Mom

In the past--even the recent past--I'd have written a long, detailed tribute to my mother, who passed away July 3 due to complications from COVID-19.

But right now? I'm just too damn tired.

Sometime soon, maybe. But not this minute.

My thanks to all who have expressed condolences or who have offered to help me and my brother through this difficult time. Your support means more than I can ever express.

For Those Wondering...

The tree in front of Mom's house not only survived Snowmageddon 2022, it was waving frantically in the strong breezes this morning, slapping the front of the house hard enough to disturb the cats, who are generally not distrurbed by anything but one another.

(Seriously. I have to break up at least one cat fight a night, usually between Bumpy and Moose--two boys who want to rule the roost solo, but have to live together.)

I think that tree might be there long after the house itself is gone.

Every Picture Tells a Story 12/28/21

Face mask by Josep Blas. Glasses by Mom.

Every Picture Tells a (Soggy) Story 8/4/20

The damp outside the window at La Casa de Mama.

Every (Kitty) Picture Tells a Story 2/25/20

This is Mimi. She's another of Mom's cats. (Mom has four in total right now. Yes, this is an ongoing series.)

She's named for her sound--she cries out. A LOT. Sometimes when she's hungry. Usually just for attention. In a house with four cats, this can be a challenge.

You might think that's cute. And it is--except when she does it at three in the morning.

Then? Not so cute.

Every (Kitty) Picture Tells a Story 2/20/20

This? Is not a photo of Olivia.

This? Is Cocoa, another one of Mom's cats.

She's pretty young--most likely between two and three years old--and is the closest to feral of all of Mom's cats.

She was tricked into coming into the house (with the offer of food as the lure) and had to be kept from running back out into the yard (which she managed to do a couple of times anyway, only to be lured back into the house later with the promise of food--stupid cat).

She's very skittish--will not be picked up or held, nor will she sit in your lap or come when called.

She will, however, sit on the back of the couch and allow herself to be petted. Her fur is, as you'd imagine, very soft.

And? She's absolutely devoted to Moose, for some reason. He seems indifferent to her attentions at best (and hostile at worst), yet she cuddles up with him whenever possible. They can often be found together in the cardboard box just outside the bathroom.

Every (Kitty) Picture Tells a Story 2/18/20

And now? "The Kitties of Mom's House, Part 1:

This is Moose. He's one of Mom's cats. And easily the largest of Mom's cats--he weights somewhere between 15 and 20 lbs. And none of that is fat.

He's an old fellow--note the gray/white hairs in his muzzle--but he hasn't slowed down with age. He still chases the other cats around the house, especially Lincoln, the youngest (and other male) cat.

He also stands outside Mom's bedroom door and yowls for her attention--usually he just wants to be fed, but sometimes he just wants someone to come out and play with him. I accommodate him as much as possible, but I'm not home much of the day, and Mom spends most of her time in the bedroom with her door closed.

Sometimes, because Mom moves so slowly these days, Moose makes a mad dash into her bedroom, usually late at night. This leads me to be treated to Mom yelling at him over and over ("Moose...MOOSE...MOOSE!") until I get up and shag him out of her bedroom myself. Then I try (try) to go back to sleep--if, in fact, I'd been asleep at all. (And considering that I'm still sleeping on Mom's living room couch...yeah, no.)

Holidaze 12/6/18

The Christmas tree at Mom's house is modestly sized--a four-footer--and, missing a leg, is propped up against a paint can to keep it upright. It remains festive, though, and looks good next to the TV, which is showing Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol.

At Mom's Tonight 1/11/15

The holidaze may be officially over now, but Mom still has her li'l tree up for one more night.

Every Picture Tells a Story: 9/8/11

This enormous white pigeon stopped by the bird feeder in Mom's backyard for a nosh.

RIP Kitty-Kitty

Less than a month ago, I posted this cute picture of three of Mom's kitties curled up together. Now one of them, Kitty-Kitty (the gray-and-white one up front) has passed away at the age of 20--pretty damn good for an adopted stray. She was in good health for nearly all of her life, and gave much love and comfort over that time. For much of the last couple of years, she insisted on sitting in my lap every time I visited Mom, sometimes not even waiting until I'd sat down to make a leap at my lap.

She was also the last cat remaining from when Dad was alive.

