Chicago-O'Hare

Here I am again at Chicago-O’Hare. This is where I landed last September after that long slow overnight drive with MS from New Orleans to Memphis during the hurricane evacuation, making it to Memphis just in time to get on a 6 a.m. flight to Chicago so that I could join my dad on a long cramped flight to France.

This is where late last summer, coming back from my cousin’s wedding, I had a big teary frustrating fight via cellphone and in front of my family with the Insane Republican Med Student. Why didn’t I break up with him right then?

I flew through Chicago-O’Hare on my way home from visiting MM in Minneapolis and on previous trips to Maine and other places. I know this airport like a second home, but the ironic thing is that I’ve never actually been in Chicago proper. I’m reading a good book set in Chicago called Crossing California by Adam Langer—the reference is to California Avenue in Chicago.

Tonight it seems I will be sleeping in another airport, Boston-Logan, because I’ll get there at 1 a.m., after the last bus for tonight has left and six hours before the first bus of the morning.

It’s a hassle, but I like the free, disconnected feeling of being in transit.