As soon as I got on the plane to Chicago, a drunken doctor sat down beside me. Talked a lot. He was an alcoholic. I couldn't understand a word he was saying due to the plane noise and his own mumbling. Said he was Polish, first generation crossing - not a clue what that means. Crossed the Delaware with Washington? Couldn't be that. He would have been the first to fall out of the boat. It didn't last long. After eating brunch, mine included, he fell dead asleep. I had already gone to the earphones and was looking out at the clouds.

Wow.

What is it with clouds? So majestic, so powerful. The perspective of looking down on them, with the ground as their background seems to change everything. Like looking through one of those 3-D viewers. The sun bounces off clouds with colors, ones seen in painted landscapes. Arizona mountain hues. And how can something appear so solid when it's really mere wisps of air.

Suddenly my new doctor friend interrupts me. He's come up for air. Some story he started telling in which he qualified his age as 47, looking me up and down and saying I must be in my 30's. I quickly responded that I was 48. He soon drifted off as I turned my attention back to the clouds and suddenly wondered, "am I 48?" I never did well with numbers in my head, let alone this new complexity of dates. Not enough fingers. It took awhile, but I finally decided that I was indeed 48, but I wouldn't have bet on it.

Before I knew it I had drifted asleep to the drum of the airplane. I awoke to a bell and a stewardess voice informing us we were about ready to land. Half-awake I quickly looked out the window in hopes to have a look at Wrigley Field, but to no avail. I tried the other side, but I was in a wide body plane. I'm looking over six seats to my right. No Wrigley Field today. I look at my watch; the game is probably already over.

We are beginning to land. I never realized so many people in Chicago had pools in their backyards. After we landed the drunken doctor shakes my hand and
strikes up a conversation with the people behind us.

I'm in Chicago.

Somehow I came alive in the Chicago airport. I was filled with a sense of new energy. Energy I have recently longed for in Raleigh, North Carolina. Do you suppose it's the charisma of the mid-west? Suddenly faces I had never seen before looked familiar. As if some of them were once sitting in one of my high school classes with me. An odd feeling. I swear I saw Diane. She gave me her dog tag to wear in the 6th grade. Out of the blue, leaning against a post, waiting for my delayed flight to Cedar Rapids, I became overwhelmed with the feeling that I was homesick for Chicago.

 

 

 

 

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