Hope and Change Redux?

 Here we are, September 2020 nearly over, three and a half years into an appalling presidency. An exhausted nation has yet to endure the coming round of debates, a controversial Supreme Court justice appointment, a fraught presidential election...and then who knows what. One shudders.

     

Yet for me, glinting out from it all is a shiny sliver of hope: the grassroots, no-PACs campaign of Bryan Berghoef, Democratic candidate for House of Representatives, Michigan 2nd Congressional District.

Bryan Berghoef

 Holland, Michigan, at the far southern end of the district, is my home six months out of every year. I began summering here in 1965 at The Mooring, a small mom and pop resort. My husband and I bought a little house in 2008, right down the street from our long-ago resort playground, in what is known as the North Side, once considered a looser, more liberal and less desirable part of town. You may wonder, does 55 years of part-time residence give me license to comment on my social landscape? I would argue that my situation enables me to observe differently--more keenly. That for me, changes are more sharply delineated when noted year to year and decade by decade.

And I say that Holland has changed, big-time. Case in point: candidate Berghoef, who also happens to be the Reverend Berghoef, pastor at Holland UCC (United Church of Christ), one of the most liberal Protestant denominations. If you are a fellow Mooring alum (the resort closed in 1992), you're probably startled to learn that there would even BE a UCC congregation here, since you remember Holland as a historically hidebound corner of the world.

    

 If you are a first-time reader, you'll have to take my word: Holland, in religion and in politics, has been since its founding in 1847 one of the most conservative spots you are likely to find. Old-timers here remember: "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much". For years, Dutch has meant Christian Reformed and Republican. Michigan’s 2nd Congressional District has not elected a Democratic representative since 1933. (For background, see my earlier post, "View From Ford Country", August 24, 2016.)

Bryan Berghoef's activist congregation, which he established here in 2016, reflects the emphasis on social justice that I remember from my years growing up in a UCC counterpart in Webster Groves, Mo. In those days, our activism centered on racial equality and voting rights. Today, that has evolved into Black Lives Matter, along with vocal support for LGBTQIA equality and pushback against climate change, to name a few. Often the rallies and demonstrations are held in downtown Holland’s picture-perfect Centennial Park. Imagine! The Rev. Berghoef is often seen at the vanguard of these events. He doesn't preach there or on the stump, though, just as he doesn't bring politics to the pulpit.

Berghoef's spiritual journey must draw a few double-takes in these parts. He grew up in the Christian Reformed Church and was originally ordained in that tradition. He became distanced, however, as he saw that his own values no longer aligned with the exclusionary theological dicta he had heard all his life. Yet he has maintained friendly ties with his former church and is so admired that two of his noteworthy political endorsements come from retired leaders of Christian Reformed denominations. There's another from a prominent UCC scholar and theologian, plus a handful from labor unions. These range from Michigan AFL-CIO to Michigan Education Association.

     *     *     *

This post is not intended as a paean to the UCC or even to Bryan Berghoef. Principled, progressive stances are not the reserve of Christians or religious congregations overall or ethical humanist communities. People of good will are everywhere. But maybe you can see why, in a season of despair, I've taken heart. Even here, change is possible. Holland has been loosening its fetters over the past half-century. Now I am delighted that a person of Bryan Berghoef’s caliber has chosen to advocate for ALL citizens of southwestern Michigan. My only disappointment: I can't cast a vote for him. Legally I'm still a Missouri resident.

www.bryanberghoef.com

Sounds of the season

What triggers your most powerful association with Christmas? Scent of evergreen? Aromas of gingerbread fresh from the oven? Jack Frost nipping at your nose?

