Many logistical catastrophes, a number of metro and train rides and euro coins lost to fussy internet kiosks and international phone calls later, I find myself in Schiphol. The power of the mind is no joke. You let things shake you and more things will happen to shake you. Like a wound worried beyond healing.

The signs say "Schiphol: A World Unto Itself," and this is true. Schiphol has three hotels in the airport itself, and more within walking distance. 24 hour free wireless. Comfortable nooks for errant travelers to sleep in. Smiling 24 hour friendly multilingual staff. A board whereby hotel reservations can be made with the press of a button. Every airline under the sun. Toys for your weary children and quintessentially Dutch gifts for your distant parents. 7 trains an hour into the city. All the comforts of home available while you run back and forth from computer to the United desk, trying to book the soonest cheapest flight home.

I did not anticipate, though I should have, the impact that being back in this place would have on me. My father sends me a short email saying We are so glad you got there and maybe being in Amsterdam will help to center you. It is doing that, as I conduct a whirlwind tour of important places. But even at Schiphol, even on the train coming into the city, there was the warm stab to my heart, the low gray sky, the rain more of a mist, the blackishblue choppy mirror of the Ij-lake. Here (in the OBA, where I sit now, using free public internet for the first time in months), is the desk where the most beautiful transwoman I have ever seen tracks down for me a copy of The Trouble With Normal. Here is the curb where I sat chainsmoking at 3 in the morning picking glass out of my flipflops after my last night at the Bitterzoet, drenched in the sweat of my happiness and the beer of my cohorts. Here is the Albert Heijn where I stopped each morning on my way into the city to buy a foccacia paprika olijven. It is a relief, all of it, a cool floood of nostalgia and comfort. It is a comfort to be surrounded by Dutch, too. The breathy lilt of it. The cutest language.

Breathe, breathe.