Go. Stay.

I am standing in front of the departure board at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, staring at the names of the cities: Quito, Warsaw, Riga, Dublin, Sofia, Madrid.

It is the morning of my departure back to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. I have been in Europe for three weeks, reuniting with friends, teaching, writing, hiking up mountains and down gorges, eating tissue paper-thin slices of jamón, drinking cafés con leches or cappuccinos through the day, and at night, vino tinto or wine made from the grapes I see on the hillside behind my friend’s house.

I have explored Seville and the Andalucian countryside, reignited my love of Viennese architecture and coffeehouses, found a place I could easily call home in a valley between the Alps and the Jura. I have friends here, amigos y amigas de mi alma, different from my US friends. The overlap in our Venn diagrams is smaller, but it is deeper.

I love Europe. I love it for its history, for its ankle-twisting cobblestone streets, its chaotic multi-party political systems, and its nationalized health care. I love it for its unhurried mealtimes and its vibrant street life, for its coffeehouses where people read newspapers and then lean in for earnest debate. I love these people who speak so many languages, both fluently and with accidental charm. (Yes, you, Poli: the fingers of your feet.)

And so, I stand here at the departure board at the Schipol Airport, scanning all these destinations, these places to explore, and electricity radiates from my solar plexus up through my chest and down my arms to my fingertips. It is the body rush I feel before I read in front of an audience, or when I crest a ridge and see a valley below, or when I think of someone I have loved, or love or may love.

I recognize the pleasure and pain of it. I know what it is telling me:

I want to go everywhere.

I can’t wait to get home.