   For me, it's music. Christmas music -- sung throughout preschool, grade school, junior church choir.  My most potent musical memories though, are bound up in high school choir. I've written about my choir in earlier posts to this blog (see "Don't shoot the piano player," October 2016), but not about the iconic Vespers program that lay at the heart of every a cappella musical year. So as I sing along with my favorites from those days, as I do every December, sentiment takes over. Some thoughts:
    * * * *

She was a tyrant. Tiny, maybe 5'1" in stocking feet, a state in which we often saw her as she directed choir rehearsals. Now in her 60s, she had short, permed hair-- the red of old (indicative of temperament, perhaps?) long faded to gray. For all this, she stood cloaked in the aura of royalty. Which, as director of the Webster Groves School District music department, she was. When I knew her, her reign had lasted nearly 40 years.

    On any early December day, Miss Esther Replogle was found deep in preparations for her annual Christmas concert and pageant, known simply as Vespers. Featuring three choirs and a large cast of familiar and occasionally exotic characters, Vespers' repertoire and format had not varied a jot in decades. Choir alums from 30, 40 years back, some now grandparents, returned annually to re-experience the magical choral music that had defined the Christmases of their high school years. This was the one moment in a frenetic season during which peace and deep joy could be reliably found.

   Vespers under Miss Rep was a military maneuver in musical guise. She insisted on perfection in every tiny detail. We sang all the music from memory, with nary a choir folder in sight. There was never a gaffe during Vespers, because, well -- that was unthinkable. She forbade it. We drilled and drilled and drilled.

   First thing after Thanksgiving, Miss Rep directed the construction of seated risers built out at angles, winglike, from the auditorium stage: A Choir at the north end, B Choir at the south. When the performances finally commenced, there we'd sit, packed in cheek by jowl, robed and be-stoled, for over an hour during each service in the hushed and darkened auditorium. It was hot there, and close. Yet every year our director was one step ahead of us, because every year we were issued the same command: "Do NOT faint," ordered Miss Rep. "Girls who do that are just trying to get attention."

   However. Here's a story from my friend and fellow choir alum, Anne R. She sang soprano in a sweet, true, though light tone. Not a soloist, she would tell you. But she was present in December 1961, as Vespers was unfolding, when a soprano did pass out, shortly before her big solo in "Lullaby on Christmas Eve." Her comrades managed to get her propped up on the riser bench...but she had sung her last note for the day. So what about her solo? It was two full verses, spanning the entire song!

   Miss Rep, (did she somehow not notice?), gave the "Lullaby" downbeat. A terrified choir hummed their intro as written, drawing ever closer to -- what? Three measures to go...two... then whack! My friend Anne took a thump between the shoulder blades as the soprano behind her hissed: “ DO it!!"

   So she did. Autopilot was her friend that day. The service went on, concluded, and ranks of sweaty, swaying singers recessed to the back of the auditorium.  Anne had saved Vespers. But I'm pretty sure she never sang that solo again.

Hear it now in two different versions [editorial notes appear after conclusion of post]:

Lullaby--Lake Wobegon Lutheran Choir

Lullaby--St Olaf Choir        

                                         * * * *

Esther Replogle's Christmas season went beyond Vespers. She (and we) maintained a full schedule of off-campus performances for civic and charitable organizations. These featured a few Vespers numbers along with a repertoire of light seasonal music: "Sleigh Ride," "Holly Jolly Christmas," " Jingle Bells." Again, these were memorized to promote unflinching eye contact with our director, and to leave hands free for the "choreography" on the fun stuff.

  One piece was not fun for me, because I had to play the piano accompaniment. Does anyone remember "The Night Before Christmas" -- the Harry Simeone arrangement?

It was written in 1945 and Harry gave it a Looney Tunes riff that was popular in his bygone day. By the mid-60s, we were way too cool to be singing in that style, but Miss Rep hadn't got the memo, so off we'd go. It fell to the pianist to supply all the ricky-tick, cartoonish sound effects. Crashing bass notes. Chromatic scales. If a piano had a slide whistle, that would have been in there, too. As any teen would, I felt beyond ridiculous.