Every Picture Tells a Story: 3/21/11

Itteh bitteh kitteh pileup at Mom's house!

The Best Thing to Happen All Week

I know, of course,that it's only Tuesday, but this has already been a craptacular week. Let me count the ways:

I'm coming off yet another bout with "the office cold," a particularly tenacious mutant that necessitated time off from work, lengthened an already long week into a marathon and transformed a three-day weekend into a festival of mucus-gurgling pain.

Monday was Valentine's Day, and even though I took the day off from work to hide under a rock until it went away, the media still found ways to shove my perpetual singleness in my face. Even when I turned on the radio to the one "all-news" station we have left in Chicago, I got smacked with celebrity V-Day greetings wedged right between reports on "real" stories. (Do I really care if Shaq or Carrie Underwood wishes me a Happy Valentine's Day or not? No. I don't. Well, maybe if Carrie were delivering her wishes personally...no. Not even then.)

And, as if V-Day and congested sinuses weren't enough fun and frolic, I got the news yesterday that Mom lost her job. (A long story--and one I might relate at some future date--but not just now.)

So back at work Tuesday, short-handed and irritable, I felt the need to scout around for chocolate. And what did I find? Leftovers from Valentine's Day. Much as I love Hershey's Kisses, they don't taste nearly as sweet when they're wrapped in Pepto-Bismol pink.

I lamented this lack of untainted chocolate to a coworker (and fellow chocoholic), who quite appropriately rolled her eyes at the mention of the V-Day leftovers. After patiently listening to my lament, however, she turned in her desk chair, reached into a bag on the floor of her office, and pulled out this: "Take it," she said. "I'll just eat the whole box." I understood the sentiment--put a box of Samoas in front of me and watch them disappear--but the kindness of the gesture was nonetheless appreciated.

Maybe she saw that I was having a rough day. Maybe she concurred with my lack of warmth toward the 14th day of February. Or maybe she really didn't just want to power through that box of Thin Mints herself. Whatever the case, the cookies are at my desk, being casually nibbled on from time to time and elevating my mood ever so slightly.

Thank you, kind coworker. Thank you ever so.

Saturday Night's Dinner

A skirt steak, perfectly prepared in the new frying pan Mom gave me for Christmas, with grilled onions and garlic cranberry cordial pan gravy ans a tall glass of Red Dog.

Every Picture Tells a Story: 9/9/09

Mom's oldest kitty, Peeper, who died this past Friday at the age of 20. She was in excellent health--you'd never have even known she was a geriatric feline if somebody didn't tell you--until the past year, when her eyesight started to fail (she could see things that were right in front of her, but not much else) and she began to lose weight. Still, she was able to get around just fine, had a decent appetite and, whenever I visited, sat on the loveseat next to me in a pet bed just for her, until finally she stopped eating and could no longer walk in anything but wobbly circles.

This past Saturday, I visited Mom, but the pet bed was empty.

Mom had Peeper from the day she was born until the day she died. In between? there was much unconditional love--both given and received.

Svengoolie

June 16 is, as it happens, a a sad personal anniversary: 14 years ago on this date, my dad passed away while recovering from triple bypass surgery. He was just 60 years old.

Most years, I keep to myself on this day except, perhaps for a brief phone call to or from Mom--it may have been 14 years, but that doesn't mean she misses her husband, her life partner, any less.

This year, though, I'm reminded that June 16 is not just a sad personal anniversary. It's also a very happy anniversary for many other people: Today marks 30 years since Rich Koz first hit the airwaves as the Son of Svengoolie.

For those of you who aren't steeped in Chicago entertainment lore, a brief history lesson: In 1970, local radio/TV personality Jerry G. Bishop began hosting a Saturday night horror movie show called Screaming Yellow Theater as a hippy vampire character named Svengoolie; he had long green hair, wore sunglasses and a red sweatshirt, and bookended the movie segments with goofy skits and occasional celebrity appearances (like comedians Mort Sahl or Pat Paulson). Bishop played this role at WFLD-TV until 1973, when Kaiser Broadcasting bought the station from Field Communications and ended much of WFLD's local programming, including the much, beloved BJ and Dirty Dragon Show and the equally adored Svengoolie. Kaiser replaced the original Sven with another horror host they already had under contract, The Ghoul, who was popular in Cleveland and Detroit. I remember tuning in to catch Sven on Saturday night, as usual, finding instead this brash, obnoxious loudmouth who, as I remember, was dressed like a gangster (because he doing a show in Chicago, ho ho!) and dissed his predecessor. It was the first time I'd watched The Ghoul--and, also, the last. (I wasn't alone--The Ghoul only lasted a few months in Chicago, while his career continued elsewhere.)

