Smile, You're Traveling!

1100 Hrs. LaGuardia Airport
I am enroute to Houston via a connection in Chicago. But it rained a bit this morning with some lightning, so they closed down airport fields and now all the flights before mine are backed up. They have pushed mine back by 45 minutes, but there’s a lot of metal to get in the air before they move flight 325 out of here. (Or, as I overheard some too-cool-for-the-boardroom guy tell his friend, “Flight three and a quarter.”) This puts my connection in Chicago in jeopardy. Why should I care so much? This is someone else’s dime, someone else’s time. I just don’t want to spend all day in these malls of human confusion.

Where I’m sitting – in a gate area that is not mine – I am surrounded by a gaggle of semi-good looking human forms (church group? hand models?), in a rush to get to where they’re getting. The melodramatic small-talk and posturing is worth a chuckle.

This mission to Texas makes me feel like the character in Reservoir Dogs to whom Travolta and Jackson go to fix things. I can’t remember the actor’s name, but I think they called the guy “The Wolf.” I am being brought down to fix things, prevent problems, and get this event up and running. I've got so much experience at this by now I can do shows like this with my eyes closed and one ball tied behind my leg.

This fucking plane had better not crash. Due to a glitch in communications that still hasn’t been explained to me, my ticket was inadvertently canceled Saturday night. The über-boss on this project, Nina, had to go online at 2200 hrs last night and get me a new round-trip ticket. At a cost $250 higher than my original booking. So, I spent about 24 hours (unknowingly) un-booked. I was NOT ON THIS flight for awhile. It had better not crash now. I don’t want anyone to have to deal with that set of “what ifs.”

1409 Hrs ORD – Chicago
I’m in O’Hare now. Just as I thought, we landed about 25 minutes after my connection to Houston took off. Now, I’m booked on another flight, that won’t take off for another three hours.

While I was wandering around this sun-bright terminal a short time ago, trying to figure out where I was and where I needed to be, I stopped in front of a bank of arrival/departure monitors. Eleven of them had the proper information on their screens, and one was showing Jeopardy. I tried to snap a picture with my phone-camera, but it came out blurry, so you’ll just have to trust me.

I have already eaten. For some reason, I walked right past Wolfgang Puck’s Airport Café (a safe bet for safe food) and about another hundred yards later wandered into some Fox Sports theme restaurant. Hear it again: A Fox... Sports... theme restaurant. There were about nine food items on the menu, and each of them will come to your your arteries' house, pull them out into the street, and choke 'em till they're good and dead. Sports grill food in Chicago is a redundancy.

The menu was well-appointed with caricatures of Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and the other wife-beating, child-hating dunces from that football programming. I sat at a table near the "Bears Helmet/Black Hawks Hockey Stick" display. There was one of each. If you’re thinking of coming to Chicago, you really should plan on seeing it. It’s amazing. And so unlike any other hockey stick or Bears helmet you’ll ever see.

I ate a bacon-cheddar burger and listened to the wonderful disco/rave music on the in-restaurant sound-system. At one point, a disco/rave version of “Livin’ On A Prayer” came on. For reals, yo.

Harvey Keitel. That’s who I meant before. Harvey Keitel was the actor in Reservoir Dogs. And you know what? I just realized – it wasn’t Reservoir Dogs that I meant. It was Pulp Fiction.

1913 Hrs en route to Houston
Here we are, up in the air, crossing the heartland at 33,000 feet. My rowmate invading my armspace and footspace.

I’m thinking a lot about today being the anniversary of our first miscarriage. First pregnancy, nearly three months in, and it ended just like that. On 4-24-01 S had seen the signs that something might be wrong and we went to the OB/GYN.

S was on the table and the doctor began the sonogram. I was in my usual seat in front of the screen. Because it was my usual seat, I knew immediately that what I was seeing was wrong. I’d been used to locating the blinking LED blip that was our baby’s heartbeat. On that day, it wasn’t there. The doctor didn’t say anything right away. But I knew.

Right there in the middle of my life came 10 seconds where my time stopped.

The world stopped moving. Everything froze. I’m sure I wasn’t even breathing myself. I knew the horrible truth, S didn’t, and everything in the world stopped as ten seconds took an hour. I looked in her eyes and I wanted her never to find out. I didn’t want her to ever feel what I was feeling.

I don’t remember exactly how the doctor told us, just that she began with, “OK.” She spoke briefly, and said to meet her in her office after we’d had some time to be alone and S got dressed.

The next day, 4-25-01, we had to go back for a D&C. Brutal. When I was finally let into the exam/procedure room, I found S resting on the table in a paper robe. On one side of the room was a garbage bin overflowing with bloody towels, discarded paper, and used disposable instruments. My wife has never looked more young and vulnerable than at that moment. I lost my shit. I don’t know which of the 75 or so painful thoughts I was processing did it to me, but I kneeled down and cried with my head gently resting on her chest.

I’ve never gotten over the pain of that day and the suffering of the weeks and months that followed. I don’t think I ever will, nor do I think I’m supposed to. Pain like that doesn’t let go of you. It holds on. Life goes on and life gets better and good things (even great things) happen, but that kind of thing stays on you. It’s a battle scar.

It’s especially weird to process this now, knowing that if none of that had ever happened we wouldn’t have H. That’s just the way it is. Without that, no this. I am not an “everything happens for a reason” guy, but knowing how H is the one boy in this world who could possibly have fit our family and become our son leaves me at once shattered, healed, confused, and resolved about all the pain that came before.

I don’t know if those are the words I’d choose if I were thinking things more fully through before typing. I’ll get it right later.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about, on old 4-24.

When I get to Houston, around 2130, I’ll take the $50 taxi ride to the hotel, and have just enough time to check in, get to my room, and throw my bag down before heading to one of the conference rooms for a 2230 meeting. I was told they’d order me some food when I get there, so cheers to that. I could kick myself in the ass for not getting out to GNC yesterday or Saturday for my MET-RX bars. That shit I ate at the FOX Sports place has left me feeling hungry again, yet with a greasy ball of something sitting in my stomach. Coffee please! I have been traveling for eleven-and-a-half hours already, the day is almost over and I haven’t started working yet.

And this time, when I get to the hotel, I’ll remember to get out the Sharpie and write my room number on my hand. No more wandering the hallways of huge hotels, cursing my A.D.D. and crappy memory! This dunce has learned.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Someone's Gonna Die from the album Burning Ambitions (A History of Punk) by Blitz

Comments

[Figlet]

Oh TommyHimself...this piece ought to be published.

[the mrs.]

this morning at h's tumbling class i heard a rave/disco version of "mary had a little lamb." from the sound of it, i think she might have also had a little ecstasy. it was nuts.