   But you know what? It's never too late to gain a better perspective. I just listened online to several choirs performing The Night Before Christmas, Simeone version, and I discovered that from the other side of the keyboard, half the goofy grace notes can't even be heard. And the whole silly song is kind of fun. Maybe you'll enjoy it, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAGCBZh2UkY

Merry/Happy to you! ("And to all, good night..”)

      plink plink

 * * * *

***Choir alums reading this may wonder how I made my selections from the many renditions out there. With LULLABY, I was captivated first by Janis Hardy's crystalline soprano in the Wobegon version, and next by the St. Olaf Choir's almost hypnotic reading. The composer, F. Melius Christiansen, founded this Northfield, Minnesota choir at St. Olaf College and wrote Lullaby for them. His original soloist was Gertrude Boe Overby, whose son, the late Osmund Overby, served as my beloved mentor and advisor as I wrote MEETING LOUIS AT THE FAIR.

A TALE OF TWO REUNIONS​​
An extremely long meditation on friendship and whining

Dear Amy, Barbara and Susan,

As I begin this missive, the three of you are likely settling in with second cups of coffee, planning the deliciously long reunion day stretching before you. I so wish I were with you. The peace I feel after canceling at the last minute tells me I made the right decision, overall. Still...
     My hasty email gave you only the sketchiest reasons for bailing so unceremoniously, and now I would like to fill in those blanks. In decades past, a conventional wisdom advised: Never complain, never explain. But the absence of explanation seems to have already cost me one friendship this year, and I'm not about to risk the loss of three more.
    Our writers’ reunion was to proceed thus: for me, a leisurely 90-minute drive down the coast of Lake Michigan to Michigan City, Indiana. There I would join you: the three other Midwesterners whom I met 12 years ago in Litchfield, Conn, where we underwent an intensive three-day training to certify as leaders of creative writing workshops. After training, we returned to our home cities to establish our own workshops, using our newly minted Amherst Writers and Artists magic to encourage aspiring writers to conquer their fears and find their clear, determined inner voices.
   Thanks to Barbara's organizational skills, we planned to come together today and share all that has happened since. I so anticipated hearing your stories and advice, looking forward to that ride along the coast as I imagined gradually separating myself from the everyday and formulating questions for all of you.
   As you know, the cosmos had other plans: I would not after all be traveling alone southward from Holland, but rather north from Cincinnati, a five-hour drive. My husband would drop me off at your place, continue home on his own and return two days later to fetch me back.
   We’d been called to Cincinnati to attend a memorial service for Howard's cousin Kent, whose death from cancer had left us reeling -- just three months from diagnosis to departure. We needed to be there, no way would we have missed it. The cousins had been close as boys, and as a foursome we had clicked and enormously enjoyed our visits. We’d been planning a road trip rendezvous when the diagnosis came in. Howard was quite cut up at the loss of his boyhood buddy and he struggled to write the memorial presentation that Sharon, Kent's wife, had requested.
     Since the beginning of this year, both of us have struggled to make peace with multiple illnesses and deaths of people we love. These include two dire diagnoses (one fatal, as you have seen). Among our Michigan neighbors, an uncommonly close group, J nearly died following surgery, R nearly died after 20 minutes without a heartbeat following a sudden blackout, and B had a melanoma dug from her leg. In a horrific finale, neighbor S died alone on a country road, presumably of heart failure, where he had been enjoying a bike ride.
    The friendships here at the NuMooring are such that when one of us is down, the rest suffer as well. Slowly, and without our realizing, grief and worry had become the underlayment of Howard's and my summer. I slid into a black depression that settled in like a bad toothache, from which I’ve only recently begun to emerge. I am learning, as I grow older (70 next May), that I don't as easily shrug off life's slings and arrows. As the wounds increase, resilience is progressively compromised, so that setbacks of the kind I've described form an accretion-- a shoulder boulder, if you will.