Flash forward a few years. Kaiser gave up its ownership of WFLD, with Field taking over again. They wanted a horror host again, and the young man they chose, Rich Koz, had been an assistant to/collaborator with the original Sven, Jerry G. Bishop. Koz's look was different--more like a mortician than a hippy--but the humor and sense of fun were pretty much the same. Koz played the Son of Svengoolie from 1979 until 1986--more than doubling Bishop's original run--and won a few local Emmys along the way before Fox bought WFLD and brought down the axe again.

But, proving that you just can't keep a good ghoul down, Sven rose from the dead yet again in 1995, when WCIU, which had been a Spanish-language/business ticker station for years, switched back to English-language programming and plugged Koz back into a Saturday afternoon slot, this time performing sans the "Son of" in his name; now, he was "just" Svengoolie.

Koz has gone on pretty much as before--his makeup is less elaborate, and he makes more of an effort to provide tidbits of information on the films he shows (from classics like Frankenstein and Night of the Living Dead to disasters like Plan 9 from Outer Space and Robot Monster), but the goofy comedy and song parodies are still part of the festivities. He's on every Saturday night (with reruns Sunday morning on WCIU's sister Station, WWME), cracking wise with his jokes, cracking windows and eardrums with his singing voice and cracking up his viewers. And we wouldn't have him any other way.

My dad wasn't a horror-film fan--he much preferred John Wayne westerns while Mom loved Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan. But both parents encouraged a love of movies in general and didn't stand in the way of spending Saturday nights watching a guy dressed up as a vampire telling groaners to hundreds of thousands of people sitting in the dark, laughing along with him.

Congratulations, Mr. Koz. And Happy Anniversary, Svengoolie!

(P.S.--Sven's 30th Anniversary show airs this Saturday, June 20, featuring the Bert I. Gordon "classic," Attack of the Puppet People. Tune in, won't you? I know I will, if only via the "magic" of videotape.)

Passing Out

I haven't slept well in a while, for lots of reasons: Bad habits, like eating or consuming lots of fluids (milk or water, mostly) right before bed; drinking cans of RC when having dinner at Mom's; worrying about the economy in general or my own employment situation in particular; racing my mind so fast for so long that an average person would probably have gone crazy by now (and, perhaps, I already have and just haven't noticed).

Slept better last night, though, by making a few changes:

Went to Mom's for dinner and stayed 'til 9 (I usually cut out at least an hour earlier);

Only had one can of RC at Mom's, followed by only two cups of Sleepytime tea;

Didn't eat anything else before bed or take anything to help me sleep;

Stayed up until 11 (was going to stay up later to watch the rerun of "Chelsea Lately," but it was the episode from Monday night--the one with someone I used to know on the roundtable--so I did the same as I had Monday night and clicked out straight away);

Slept with my head on the opposite end of the bed and the fan blowing away from me (Olivia adjusted admirably, parking herself at my feet and not moving until the alarm went off.

Didn't get a full night's sleep--maybe 6 hours. Still, that's about 5 hours more than I got the night before, and the dreams that accompanied that sleep (involving spiders and Tom Baker) were no stranger than normal, really.

So...yay, me.

And the Oscar Goes to...(2009 Edition)

I doubt I'll be watching the Oscars this year--I'm having at Mom's house that night, and she hates watching the long, often tedious telecast.

That won't stop me from making my annual predictions, though.

Best Supporting Actress. One of the hardest categories to call in years. I could seriously see any one of the nominees--Amy Adams (Doubt), Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), Viola Davis (Doubt), Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) or Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)--taking this one home. Academy voters may have a hard time deciding and, to cut down on unnecessary thought, may just choose the biggest name in the bunch. If that's the case, expect Cruz to get the little gold statuette (manufactured right here in Chicago)--she's my official choice. If not...it's anybody's guess.

Best Supporting Actor. As hard as it is to call the Best Supporting Actress category, that's how easy it is to call this category. Josh Brolin? Robert Downey Jr.? Philip Seymour Hoffman? Michael Shannon? Sorry, fellas. The nomination will have to be the award for you. Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight likely would have won him this award anyway, but his death last year due to an accidental drug overdose makes it a virtual certainty.

