Homeward Bound

 

I woke to warm humid air and unfamiliar bird calls after arriving in Fort Myers yesterday to begin what will be a road trip back to Chicago with my mother-in-law's car. After surviving 3 feet of snow last month, and heavy rain this month, the palm trees and heavy air feel welcoming. There is a tentativeness to wearing shorts again. Will it last?

There is no doubt in my mind that I'm a Midwesterner through and through. The dark nights of December and January, the bitter cold that is difficult to explain, the feel of shoveling for the fourth time with the realization it still isn't "enough". However, it is nice to get away. Leave it briefly. Appreciate what we do have between the snowflakes and drifts.

The mailbox is finally straight. It took a new post and a sledgehammer, but it stands proudly again, waiting to get the junk mail and Amazon packages. A sledgehammer. Just part of the Wisconsin toolkit.

There is a road trip ahead, though. And I'm excited about that. We didn't fly when I was a kid. So I've done road trips crisscrossing the country. I continued this in college marching band with bus trips to Florida, Texas and all over the Big 10 with 350 of my best friends strung along 7 motorcoaches. Our honeymoon was a big long drive to Glacier NP, driving back from Cut Bank MT to Freeport IL in one big long day. Needless to say, I didn't do the majority of the driving. 

Modern road trips are different, though. Podcasts. Buc-ees. Quality coffee. Fancy Maple Cherry jerky. New flavors for Cheez Its even! Still, though, Waffle House, Denny's, Cracker Barrel and state Welcome Centers form the backbone. There will still be madcap pursuits such as driving across the state of Florida for lunch with friends from Wisconsin and dinner with our Mexico gang in Georgia. Too much junk food will be consumed and by Kentucky I'll already be calculating how many long bike rides it is going to take to burn off the calories consumed. The Cheez Itz will require careful attention of a car wash vacuum to eradicate from between the seats.

There is always an element of surprise on a trip. A view we didn't expect. Or a small bit of US History we never knew. A mural on the side of a building. Amidst the jerky, Pringles, and Milk Duds will be a small moment that comes unheralded and will be what is remembered. I'm ready for it.

Recovering the Satellites

 It is mid-April in Door County WI.  We had 33" of snow melt quickly, followed by rain upon rain, and finished, for now, with thunderstorms last night. There's water coming in our basement. We're in that cycle of moving fans and shop-vaccing the floors every 15 or 20 minutes trying to keep things under some degree of control. 

We purchased our first home in late 1996. After several years of apartment life we were excited to have a small two-bedroom one-bath house in the heart of Downers Grove, walking distance to the train and shopping. It felt small-town, but with every advantage of suburban living. Working in Chicago, the proximity to Metra was perfect for me. 

If I think about the important albums in that period of my life, there are really but two, and both from Counting Crows.  In the mid-90's they were at their apex.  Adam Duritz spoke to the loneliness I felt even within the largest city I would call home. August and Everything After saw me through the end of college, the beginning of adult life, corporate trainings, and the feelings of being an outsider despite being in the middle of everything. 

It was serendipity that their follow-up Recovering the Satellites came out days before we purchased the house, newly married, and fresh into a team-change at work. We had entertained serious notions of moving to the Bay Area, rendezvousing with good friends, and taking some time out of the Midwest. After a visit over Labor Day weekend, largely scouting out if this was our next chapter, we got off the plane in Chicago, looked at the other and realized we were Midwesterners, and that evening after going to bed, our phone rang. It was our realtor. A house we'd made an offer on in May was back on the market. It was our dream house. It was the final sign we needed. 

So our introduction to what real home-ownership meant was in February 1997. Some heavy rain on frozen ground left us battling 15+ inches of water in our basement. We fought it as best we could with our portable sump-pumps, newly purchased at Home Depot, until we just had salvage what we could, and make some peace with it. Kim headed to Indy to see friends. I fought a bit longer before heading into the city for a party with friends. My soundtrack for all of that was Recovering the Satellites. On repeat. 

We'd go on to have this fight over the years with our little house until 2013 when all of the skills we'd learned were for naught, 8 inches of rain fell on frozen ground, a creek in the neighborhood flooded from poor management by the village of Downers Grove, and we woke to 4 feet of water in the basement, and a flooded backyard and garage. We'd see our 3 cars towed away. We'd need the help of family, friends and neighbors to clean up the damage. It would be months of work before we were back to normal. 

In the aftermath we re-graded the yard, fixed what needed fixing, but flooding rains still cause a deep-seated anxiety that is hard to shake. 

As I keep the fans moving and the shop-vac sucking up as much water as I can, I'm playing Recovering the Satellites and thinking about the passage of nearly 30 years. Have you seen me lately? 

Kevin

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Loss of Signal

Last evening I was watching the NASA coverage of Artemis II as the astronauts passed behind the moon and lost radio contact with Earth. I watched as their orbit caused Earth to blink out of sight and for the next 40-ish minutes they were out of contact. The coverage had a segment about what the moon meant to each of the astronauts and it got me thinking of my childhood, well high school really, interest in space that was born in a galaxy far far away when I was 6 and Luke Skywalker was my hero.

It made me wonder why now that I have dark Door County skies why I'm not out more with my telescope, looking at the moon or Jupiter or Andromeda.  I've become more involved with the Door Peninsula Astronomical Society and now coordinating the monthly speakers at our meetings. I'm enjoying making new friends and learning new science, but I need to get out in my own backyard and wander the sky. 

I'm sitting in a Starbucks in Lisle, IL. I had my first apartment here after I graduated from the University of Illinois and spent over two years here, writing my 20 Poems for Sad Lonely Evenings from an apartment on Ogden Avenue, dating my now wife, hanging only a dart board on the beige walls, and riding the train daily to the city and spending another day with my FS90 team at Arthur Andersen. I reunited last night with some of my old AA friends, shared some beers, and watched Michigan win the NCAA tournament, but mostly told stories of the old days with a lot of talk on how we're using AI in our jobs or personal lives.

Caught between the world I used to inhabit and the retirement I'm still learning to navigate, I’m frustrated with my lack of doing, the metaphor of being out of contact, sailing around the dark of the moon, seemed appropriate. I’m out of contact with the mission control that had guided me before. I’m awaiting regaining the signal, but for now I can only wonder at a world that is only visible to me. For 30 years, there was a plan for every day, goals to achieve, flights to catch, systems to design, build, install and train. The meetings, the emails, the responsibility of it all, was prescribed and I could execute the mission before me.

Now, I’m out of contact with that world. There is no pressure to do to produce to accomplish. I’m sleeping better. I don’t wake with a panic attack worried about an issue on the other side of the world. But I’m out of contact and hoping to regain contact, even if the mission control has changed.

My telescope gear is all in the garage, just waiting on me. A clear night, 15 minutes of set-up and I’d be floating above the moon as those Artemis II astronauts make their way home. They knew they’d come out of the darkness, resume their radio contact, and start on their journey, homeward bound. I wish I had that same assurance that mission control is timing my exit, ready to pick me back up and guide me home.

I don't have an answer right now. Just a lingering frustration with my prioritization. I'll write soon on my "More List", but for now I need to move this all from thought to action. Only I can create what comes next. I'm genuinely asking: how do you move from wanting to doing?