    Just two weeks prior to our writers reunion, Howard had to go to the ER for intractable back pain that had been building for several days. The staff ran tests and found nothing, sending him home with heavy drugs that only partially relieved the pain. Finally he was okay, but we both took this as a wake-up call, a flashing neon arrow aimed at the path of healthier habits. (We had a similar sighting back in 2010, after his heart attack and five stents. The resolve to stay on that path of redemption, however, is easily eroded.)    
      The funeral weekend played out, Howard got through his tribute to Kent, speaking masterfully and inspiring the congregation with a hilarious account of two-long ago boys' mischief with their pea-shooters,
     By Sunday night, we were relieved yet drained. Overnight my thoughts turned to the reunion. All of this driving was doing his back no good...and there would be another round facing him on Wednesday to bring me home. I worried about the gale force wind and storm that had blasted across our Holland property over the weekend. What would Howard find when he got there? And on and on.
    I am the once-impulsive woman who often airily proclaimed " Worry is a useless indulgence." (Corollary to another favorite, "Guilt is a useless emotion.") But yesterday, in the end, I gave in to the useless indulgence. I sent you good women my reunion regrets, and drove home with my husband. Now, my friends, you know the full story.

Reunion #2    
Earlier (MUCH earlier) I spoke of another well-intentioned failure to tell the whole story, and how it ended a friendship. This, too, is the tale of a reunion.
    I had a precious friend of decades' standing. We were young together during that indelible season: the discovery of life. We now live in distant cities, so every April we can manage, we have a blossomy, balmy reunion weekend at an inn that is equidistant from our homes, about a two-hour drive. It has always been a soul-filling time of shared memories, current-day philosophizing  and gales of laughter.
    This year, though, we had to schedule our date in early March. I had some trepidations about the timing. The choir I sing with had been preparing intensively (Schubert's Mass in A flat Major) for a concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert date was just ten days from my reunion with Erica. In between would come a four-day visit from our Texas son and grandson. This, for me, is a lot to pack into a two-week period, but there was no alternative to the reunion date and no way I'd miss a chance to meet up with Erica. I kept my trepidations to myself.
   A frigid wind blew through the Midwest that morning of my departure for the inn. I realized not long after I set off that I had forgotten a critical pre-travel step: I had failed to wrap my wrists. I have basal joint arthritis in both hands and cannot drive more than an hour unsupported before they begin to ache and cramp. When I reached the inn, I took an aspirin, the first of several as the afternoon and evening progressed. A hard choice for me, because aspirin makes me drowsy. In the meantime, I was dealing with another issue. Since January I had been fighting a weepy eye, which no doctor had been able to diagnose and treat. Depending on who knows what factor, the eye would overflow, tears coursing down my cheek, the salt irritating sensitive under-eye skin. Cold weather made the condition worse.
     These are niggling issues, right? And Erica has her own far more serious ongoing issues, about which she never complains. Erica is a poster girl for the old don’t-complain/explain adage. So I decided to suck it up and say nothing of my own stuff; how trivial it sounded in comparison. We had our typical first-night room party, with wine, cheese and crackers fueling a gabfest in which despair over the current political situation figured prominently. When we retired to our separate rooms, I took more aspirin, wrapped one wrist in a scarf and the other in a long sock, and prayed for sleep. It came.