Best Actress. It's great to see veteran character actress Melissa Leo nominated this year, especially since her movie, Frozen River, came out a while ago--too bad she has virtually no chance of winning. It's also nice to see Anne Hathaway get a nod--she started her career in fluffy rom-com roles, but has rapidly advanced to much more serious fare. Unfortunately, she's got no more of a shot than Leo, but she's more likely to be nominated again in the near future. Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep? They've both won Oscars before. That leaves Kate Winslet. This is her fifth nomination for Best Actress. It'll likely be her first win.

Best Actor. This, for me, is the most interesting category. Brad Pitt has no chance, especially since plenty of people seem to feel that the makeup and special effects in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button gave the performance for him. As with Melissa Leo, it's nice to see character actor Richard Jenkins get nominated for The Visitor--and as with Leo, Jenkins has no chance of winning. Both Mickey Roarke (The Wrestler) and Sean Penn (Milk) have a lot of support. It could be hard for Academy voters to choose between them. There was a similar situation in the Best Actress category last year, when both Julie Christie and Ellen Page had lots of support for their noms, leading to a split that allowed Marion Cotillard to win. I think there may be a similar result in this category this year, allowing Frank Langella to win for Frost/Nixon. This would be a major upset. Then again, Cotillard's win last year was a major upset, so it's possible--and it's what I'm predicting.

Best Picture. This category is almost as easy to choose as Best Supporting Actor. The winner will, of course, be The Dark Knight, with Christopher Nolan taking the award for Best Dir...wait...what? Neither Dark Knight nor Nolan got nominated? The hell? Sometimes you confuse me, Academy voters. Oh well...of the movies that actually did get nominated, Benjamin Button, The Reader and Frost/Nixon are all out of the running. Milk may take the top prize, but it's much more likely that this year's "little film that could," Slumdog Millionaire, will win instead, with Danny Boyle getting the corresponding Oscar for Best Director.

I've gotten pretty good at this particular guessing game, but since I'll probably only catch the ass end of the broadcast after dinner at Mom's, I'm morelikely to find how good I am this year Monday morning.

Tigger

Not long after Dad died, Mom took a job as a cashier at a neighborhood grocery store.

It wasn't so much because she needed the income, although the extra cash didn't hurt, but because she didn't want to sit at home, thinking about the fact that her life partner, the man she'd been married to for 30-plus years and raised two children with, was gone.

The store she worked at wasn't one of the national chains, but a much smaller local chain that had a couple of locations in the city and at least one location in the suburbs, which apparently still exists. The two city locations, including the one Mom worked at, are long gone. (One was razed ro make way for a Dominick's; the other is a parking lot.)

She didn't work there long--something under a year--before moving on to another cashier job, this time at a large drugstore chain, where she's been ever since. In her short time at the grocery store, though, she came away with something most people don't get on the job: a cat.

The cat in question, a female tabby, was small and young--perhaps a few months old--but evidently quite loud. She had gotten into the grocery store's warehouse, and other, less feline-incline employees were planning on capturing the kitty and, at the very least, throwing it out, if not removing it in a much more permanent fashion.

Cats, though, are, for the most part, smart critters. They know when someone likes cats and when they don't. Mom was able to coax the tabby to her, earn its trust, and eventually bring it home.

Mom named the tabby Tigger--not the most imaginative name, I know, but our family will never be renowned for our ability to give intriguing appelations to pets (examples: our Black Lab mix was named Blackie; my Russian Blue, Gray Cat).

She almost wound up being my cat. When I moved out of the apartment on the second floor of my parents' house and into the first La Casa del Terror, I definitely wanted to have cats with me, but Gray Cat was quite elderly by that point and would need more attention than I could give her; Mom and my brother would be home much more and could keep a better eye on her. (She lived a couple more years, to the ripe old age of 20.) Mom very much wanted me to take Tigger, a very personable (and now much better fed) feline, and another recent acquisition, a female gray-and-white kitty called, er, Kitty-Kitty. (See what I mean about the names?) I had already committed to take on Lottie and Ms. Christopher from JB, though, so I got the Girlish Girls and Mom kept her two new furry friends.

