The occasion was the birthday of my cousin and it was not as if I had not seen her for a long time -- family memorial services unfortunately bringing us together -- it was celebration of the fact she had become a hale and hearty, a healthy, 90, and even with that Round Trip from Hell, the flight upon which, it being rather short, i.e., NY-Chicago, one goes foodless, drinkless and pee-less, I was delighted we had managed the long weekend. The very air, the very flatness of the prairies -- that I loathed and vilified when young -- filled me with euphoric nostalgia, the moment I stepped out of awful O'Hare, that airport where any Gate you get assigned is a three-mile hike (whilst hauling a Wheelie.)
I had fantasized I would write Harriet a long poem, but that did not happen before I left NY as I was (not) enjoying a state of foggy un-wellness which turned out to be a stomach virus. That is another story: the prompt attention of my New York doctor on the phone and the medicine from a local pharmacy. But even as I felt off-color (it was sort of like a hangover) I could see that the extravagant Spring that had visited Manhattan, leaving Central Park the very loveliest I had even seen it, had also dallied on Chicago's North Shore. I felt soppy with delight upon seeing all that green, sort of like actually believing the overblown message on a Hallmark card.
I guess that is what happens when you are as ancient as I am. And that of course, is the Elephant in the Living Room -- what if this is my Last Trip? What if some more of us die and I Never See Them Again?
Once I had a cup of coffee at the hotel, these all-too-human speculations sort of trundled out of sight -- like overloaded wheelbarrows...
The hotel in Evanston was lovely,rehabilitation of the venerable hostelry that was the site of my Junior Prom. Those new buildings on the Northwestern campus looked good to me -- it had been, in memory, full of empty spaces where you had to trudge for miles (or at least city blocks) from building to building (as during that summer I was a "Cherub" at the School of Speech.) Northwestern students seemed as un-scruffy as ever, with shining cheeks and hair and an air of entitlement.
The very lovely party was in Winnetka, where I grew up. Family, friends, neighbors, the beautiful great-grandchildren of my cousin Harriet's. My cousin Paddy (daughter to Harriet) and my cousin Tom, whose brother, along with my brother and sister, have died in the past few years ( I take these milestones seriously) tirelessly ferried us by automobile from Evanston to Winnetka and back. I had forgotten one cannot live without a car in the suburbia of anywhere on the planet.
On Sunday evening, Manhattan looked gorgeous.