   I was definitely groggy and off my game the next day, but thought Erica didn't notice as we visited our favorite boutique and ate lunch in town. In the afternoon, I begged off our usual swim session in the free-standing indoor pool across the way, saying only that the day was too cold for me, even in my heaviest winter coat. What was actually going on in my brain: It’s cold, all right! Did you not feel that wind? Do you want to get a chill right before Carnegie Hall? Or expose your weird eye thing to the unknowns of a public pool?! Girl. Show some sense!  So I sent Erica on to the pool by herself and I went to use the fitness room treadmill instead. As I walked back, endorphins now pumping, I thought of the hot shower awaiting me, and a wonderful rest of the reunion with my friend.
    I checked in with Erica, then headed for the shower. When I emerged, I found a note under the door. "I decided to head back home. I don't feel comfortable staying. You seem to want to be on your own. Take care, Erica." I raced to her room and hammered on the door. There was no answer, of course. I couldn't call her because my cell phone wasn't getting a signal. But I was furious and wanted her to know it, so I sent an email: " Erica -- I can't believe you would do this. How can you possibly know what's in my head unless you ask? I am so disappointed. Shocked."
 Back in St Louis, I discovered she had unfriended me on Facebook and probably blocked my emails as well. There's been no further contact. I expect none. Do I feel responsible? No. I gave the best I had to give. I know that I am a faithful friend, one who would have had Erica's back forever, as I thought she had mine. This hasn’t been pleasant, not at all. But now it’s over--and that, as they say, is that.
     Within the past month, two women friends--my contemporaries-- have publicly apologized for what they termed "whining" or "dumping on friends." (Whining is most unfashionable, you know. Try googling “whining and friendship”) These two friends guiltily mention the disasters of the wider world, balanced against their own paltry concerns. I say this is wrong. It’s apples and oranges. The first woman is currently healing from an injury that has badly compromised her ability to walk. The second has been struggling with a parent descending into dementia, and her own bewildering journey as she tries to wisely and sensitively dispatch her duties as sole caregiver. Neither of these friends is a spineless nitwit complaining about first world problems. In these scenarios, nobody's kvetching about the lawn crew not showing up.
    As my mother was dying over several agonizing years, I don't believe I wrote about it publicly until the very last day, in this space. No, I haven't wanted to be a Debbie Downer either. But increasingly I feel that selective whining can be a constructive thing. Maybe as we reach a certain age, we need to tell others what's really going on with us, to speak up if we feel we have some  splainin' to do. Otherwise, despite our best intentions, something really important could end up as a crumpled scrap of paper at our feet.

All love to you, Amy, Barbara and Susan. Till our next reunion  ----

MY FIRST BASH

[With links to vintage versions of my all-time Jazz Bash faves]

Many years ago, North Shore Drive ended at The Mooring, just west of my current Holland home.  The old house where Blair and Elizabeth now live was the last on the road and was known, informally, as the Lodge or the Big House. Beyond lay the cottages, scattered across a wide lawn encircled by Lake Macatawa. On the western shore of that point sat the Mooring dock, beach and fleet of small sailboats. On its southern shore, a sandy strip from which one could take a far longer view toward the entrance to the Narrows.

"Doctor Jazz" -- Jelly Roll Morton

  Back then, the Lodge belonged to Charlotte Horner, owner of the Mooring. She, along with her late husband, Bob, had operated the place since 1939.
Along the way they had attracted a loyal following of summer people-- disciples, almost, who returned to vacation year after year, usually during the same week. Our friendships went back, in some cases, decades. Bob and Charlotte, who had no children, thought of us as family.

   The Horners were jazz fanatics, and knowledgeable ones. Bob kept a bank of filing cabinets filled with 78s--disc after disc recorded by just about every jazz great from the 20s, 30s, 40s...New Orleans jazz, Kansas City jazz, Chicago jazz, you name it. The Horners knew quite a few of the musicians. Back in the 40s and 50s, many black jazz artists, unable to find area lodging when touring the upper Midwest, were offered hospitality by Bob and Charlotte. [This was also the era when resorts in this region felt free to stipulate “Christians only.’ The Horners did something about that, as well. Charlotte is said to have tartly informed someone: “We accept everybody--even the Dutch.”] You could stop in at the Lodge almost any time, day or night, and hear a sampling from the famous record collection. In my memory, sometimes right around happy hour, they’d put one of their 78s on the loudspeaker usually used to announce mail call, and wander down to join the families du jour for a round of whatever.

Jazz Bash as Fundraiser

    After Bob died in 1970, Charlotte initiated a tradition she named the Horner Memorial Jazz Bash. Every June, first weekend after Memorial Day, she invited her many friends and Mooring family to hear an evening of live jazz right in her own expansive living room. They made a long weekend of it, with Charlotte billeting them communally  throughut the cottages. The July people met the August people and often made new friends.   

In return for her largesse, Charlotte asked only a $25 contribution to Michigan Child and Family Services, her favorite charity, which she served as a board member, plus $15 per person to cover expenses. Guests arrived bearing their own beverages of choice, plus all kinds of home baked sweets and covered dishes to supplement the meals. And I'm sure that many of the checks to MCSF well exceeded $25.