Mom wasn't too thrill about that at first. Or so she said--she'd agreed readily to the idea of me taking Olivia off her hands, but when the day came, she had tears in her eyes.

It didn't take Mom long to get over "being stuck" with Tigger, though, as she found that the young kitty was friendly, affectionate and, unimaginative as her name was, appropriately bouncy. Other cats came as older cats went away, but Tigger and her new friend, Kitty-Kitty, made Mom smile many, many times, as beloved pets always will.

In the last couple of years, Tigger had her medical challenges, as all elderly kitties will. Her joints were creaky, her kidneys were less than bouncy, and her weight, never great, dropped noticable. However, Mom often said, as long as Tigger ate, pooped and was in no obvious pain, there was no reason to have her put to sleep.

I visit Mom's house for dinner as often as I can--weekly if possible, though work and weather sometimes get in the way. Last Saturday was Mom's birthday--no way I was missing that. I brought dinner (Mom's meal of choice, Popeyes chicken) and two pair of brand-new gloves (she'd requested one pair, but the sales in the department stores are so "pleasepleaseplease!" this year that I was able to buy her two pair for less than the regular price of one). We ate dinner and watched TV for a while, and various cats paid me visits, including Tigger. She was walking unsteadily, reminding me uncomfortably of Christopher's uncertain gait in the couple of days before I had to take her to the vet one last time, but she managed to jump onto the loveseat, walk tentatively onto my lap and stay there much of the evening.

Mom regarded Tigger sadly. "She going to be the next to go," she said.

"I think you're right," I replied, stroking the kitty's head and trying to feel her purr--it was there, barely audible.

When it was time for me to head for home, I gently lifted Tigger out of my lap. "Put her on the warm spot," Mom instructed, pointing at the ass imprint I'd left on the blanket covering the loveseat. I placed the elderly tabby there, and she immediately curled up and went to sleep.

On Monday, Tigger seemed to be having even more trouble walking, and Mom decided to take her to the vet Tuesday morning to see what, if anything, could be done. Monday night, Mom was in her bedroom, watching a bit of TV before retiring for the night, as is her custom, when she heard a cat pawing at the closed door and crying. She got up and opened the door. It was Kitty-Kitty making all the noise, but she didn't come in. Instead, it was Tigger, also standing there, who made her way into the bedroom. Kitty-Kitty then turned and walked away. She hadn't wanted into the bedroom at all; she just wanted her longtime friend, too weak to ask for herself anymore, to be able to go where she wanted to be, to go sleep with Mom, who picked her up carefully, placed her on the bed and kept her company until they both fell asleep.

Tuesday morning, Mom got up early to take Tigger to the vet. There was no need--Tigger had passed away peacefully in her sleep. She was 14 years old.

A Day to Remember

That Tuesday morning started off like just about any Tuesday morning had or has or ever would. Shave. Shower. Feed the circling furbags meowing at my still-damp feet. Pull on clothing. Push out the door and onto the Brown Line. Fall in love half a dozen times before the train even reaches the curve before the Belmont stop, where it sits without a word of explanation from the conductor for minute after minute. Same old same old.

But something was off as the train rolled on. A vibe. A buzz. Something. Two women in business suits standing near the doors, swaying and jerking with the turning and swerving of the Brown Line, talking to one another. Scattered words make it through the throng--"Didyouhearohmygodisn'titawful?"--but not enough to provide any meaningful context. Just enough to make me wonder. Just enough for me to make a mental note to log on to chicagotribune.com as soon as I got into the office.

As soon as I stepped into my cube just outside the men's room and threw myself down before Bridget, my Bondi Blue workplace iMac, I hit my bookmarks and tried to get onto the Tribune Web site. Tried. The site wouldn't come up. Shit. That meant one of two things: Either the site was down for whatever reason--maintenance, virus attack, sunspots, etc.--or there was too much traffic for their server to handle. Whatever had happened to cause the buzz on the train must have been big. Globally big. I decided to try the Sun-Times site instead. Less traffic. Less flashy graphics. Better chance of telling me what the bloody hell was up.

I hit the bookmark. Bridget churned and buzzed for a few seconds. The Sun-Times site came up straight away.

Ho. Lee. Fuck.

