Planes and Trains and Memory Lanes

Thank you to Wicky for the info on saving my blog (saving as in keeping a copy--not saving from poor grammar or sophomoric content and certainly not saving in the Baby Jesus way). It is appreciated!  The thought of losing my ramblings is enough to send me to therapy.  I am proud to be your first wife of a wife!

Update on Lucy: Oh my my my.  She is healing very nicely, thank you for asking.  I can't say that the surgery slowed her eating down very much.   We will be out of pain pills today, so that should be telling.  Now that I've been able to take a gander in that little mouth of hers, I have personally witnessed that she basically has no teeth on the lower right side.  I am not exaggerating.  No teeth--just a lot of gums.  How did we miss all those teeth falling out of there? We didn't see any in her poop (and, trust me, we exam dog poop around here--we are professional dog poop inspectors).  We never saw any on the floor or in her bed or anywhere.  Perhaps there is a little pile of teeth hidden in some corner of the house.  Maybe Freckles at them and that's why her poop was so weird way back when.  Maybe the wife's been serving them to me--hidden in a ball of tofu or maybe in my bowls of cereal--in an attempt to get me to turn from my vegetarian ways....


BTW, here is visual evidence that Lucy sleeps with stuff animals in her mouth....the most likely culprit of her dental decay:
 
Thanksgiving.  How did we get to Thanksgiving so quickly?  Can it already that time of year when people ooze gratitude and throw boatloads of money at various business establishments? Where does the time go? Wasn't it just a week ago that the Packers were winning the Super Bowl and the snow plow guy was crashing into our garage door? Wasn't it just a few days ago that we were getting civilized? Alas, you avid readers already know that I am grateful about many things, so I'll skip that for today.  Instead, I shall speak of last weekend's stroll down memory lane.

The wife and I were in the Chicago suburbs last weekend for various events, including our beloved aunt's memorial service.  (It's all good--I said good bye to her three years ago, so I went to celebrate her life, not mourn her death. Hope that doesn't come off as cold or uncaring....as it is most certainly not what I mean.  I mourn for her children and send them heartfelt condolences.  But, for her I had smiles.)  On the way to the cemetery, I subjected the wife to yet another rendition of memory lane.  She's been tormented countless times with this tour--whenever we drive by my old stomping grounds, I narrate the trip, historic markers of the Addiverse.  As usual, I pointed out my junior high school, my orthodontist, my church, my grandparents' house, the gazebo, the factory where my aunt had worked.  I told her of the ubiquitous trains that always made you late, of living in the landing pattern of O'Hare, of riding my bike down the arteries of gravel alleys--the sounds of these three things make me giddy--there is nothing like a bike tire crunching on the gravel in the alley, hearing a train chugging down the tracks in the distance or the thunder of the jet roaring off the runway. I lamented about how the town's bowling alley had been turned into a church (a church!), how some of my favorite local landmarks were missing.  I recalled happy memories of Christmas Eves long ago, of visiting my family just blocks from my childhood home.  I explained how we would try to guess the color of the caboose and count the cars of the yet-another passing train. I took a long look at my grandparents home as we went by, as that is also where my mother, aunt and her children lived.  I paid due respects as we meandered toward my aunt's service.

When we got to the cemetery, I learned that my sister had done literally the same thing as she was driving, torturing--eer, I mean educating--her daughters and friends with the same stories of old.  Funny how we all tend to do that.  The wife will make fun of me and my sister for doing this, but she's just as guilty as we--I've heard the same stories about the same landmarks from her childhood......"there's where my brother lost all his holy cards while riding his bike to church...."  Guilty, as charged.

As we were standing in the cemetery chapel for the service, I could hear the horn of a passing train.  It gave me pause. It was loud.  It was a wee bit distracting. I realized I was out of practice--the others probably didn't even hear the train whistle.   While standing graveside, planes continued to fly overhead, this time toward (not away) from the runway.  I'm probably the only one who was looking up at the sky as much as I was looking down at the ground.  Those two minor things, those two things that everyone in town either no longer notices or hates with a passion, made me feel right at home.  The gritty colors, the factories, the soot....all part of "home," even though it's a home that hasn't existed for me in thirty years.  Although I wouldn't ever want to live there again and even though I've lived where we now live longer than anywhere else in my life, it is good to have somewhere in the world you can call "home."

They say "Home is where the heart is."  In my case, home is where the soot and the traffic and the noise and the grime is.  Home is where you get caught by yet another train--sometimes even two at a time.  Home is where you can see the landing gear of an approaching airplane or have to stop a conversation because you can't hear over the jet engines.  Home is where I can find a bowling alley that has been converted into a church. 

Happy Thanksgiving.  May you be home where your heart is.  May your heart be where your home is.