Home

I've been slackin' of late on documenting my adventure in the city.  For the handful that actually read this, I apologize.  What time I've not been busy with visitors or work, I've been too tired to think.  But that's what happens with this thing we call life.

Yesterday was a "home" day.  I haven't been feeling actually homesick, but there are things that I see or that happen that just make me think "home", and make me a little sad or lonesome for the familiar.  The constant news about the gulf and the pictures of the beautiful beaches I've known since I was too young to even remember make me extra sad - it's like I left Alabama and now I can't ever go back.  I can't go back to Orange Beach and sit on the blindingly white sand and see the blue-green water splash onto the shore.  It's now mucky sand and mucky water, and it's not like those years of the red seaweed or trash a hurricane blew in - it won't go away that easily.  But, then, we hear about it every day and there's little else to say, except I sure wish someone would have taken it seriously 2 months ago.

Another "home" thing yesterday was the heat.  I walked out at lunch and it was hot and sunny and humid - just like home.  It made me smile, even though it was sticky and sweaty and the car seat was scalding.  In the late afternoon, a storm came through.  This was not your typical little afternoon shower, this was a STORM; the kind that is defined in the sky like someone pulling a blanket up over your head.  You see the front edge, dark and menacing, coming in fast.  The wind was bending trees over as though they were made of rubber.  Limbs starting rolling across the ground, and then the rain hit.  Hit is a good word for it too - it was a hard, driving rain that slammed against the windows and brought traffic to a halt.

I had not left work yet, but my desk faces large, continuous windows across the front of the building, so I had a front row seat.  When it did let up enough to make a run for it, I did.  Friday afternoon traffic is bad enough; throw in some rain, downed power lines and trees, and a lot of people thinking the same as me (it's going to take twice as long to get anywhere), and it becomes a good time to have a book on tape, or learn French as you drift slowly through the streets.  Unfortunately, I had neither a book nor a "Learn to Speak French" CD in my car, so Edith Piaf sung me home instead.

Winding through Oak Park, around closed streets and utility workers, I saw a beautiful thing.  Something I had not seen in almost 2 months.  It caught me so by surprise that it brought tears to my eyes and I wanted to follow it until it stopped, and get out of my car and hug it and say "home!!!".  It was an Alabama license plate.  Mobile County.  It was beautiful.  Of course, I see the one that is still on my car since I haven't changed either plates or drivers license yet, but this was someone else here in the city far from home.  Were they having as much fun as I?  Did they miss the South?  Were they here to visit, or on a grand adventure like me?  Guess I'll never know, as they went straight on Lake as I turned on Harlem.  I little while later I saw a Mississippi tag, but it didn't feel the same.

The last bit of "home" for the day was at the Green Door Tavern.  It's a neat little place around the corner that is supposedly the oldest tavern in Chicago, was home to a famous speakeasy in the day, and still has the original green door from then, hence the name.  As I sat there enjoying a cold one, a man in a familiar orange shirt walked by.  No, not Auburn burnt orange, but close.  It was the brighter orange of the Florida Gators.  As he went by I said "War Eagle" and he stopped in his tracks.  We chatted a little about the SEC, and I lamented that I would not be able to see all of the games here.  He told me about Sully's, where they will carry any game you want.  Reminded me of the End Zone at home - dozens of TV's with every possible game every Saturday in the Fall.

So I got a large dose of home yesterday, and I can't wait to get it for real.  I'm flying to Nashville the weekend of July 4th, and hoping someone will pick me up and take me home.  Of course, someone also has to take me back to Nashville on Monday so I can come back to what has easily become a foster home, a surrogate, an adopted home.  And since it's 80 and beautiful outside, I'm going to get out there and meet a little more of it today.