And then that dance becomes a movement piece as well. I was never present in the interlude. I was always trying to get through, to the next thing. Not sure I’ve ever thought of life in chapters. I guess I could: There’s the childhood chunk (which is further divided by the chasm dug by the move), which segued into the bit called adolescence also known as the state of perpetual annoyance, then there’s those college years, followed by post-college confusion, which leads us the relatively even-keeled present. But every proclamation I make, every lowest common denominator to which I seek to reduce, seems too simple. I have realized that my life – every life - is up, down, around, peaks, valleys, and raging rivers. Clawing, crying, wandering, wading. It doesn’t follow a thin black line. I wouldn’t have it any other way. And I wouldn’t want to equate life with anything as tame as a book that could be closed or a dance that could end when the music stops. But, it’s chapters to which I keep referring.

But, it’s the beginning of a new chapter. I have offered this repeatedly in recent weeks. To each member of my family, independently, I have said this. It feels like everyone is at a crossroads. Scripting is in progress but clauses are being written. And whatever the change - a sought-after opportunity, an anticipated rite of passage, a roadblock sending us down a different path, by way of elements completely out of our control - on their behalf, I have looked upon it as a new start. I am nothing if not woefully optimistic. Actually, I am not woeful.

My sister has been accepted in a teaching certification fellowship in the Bay Area. As part of her education, she had to find a teaching job. After interviews and a door or two shut, her job offers came through. Two of them. She’s opted to work at a diverse progressive school, the type of place she’d been hoping to find. Another school, a ritzy one only for girls, also offered her a position and some more attractive benefits. She made her choice, and will make the necessary sacrifices to afford the potential opportunities she sees the Saint will offer. I hear myself in my head, cheering for her the way my mom did at softball games. Two syllables – Go Mel!

My little brother graduated from college. This was a couple months ago. But still. He’s back in the Tri-state and looking for a job. I feel like saying, “welcome to your life.” But maybe I just want to welcome him back into mine. We haven’t lived in the same place since 1996. My mother said that after he came into the city on night and went to a bar with a roof-deck, that she got the sense he thought he could get used to this. I remember when I worked at my dad’s mortgage company for a few months over one summer. It was the first time I realized that life, and friends, and laughing didn’t end when college was over. There were three girls who worked with him. They were fun. They had fun. I want my brother to stay here.

And then there’s that place we lived, back when we resided under one roof. My parents are planning on selling the house. My dad’s started a new career and they don’t really need all that space. We’ve lived there since 1985. I mean, I remember moving in. I remember it. I remember my mom made friends for me with Jill because she lived around the block and I didn’t have to cross any streets to get to her house. Jill got increasingly grouchy as the years progressed. When she drove me to high school each morning, we didn’t speak. But, as of late, I’ve known my parents were looking at condos or townhouses. But I just knew they were looking at them, not for them. But, when my mom said, “We’re thinking of selling the house,” in this I am sorry to break it to you kind of tone, I felt like I should be sad. And I was. For a minute, before I realized it was just a house. I also remembered that for a great many (too many) years after we moved into that house that I still always felt displaced. I remember crying one time, sitting on the huge king bed in my parents’ room. I was probably 13 or 14, one of those years during which I suffered considerable teenaged angst. I said, “I want to go home.” I don’t know what I meant by that. I was home; I was in the house that my family lived in. So maybe it was a metaphysical thing, an existential dislocation. But still. I loved reacquainting with the house’s smell every summer after eight weeks away at camp. And my mother, in her spot at the head of the table, every morning as the sun streaming through the green leaves in the backyard and into the kitchen. My mom said she’s ready. She doesn’t want to clean out the house. The clutter is getting to her, even though it’s confined to the basement. She’d rather just move.

So, it’s the beginning of a new chapter. It’s the cliché I keep using. (Clichés are sometimes underrated, they’ve become such because they express the sentiment so perfectly.)

As for me, as I enter my 30th year, I am happily dancing during this interlude. I can’t define this time by giving it a chapter number or title. But the song that’s playing is harmoniously peppered with notes of contentment and the dance is exciting.