At the end of the summer of 1986, I stepped into the elevator and traveled alone from the forty-sixth floor of Chicago’s Mid-Continental Plaza to the ground for the last time. For four years, I had worked in that gray rectangular office building that spans a full city block. Its exterior resembles graph paper—gray metal and concrete run up the building vertically and around it horizontally, forming squares. In between that metal and concrete, set back ever so slightly, are windows.

Some people ask how I became a world traveler. I guess I got it from my mother. She never told us to be curious or seek out new places, but she made anything possible.

I was the youngest of six kids. My dad left to marry our neighbor five doors down when I was in second grade, so though he was nearby, he wasn’t part of my everyday life. He belonged to my best friend now.