There, on the Sun-Times home page, in color as vivid as deep real blue the New York morning sky behind them, was the World Trade Center, holes ten stories tall punched in each one, black tangles of smoke pouring up and out of them, like an enormous, fiery giant had come along and shoved his flaming fists through them. I stared at the photo for one very long minute before I even read the headline beside it. Commercial jets had flown into each tower, minutes apart. Okay. One plane? Flying into one tower? Horrible. Tragic. Catastrophic. An accident? Possibly. Just possible. But two planes? Hitting two towers? No accident. Terrorism. War.

I couldn't sit still. A TV was on in an office up the hall, Dan Rather's faded Texas twang cutting through the unnatural silence in what would normally be an office thick with activity at the beginning of a work day. Normally. Not now. Now there were several co-workers crowded around the TV, trying to make out the signals that the skyscrapers around us would let through. CBS ran what footage it had of the towers afire, of the thousands trying to escape the conflagration, of emergency personnel rushing to the scene, always returning to the black smoke blooming from the towers' wounds. "Motherfucker," I muttered to no one in particular, regardless of a vice president at my right and department managers fore and aft, all women. They weren't listening to me anyway. They were staring at the snowy pictures.

I watched for a minute or two, then crossed the hall to Red Secretary's desk. She was there, busily typing away, and looked up to give me her usual, bright "Good morning!", a latter-day Louise Brooks with smiling gray/green eyes in place of Lulu's black gaze. Which thoroughly confused me. (Like that's difficult.) I asked if she knew what was going on. She knew something had happened. That there had been a plane crash or something. But she really didn't know what. I envied her that. Didn't stop me from breaking the news, though.

Her face drained of all color, and the smile abruptly left her eyes. "What?" I repeated the news. We crossed the hall together. We watched more reports. Then, we watched the first tower fall.

It wasn't like something out of Independence Day or War of the Worlds or anything anyone at Industrial Light & Magic could ever conceive. It was brutal. Dirty. It reminded me of being in the alley behind our apartment building on Ohio Street and covering a sheet of cardboard with topsoil from the nearby empty lot--the same empty lot where I used to scrounge for nuts and bolts in the hopes of someday building my own robot-- and tossing the whole lot in the air and watching the resulting mushroom cloud with awe. Except for the "awe" part. There was none of that watching the first tower fold in on itself, story after story, life after life. That was one of the tallest buildings in the world. Filled with thousands of workers just arrived for just another Tuesday at the job. Just people. Just like me and RS. Just like us.

I tried to go back to my desk. Tried to surf the Net. Tried to damn near anything but think about what was happening in Manhattan. But I couldn't just sit there. Restless. Shaking. Had to get up and stalk the halls. Passed empty office after empty office until I came to the main conference room. Filled with what looked like most of the company. All staring at the TV in the southwest corner of the room. All with exactly the same expression on each of their faces.

Disbelief--utter, complete, everlasting disbelief.

Info started filtering in. Some of it strictly rumor. "There are hijacked planes headed for Chicago," one co-worker reported with authority. "Cut that out," I snapped back. "You don't know that for a fact." "But I heard it on the radio...." "That doesn't matter...they don't know what the fuck's going on any more than we do." No planes headed for Chicago other than those already in flight looking for a place to land. No car bomb outside the State Department, either. But some of it grim fact. A jet slamming into the Pentagon. Another, likely headed for D.C. as well, going down in Pennsylvania. I have a dear friend in Gibsonia, just outside Pittsburgh. I hoped that she and hers were all right.

More info. Red Secretary's then-boyfriend, Czynsk, called her to say that the building he worked in was being evacuated. That was directly across the street from us. Reports were coming in that the skyscraper two doors south was emptying out, too. And we were still there...why?

Just before 10:30, one of the office admins came around to announce that workers had the option to leave if they wanted to. It took me and RS about, oh, five seconds to exercise our "option." Why stay? Even if we weren't in danger of attack, we couldn't concentrate on work anyway. And I admit it. I was nervous about being in a tall building at that exact moment--like being in a grove and hearing there's a forest fire raging not far away. (Strangely, some workers opted to stay and labor away--until the city evacuated all downtown buildings early in the afternoon.)

I suggested that we avoid the trains, which would undoubtedly be packed like rolling sardine cans, and grab the Grand Avenue bus out of downtown--we'd be more likely to get a seat, and we could swing by the drug store where Mom worked. I could let her know I was okay. More importantly, I could give her a hug and tell her I loved her. Something thousands in New York and D.C. and Pennsylvania no longer had the option of doing. RS readily agreed, and we shot out of work and onto Michigan Avenue.

