Filling Up My Community Cup

Having finished my spring semester, I decided to take a quick trip to Chicago to visit some friends. It's pretty easy to get to Chi-town, if the train runs on time. Thankfully for me, it did on this trip. My purpose for this trip wasn't so much to sight-see because I've been to Chicago a lot. So much so that I've started to lose count. One year when I lived in Seattle I had to go to Chicago three times in a matter of six months. So for this trip, the purpose was simply to see friends and to fill myself with familiar people. What is coincidental about the two friends that I visited is that I met them both in Seattle. One, I met as an undergrad, the other, I met just a few years ago. However, they both filled me up to the brim with a sense of community. My friend from college isn't someone I see very often, and we drank and noshed and he and his wife made me an amazingly delicious dinner. And then I played some with their two year old. The rest of my time in Chicago was spent with a good girlfriend of mine and her husband - although it was mostly just she and I taking walks, talking, lounging, eating and drinking, and talking and lounging

Saw her on our walk, she was
glad I was with friends
too.

more. It was simply fabulous. I have realized that, even though I now comfortably call Lansing my home, I still have a home wherever my friends are. And these are friends who know me, and I feel known and recognized by. There is laughter and community. I am starting to have that here in Lansing, yet there is something so nourishing about being around people who know me - really know me - regardless of where we are. It was the trip I needed to fill up my community cup enough as I start in on my summer semester, and also to allow me to settle even more into the Midwest.