“Into the great wide open..
Under a sky of blue”
-Tom Petty
In the absence of moonlight, the summer lake house had been pitch dark when we arrived. The five of us had made a spontaneous late-night decision to drive from the northern suburbs of Chicago to Michigan City, Indiana. Now, as dust particles dance in the glow of the morning sun streaming through the windows, I wake up in the large room known as the “dorm.” In other far too small single beds, three of my friends are refusing to acknowledge the start of the day.
The bed squeaks as I swing my feet onto the floor and walk outside to the concrete patio. The house sits on top of a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. The cool morning air has not yet given way to the sun’s warmth. Peter is already up, coffee in hand. Slowly, the rest of the crew makes their way outside to sit on the stone steps that wind down to the street; Lake Michigan and the beach just on the other side. Hungry, we dig into a box of day old Dunkin Donuts brought from home.
It is the summer after our high-school graduation and we are at Peter’s summer house for a few days. A weekday or weekend? It doesn’t matter. Every day now feels the same. High school is behind us, yet college still feels far ahead in the distance. For the moment, there are no homework assignments, or grades to worry about. The ninety-minute drive to the beach house is as much a declaration of our growing independence as it is a fun forty-eight-hour getaway to squeaky white sand and mid-summer sun.
Still in our shorts and sweatshirts from yesterday, we eat the donuts and drink bad coffee. We talk about the Cubs and summer jobs. We retell inside jokes and repeat favorite movie lines. The afternoon will be filled playing catch on the beach, with the Cubs game on the radio, and cooling swims out to the sandbar. Our personal journeys lie ahead, but for the moment, we are carefree and at ease.
The memory of drinking coffee on the patio before spending the day on the beach is still vivid thirty years later. The cool rock on the back of my legs. The bitterness of that flavored coffee. The hot sand squeaking under my feet. My shoulder, sore from throwing the baseball all day long. The sun’s heat burning my back while lying on a sandy blanket. Swimming to the sandbar. Nowhere to be, nowhere to go. My future completely unwritten.
I didn’t recognize the significance of that day, or that summer, in real-time. I guess that’s the nature of being young and feeling immortal. Maybe it’s the slow and gradual accumulation of responsibilities that come with a job or marriage or children, that enable us to appreciate the days when we could just lie in the sand and bake in the sun. That summer, listening to the Cubs game on the radio with friends, the weight of future responsibilities had not yet entered our world.
Thirty years later, I am, once again, at a place in my life where things are yet unwritten. After 13 years as a pulmonary critical care physician, I chose to start working part-time in July. I have already encountered a few hiccups and speedbumps along the way, but this time I am able to appreciate the freedom and opportunities that lie ahead.
I am attending a TEDMED conference this week. Within the overarching theme “Limitless,” the talks highlight issues of medicine, both directly and tangentially. I am eager to see which talks will directly apply to me and what I can bring to the table. What mix of critical care medicine, parenting, water polo, and writing brief narratives stories related to those topics might spark a conversation with my colleagues? I am no longer a seventeen-year old kid lying in the sun, with no real responsibilities, but my future does require a similar shift in my mindset. And as I hear Tom Petty’s voice singing in my ear, I am focusing, not on what limits me, but on how limitless the possibilities are.