These scene below was surreal. Michigan Avenue is usually busy. Buses. Cabs. Shoppers. Tourists. Panhandlers. Rollerbladers on cell phones. Crazy. But now, everybody seemed to have their heads down in determination, walking fast, like everyone was late for the same appointment. There were more vehicles than usual for that time of day. The strangest aspect, though, was the sky. No passenger jets. No private planes. No traffic copters. Not even a lousy cloud. For the first time in my lifetime, the sky above me was completely clear.

RS and I caught a bus pretty quickly and grabbed seats at the back. The bus filled quickly and made slow progress west. As we passed beneath the elevated tracks, a Brown Line train lumbered by. No daylight could be seen through its windows. Standing room only and beyond. Everyone was abandoning the Loop. Headed home. Seeking shelter. Or information. Or the embrace of a loved one. The bus continued on through the heavy traffic, and every so often I'd turn back and look to see whether the skyline was still there.

Eventually, traffic cleared just enough that the bus was able to move at something slightly faster than an arthritic retiree deprived his walker. We got off at our stop, walked the three blocks to the drug store where Mom was a cashier and walked through the automatic sliding doors. Inside, we were greeted by long lines of shoppers stocking up on supplies. Bottled water. Canned goods. Batteries. Booze. Anything to outlast Armageddon. Mom was busy checking out customers. I swung around her line to try and sneak behind to say hi. All the TV sets behind the electronics counter were tuned to the networks. Evereyone glanced up at the screens, down at their baskets, up at Mom, back at the screens.

After a couple of minutes, between checkouts, I tapped Mom on the shoulder and she turned around. We hugged. Exchanged I Love Yous. "Just wanted you to know I was okay." "Thank you. I was worried...." I turned to introduce Mom to Red Secretary...but RS wasn't there. Nor was she anywhere in sight. Mom laughed. "You never could hold onto a woman!" she said. Loudly. Loudly enough that every shopper in every line stopped glancing at the screens and their baskets and the checkout clerks and fixed their stares straight on me.

RS suddenly appeared, I brought her over, made a hasty intro and headed for the doors, with one middle-aged woman in like calling after me, "Yeah, why can't you hold onto a woman?" Back out under the alarmingly clear sky, I told RS why I'd run for it so abruptly. She thought it was funny. Me? Not so much. (Mom apologized later that evening. "I'm sorry, honey," her voice heavy and sad. "I didn't mean to embarrass you in front of your friend. I love you. You know that." I knew that.)

After another long, slower-than-usual bus ride, Red Secretary and I parted company for our respective apartments, both anxious to get somewhere with at least the veneer of safety. I still made a side trip to a neighborhood gyro stand, though--comfort food was definitely called for--and wound my way through side streets toward home.

Then I heard a sound that made me stop, stand, stare at the blue above--the unmistakable roar of an airplane. For what was likely only a minute but felt like a few hours, I stared. I shouldn't have heard that roar. All planes were supposed to be grounded. Maybe the reports of hijacked jets headed for Chi-Town were true after all. Stare. Stare. Rotate in place. Stare...nothing but blue, blue and more blue. Walk a few more steps. Another roar. Another stare. Another nothing. A few more steps. Another roar. Lather, rinse, repeat. This time, I spotted a small white jet far above me, way too small to be a commercial airliner. Found out later that it was an F-16. A fighter jet. Patrolling Chicago's airspace. Ready to shoot down anything deemed a threat. Jesus.

I made it home. Popped a tin for the Girls. Stroked their fur more than usual. Plopped myself on the loveseat. Worked the remote for the next few hours. Watched the same horror show play over and over and over some more. From different angles. From varied eyewitness accounts. From seasoned reporters, all of whom looked shaken, no matter how close to or far from the carnage they were.

Just before I went to bed, one of the networks ran silent footage, provided to them by French filmmakers who happened to be in the Big Apple shooting a documentary on the city's fire department, of the first plane slamming into the first tower. At that moment, I realized why the whole day had seemed skewed, discolored, off ever so.

That image was just like something straight out of a dream. Or a nightmare.

Went to bed. Didn't sleep a second. A few hundred million others did the same.