Back to Chicago: A Second Chance

My friend Lois and I went back to Chicago a year after she fell, face first, onto a Michigan Avenue street, replacing a girl’s weekend getaway for an overnight at Northwestern Hospital and sequestering in a hotel room at the Hampton Inn for the remainder of the weekend. We both boarded a plane home two days later. Lois to Sioux Falls with sutures over her right eye, a cast on her left arm, a chipped tooth, broken little finger on her right hand and a broken nose and rib. Me to Raleigh with visions stuck in my brain of my friend sprawled on the road with blood seeping out of her head. We both shared unpleasant memories of what was to be a fun trip.

I wrote a post about the accident.

So, we decided to repeat our weekend trip a year later, minus the fall and do all the things we had planned to do the year before.

Lois and I met almost 50 years ago when we enrolled in the same community college that offered a bachelor’s degree to diploma nurses. Besides being nurses, we have a lot in common, not the least is that we enjoy an irreverent sense of humor. Over the years, even though we moved to different states, our friendship deepened. The combination of our getting older, losing some mobility, and the reality that we have more time behind then ahead of us contributed to our bittersweet visit to the city that holds most of our mutual memories.

We arrived Saturday afternoon just in time to share a table under the tent sponsored by the Chicago Writers Association at the annual Printers Row Lit Fest. Last year, I took Lois’ place to sell her new book, Marv Taking Charge, while she rested back at the hotel. This time I brought a few copies of my old book, Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic. The fun lie in discussions with the passers-by and other authors sharing our tent rather than selling books.

We did some touristy things, such as: visit the Taste of Chicago, take the Chicago River Architecture boat tour, and have an after dinner drink at the Palmer House. We also sat outside the Starbucks on lower Michigan Avenue to people watch, listen to the din of the city traffic and appreciate that we made this trip, this second chance, together.