I'd heard accounts of the bash for years from Uncle Ernie and Aunt Suze. But even though I received an
annual




"Cake Walkin Babies From Home" -- Bechet/Armstrong

invitation (“Attire: mini, maxi, bikini, pantsi”), years went by before I could accept. Finally one spring in the early ‘80s, I managed to make the trip, driving up with my cousin Mark.

Coming as a singleton, I bunked with Ellen and Chris in the upstairs Great Scott and had a great time getting to know both of them better. We were about the same age, all of us at turning points in our lives. We had LOTS to talk about. Chris had just finished reading Megatrends, the hot book of the season. Somebody else that year, at the high-touch end of the literary spectrum, was fascinated by Out on a Limb.

The weather turned halfway accommodating, so Charlotte sent her revelers off on the Pomie with one of her more experienced guest skippers, for a chilly, first-of-the-season sail. A new friend, DC, took us out that year the day after the bash, and later on a longer sail that echoed my epic voyage with Mack Parker some 20 years earlier. Fortunately we did not meet a freighter in the channel.

    Elsewhere on the property, you could hear pingpong balls popping through the rec room, take a walk through the woods, engage in a Mooring heart-to-heart or bake bread with Charlotte.

 

Concert Time

   While the rest of us were out and about getting back our Mooring legs, the band set up around Charlotte’s Steinway, at the west end of the living room. At long last it was concert time: we filtered in, drinks in hand, to check in with Bernice and Marie at the welcome table. Blair, who had done a huge percentage of the bash prep heavy lifting, now had time to take a breath and get in party mode with his summer friends. So. Much. Laughter.  I remember looking out to the lake, framed in the panoramic south windows-- sundown was nowhere in evidence and I could see sun sparkles dancing across the water.

  Finally our musicians tuned up and began to play. Who was it that year? Bill Hanck on trombone, I think, and Charlie Hooks on clarinet. There was a trumpet, of course, and piano and percussion. I’d be willing to bet they led off with “Struttin With some Barbecue” --an exuberant, sassy, party-just-beginning kind of tune that got us right into the mood as the band showed their stuff .

"Struttin With Some Barbecue" -- Pete Fountain

I was loving it. I think of a photo from that year, in which my cousin Mark and I are seated with Walter B, one generation older, he of the hypnotic eyes and rumbling Teutonic intonation. Boy, I was smiling in that shot, the night of my first bash. Not long before, after months of painful soul-searching, I had come to the hardest decision of my life. Now free of agonizing and not yet living the consequences, I was ready to laugh, sing, stomp. Wheee! All was groovy.

  During the break, everyone enjoyed Charlotte’s generous buffet, along with a refill of liquid amber or clear. The concert resumed with Charlotte’s annual jazz parade, based on a New Orleans tradition of second-lining during anything-but-somber brass band funeral processions. Charlotte led the female guests, snaking through the room, all of us twirling elaborately decorated and wildly colorful silk parasols, the handiwork of friend June Z. Bobbie P snapped still photos, as she did each year, reminding us that she really preferred photographing animals and only shot people on this occasion as a favor to Charlotte. Without any such disclaimer, Bernie D, always armed with the latest in technology, prowled benignly, filming and audiotaping the revelry. Later he would offer the tapes to everyone for a nominal cost; I still have several.

   How long did the concert last that night-- two hours? Three? The music wound down, and at last the surrounding tall trees cast long shadows. Lake-sparkle had long yielded to reflections of the pink and mauve wash of sunset.

"Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans" -- Billie Holiday

How beautiful, I thought, how piercingly sweet. How did I get so lucky? Could there be any group of people more fortunate than we, to have won a place in this room, with this music, and this extraordinary woman at the heart of it all?

  I knew beyond question:  here is what it means to be rich.

  Too soon, I would have to head back home to face a steamy St. Louis summer and a very different kind of music. But I could do it now, with some measure of grace, because I had again touched my true north. And heard some great jazz in the bargain.

