Every year, the lady and I return to the Midwest for the holidays. We go because we miss our families and friends but also because we feel we need to. We’re guilty, catholic-raised deserters.
Six years ago is almost a decade. Seattle has been good to us during this time but it’s still a strain to be so far away from everything we knew, everything we grew up around for nearly the first four decades of our lives. The wife has it worse than I and, that’s why, every time we drive from her hometown, Minneapolis, to my hometown, Chicago, she asks if I would ever move back.
We stay with the lady’s mom when we return to the Midwest ever since she sold her house two hours north of the Twin Cities and moved into the cities. She also gets up early. She also makes egg-coffee.
At the age of 25, I learned that my taste buds had changed. For some reason, at this age, this onion-hating individual tried these tear-inducing vegetables and liked them. From that moment on, I decided I would try eating anything at least once – I could only say I didn’t like something if I had tried it. Turns out, I like most food. In fact, the list of food-stuffs I don’t like is so short, I can list them here without the risk of boring you: nato and some whiskeys of the super-stingy variety. For this reason, I find it very strange that I refuse to try the egg-coffee.
While in Chicago this holiday, I decided to not visit my friends and, instead, spend an afternoon at a museum to see the David Bowie exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Being a mega-fan, it was a wonderland. The items, seemingly random to some that I’ve talked to, were a perfect patchwork of artifacts linked between thought and expression. As I consumed the experience, bookended by David’s baby pictures and his coke spoon, I continually pondered his imminent death.
That makes it sound like I’m planning something or have received an inside tip from my Vegas bookie about a celebrity death-pool. I’m not and haven’t but Lou Reed is dead. That’s not really news. It was over a year ago that he passed, on a Saturday. It’s been over a year since KEXP riddled their Sunday playlist with cover versions of his songs that had me in tears. It’s going to happen to Bowie and it’s going to happen to the lady’s mom. It’s going to happen to my mom. It’s going to happen to my NW friends, my MW friends, you, the lady, and me.
I’m at the age that parents are dying. The list of dead parents is much longer than the list of foods I dislike. So, yes – I think about going home a lot and trying some of that foul-smelling, almost certainly horrible, egg-coffee.
