I got to spend the night in Chicago, thanks to a delayed flight.

This could have been a true joy—my brother-in-law lives here, as do two of my nieces. It is also one of my favorite cities, full of city-ness. There’s more traffic than I like, but what the hay, it’s a city. Alas, it was just time in the airport, the shuttle, and a small room with no view.

Our exterminator gave me a great suggestion whenever going to a hotel or AirBNB or what-have-you. Take a flashlight and carefully check the mattress along the seams and underneath for signs of bedbugs. He told me horror stories about how difficult it is to get rid of them. And the bites. The horror of the tiny bites.

He also suggested a UV flashlight. I do not want to shine a UV flashlight at a hotel. Lots of other things show up under black light. I don’t want to know.

Except I also don’t want bedbugs. He told me what the extermination process is like. One method is to bring a heating device in and heat the entire house up to a temperature that kills them. The other is a chemical cloud that is toxic to all life. 

I also don’t want that. 

Hello, Amazon.

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I’m in a Comfort Inn shuttle now, scooting through the streets around O’Hare. This road has four lanes, now suddenly two. 

My life had five lanes for a while. I was coaching cross country, had just become a father/husband, was writing a novel, was a middle school science teacher, and was the assistant director for my summer camp in Vermont. 

So, actually five lanes. I was pretty good at merging, but there was a lot of traffic sometimes. A few fender benders. 

My novel became a shoulder. I lost it when our computer crashed and I wasn’t using a reliable back up system. 

The novel wasn’t really good, but it was the start of the career as a writer that I wanted. 

Next, my lane as a coach became an off ramp I didn’t take. Then the assistant director lane. So, I had two lanes, two paying careers closed and my dream career with a sign that said, “Shoulder closed next several thousand miles”.

No regrets here. Like my father, I love to drive. Two lanes is plenty. I’d gladly take one, as long as it was the fatherhood/husband lane. 

And I have, now that I’m retired. As long as I can, until they take the keys away, I’ll keep driving.

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We are in the airport. Seventeen minutes to keep writing here at the crowded gate. 

Here is the breakdown of how people here are spending this time. Twenty-one people, not counting me. Eight on their phones. One reading. Nine just sitting or standing. Three just left. 

I couldn’t count fast enough.

So many quick memories as we walked to our gate. 

Passing the duty-free shop. I like to stop at the duty free shop.

Passing walls of vending machines. I remember cigarette vending machines everywhere in the seventies. Motels, hotels, rest stops, bowling alleys. Right at my eye level were the candy cigarettes. They were only a quarter.

Not true, of course. Big tobacco was not that egregious. But close. 

My mom has switched to vaping. When I buy her cartridges, I get fifty cents off per gallon of gas at my next fill up, per pack of four. 

I’ve considered starting to smoke just so I can save money on gas, which is I think their point.

My dad had me take a few puffs of a Pall Mall when I was five. We were watching the Brady Bunch. I didn’t enjoy the puffs, but tapping the cigarette on the ashtray was very cool. Tippy tap. Tap tap taparoo.

My dad loved to drive. He really loved to drive. When the Lewy-Body Dementia (LBD) started taking over his life he had to give up driving. He’d had to give up cigarettes when he was fifty after his second open-heart surgery. The two hardest parts of his life, I guess.

Other than coming home and finding his first wife in bed with a friend of his. Apparently she said in that moment, “Give me a minute, dear.” 

Other than his ten years with LBD.

Of the cigarettes: “If you don’t give them up,” his doctor had said, “you’re going to die.”

So, he did, he gave them up right then. Cold turkey. 

He tried to give his first wife up cold turkey, but such decisions are difficult. Especially for a man that forgave without a second thought.

You can’t give up dementia. 

I’m a lot like my dad, but I don’t forgive Lewy-Body Dementia. 

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We are on the plane. 

There are small curtains that separate business class from economy. They are maybe blue, checkered with white dots, and pathetic. One is broken and the last clip is off the track. 

Speaking of tracks, I’m listening to “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan on repeat and will continue to for the entire two hours. I want to see what happens if I force feed my brain a song I like.

Or I wish I could do this. I did not download the song. My music life is in the Cloud and I’m above the clouds right now. 

Those clouds are one solid expanse of white from here, so, the Cloud. I can’t see even one song in them though I’m told there are millions. 

I could tell you what “stick season” is, if I knew. I could look it up, but that is so overkill for a detail that doesn’t really matter. My life is full of too many details already. I refuse to look it up.

It refers to the time between fall and winter in Vermont which apparently is not an exciting time. It is “miserable” as the Google AI told me.

Forgive my willpower. I looked it up.

There is a temporal incongruity here which you might have noticed. How did I look up the meaning of “stick season” if I am not connected to the internet?

The answer — I looked it up ahead of time. I built this entire segment in my head during the time right before and during takeoff when all large electronic devices were to be stowed away.

The cloud segue is too good to give up.

Of driving, “Stick Season” starts with lyrics about a former girlfriend driving to visit and then at the exit sign she “kept on driving straight and left our future to the right”. I love that line.

My dad once drove six hundred miles from Indiana to Pennsylvania to visit us and only stayed for two hours. He was delivering trailers to a small town near us, so the trip wasn’t just to visit us. 

Still he did only visit for two hours. He had to get back on the road. I think that’s how he managed his mental health.

Whatever frustration I had with his decision is long gone. That was two hours with him before LBD destroyed his ability to talk and walk. Before it took his life.

It never took his smile. Right to the end, he had this grin you just had to love.

That smile is not just in my memory. It’s in the mirror. My kids have it. My sisters have it.

I know it’s also in that great big cloud in the sky.

In fact, I just downloaded it.

Here he is with my sister, Cara. More than anyone, she had his smile. 

I had similar moments with both of them before they passed where we were driving together in a car and having a conversation about the death they knew was coming for them. Just the two of us. 

They were both scared. I was scared. 

Yet in both cases, we found moments to laugh together. I don’t know what we laughed about, but I remember the feeling. 

And the grins. 

The miles roll past on this highway, and while I can, I’ll keep driving. 

And laughing. And smiling. 

And looking in the mirror.