But Wait -- There’s More!

Sometimes the trip you plan isn’t the trip you get

Ten days ago I went back to St Louis on the spur of the moment for a 36-hour stay. Blasted into town for a family meeting that I very much wanted to attend. It went well and I learned a lot. Next morning I drove my rental car to the airport and checked in for the first leg of my return trip to Grand Rapids. I watched my suitcase disappear on the conveyer belt, leaving me with a tote containing a stack of heavy files, my night guards (yes, plural), my electronics and a comb.

Down to Concourse C and my gate... and there the fun began. I saw that my flight was delayed by a half hour because a severe storm system in the upper Midwest. There would be no chance of making my tight connection at O'Hare. The few remaining alternatives were sold out, seats bought up by frantic travelers in my exact predicament, who just happened to get to their airports a tad earlier than I did. However, that suitcase I watched disappear? That made it on the eventual flight just fine and onward to Grand Rapids.

Well, okay. Here's what I can do, thought I. Exchange my tickets for new flights in the morning, book a room at the convenient Airport 'Horton'  for the night, take their shuttle, which I knew to be reliable, back over to Lambert early tomorrow and be on my way home. Inconvenient but no sweat. I scored a toothbrush and toothpaste at the front desk, lulled myself with stupid TV and slept poorly.

   Next morning I got out of St. Louis as planned, landing at a beleaguered O'Hare. This monster storm, which I never did see, was still making kamikaze hits across the Great Lakes, effectively dorking airline schedules everywhere for the second day running. Well, no matter. This time I'd been smart, choosing a connecting flight due to take off  a couple hours after my first flight landed.

That was all well and good until I actually trudged off the O’Hare jetway and discovered said flight had been canceled. I managed to get on an alternative flight; it, too, was axed. My phone and tablet were running out of juice. So was I, having lugged my heavy totebag up and down the lengths of O'Hare concourses H, J and K -- which you may know is quite some distance. My only option now: the last flight out to GR, arrival time 11 pm, on which I occupied the waiting list #20 slot. Risky in the extreme.

No way was I going to spend another night in a hotel or in the terminal. Chicago was just three hours from home by interstate. So I found my way back up concourse  G or H or wherever the hell I was at that point, down into the bowels of O'Hare, and after a very long trek guided by red arrows painted on the floor (in a surreal nod to The Wizard of Oz), into the waiting room for regional bus connections. I bought a ticket, no muss no fuss, to Michigan City, Indiana. I rode for a peaceful two hours in a cushy, commodious seat, as the grappling hooks in my neck and shoulder muscles loosened their grip. Not once did I hear a Barbie voice bleating over a scratchy microphone, reminding me to keep my seat belt fastened (“We DO ask…”) or a weary pilot reporting further delays at the next stop.

My dearest hero husband met me at Michigan City and drove me 90 minutes back up the Michigan coast, chasing a spectacular Big Lake sunset all the way. Then...I was home and it was over.

   Except it wasn't. Several days later I began scratching the angry red bites that had broken out over my body -- shoulders, back, ankles, Wherever. Funny, I hadn't been outdoors. The oddest bites were inflicted in two precise lines like Busby Berkeley chorines, time-stepping a perfect Art Deco chevron across my right shoulder. What makes a mark like that? Where had I seen this before? On the internet... on WebMD?

Five...six...seven...eight... ONE....overnight sensation!

    Oh, no. Oh, the horror.

   Bedbugs!  I had been ravaged by bedbugs, maybe on the bus, but way more likely in the Airport Horton. It's a favorite stopover of flight crews, whose peripatetic luggage is the perfect vehicle for these parasites.

    Everything about my experience fit the bedbug profile. And let me just say, reading about the habits of the loathsome little creatures is nightmare material. Let me also say that their bites itch like crazy.

By now the itch has subsided, though my unwelcome tattoo job remains. It will fade, though my new resolve will not. Another meeting in St. Louis? Probably, and I'll happily attend. But you can bet I'll be driving.

       ###