A long life of love

Recently I noticed that Harry, one of my two nineteen-year-old cats (the other is his brother, George), has been looking a little round in the belly, and that his tummy has seemed swollen and tight, although not painful to the touch. I also realized he hasn't really been pooping.

"Aha, he's constipated, not uncommon in older cats," I thought. So I booked a vet appointment with my friend and proceeded to dose Harry with mineral oil and Metamucil, hoping to cure the situation and avoid a vet bill. Neither remedy produced the desired result.

"He may need an enema," said my vet friend, "and trust me, you don't want to do that on your own."

So on Saturday morning we went for the appointment.

"Wow, his belly is really firm," said the vet, feeling Harry's abdomen while he waited patiently. "I'm going to do a rectal exam to see whether I can feel anything in there, and to make sure his bladder isn't enlarged."

She took Harry out back and a few moment later I heard a loud "MEEEEEOOOOOWR."

"That would be the rectal exam," I thought.

She came back in, holding a rather astonished-looking Harry. "I feel some feces, but nothing to indicate he's constipated, and his bladder feels fine, so I'd like to do an X-ray to see what's going on."

"Do what you need to," I said.

Now, Harry is easy at the vet. He's mellow and not troublesome, so I knew taking his X-ray would be simple. So when over twenty-five minutes had passed and she hadn't come back, I began to feel dread in the pit of my stomach.

Finally, she came back holding two X rays, She stopped and gave me a very sad look.

"I had a feeling," I said, my stomach  dropping.

She held up the X-rays. There was fluid, a lot of it, in Harry's abdomen. She showed me all the things that I never would have picked up on with my untrained eye. The lack of a clear border, indicating fluid rather than a mass. The pressure against one of his lungs. But even my untrained eye had seen enough other X-rays of my cats over the years to know that I was looking at a story with no happy ending.

"I'd have to put the fluid under a slide to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure it's cancer," she said. "I'm so sorry."

I just stared at the X-ray, at the insides of the cat I loved more than breathing, and felt so sad for him, that his body was betraying him this way. I looked at the outline of his heart, the fine bones of his ribs, the sharp poetry of his spine. I looked at the dense white cloud of fluid that didn't belong there but that would, unfairly, cast the deciding vote for everything that did.

"You could try treating it, try chemo..." she began, "but at his age, you'd have to ask yourself who it would really be for..."

"No. No. I will not put him through that. He's nineteen. It's just his time. I've been sort of preparing for this... it's just...hard."

I drew in a ragged breath, trying to focus and stay coherent. "Ok. Ok. So...is this at a stage..."

She knew what I wanted to know. "It's affecting his quality of life."

I could feel the tears all over my face, but I swallowed the lump in my throat and kept talking, feeling the contrast between my matter-of fact tone and the tears streaming down all over me. I was still staring at the X-ray, at the bright spot, trying to focus on something.

"I can't euthanize him today," I said, my voice finally breaking. "I can't. I need some time to say goodbye. He's nineteen. He's been with me for nineteen years. I need some time to say goodbye. Do you think it would be OK to wait a week, I mean, do you think it would be inhumane to wait a week?"

"You can do that," she said, "and if he deteriorates in the meantime, you just bring him in sooner. I'll give him some fluids, and send him home with an appetite stimulant."

She aspirated some of the fluid to study and showed me the syringe. It was full of a milky-white fluid tinged with pink.

"It looks like lymph, so I'm guessing he's got lymphoma, and it's blocking his lymph ducts, and it's draining into his abdomen."

She also agreed to see about doing an in-home euthanasia for me when the time came.

Out in the lobby, sunglasses over my swollen eyes and the tears mercifully at bay,  I waited to pay my bill, Harry in a carrier at my feet. A little boy of about six came over and squatted in front of the carrier. He was careful to keep his hands against his chest, so someone had told him about not touching strange animals.

He looked in at Harry, and broke into a wide grin. "This looks like a really nice cat," he said. He was adorable.

"He is. He is a really nice cat," I smiled at him. "His name is Harry, and you can pat him. He's very friendly."

"Hey, Harry," the boy said, putting a finger through the door of the carrier. "He isn't sniffing my finger or anything, and he's not letting me touch him. He's too far away."

"Well, he's been poked and prodded a lot today, and he probably just needs a break," I explained. "But you can talk to him; he likes that." Harry is of course now deaf, but he didn't have to know.

"Hey Harry, you sure are a nice cat," the boy said. Another little boy joined him.

"Have you ever read the book A Cricket in Times Square?" I asked. "There is a cat named Harry in that book." They thought this was great.

I'd paid and picked up the carrier. "Thanks for talking to Harry. And remember: A Cricket in Times Square."

I made it to the car, had a moment, regained my composure, and drove home.

Harry is sleeping a lot, and walking very little, his distended abdomen making it more difficult, although today it is far less tight. I'm not going to kid myself, though. I slept with him on the floor for part of the night (he seems to prefer that now), but ended up in my bed when my neck got stiff. I woke to find him on the bed with me in his usual position in the cook of my arm, purring. Yesterday I took him to a side garden and let him sniff the grass and flowers and bask in the sun. I read sitting on the floor, and he comes over to lay his head on my lap. He's still Harry.

I do wish he could still hear, but the fact he can't doesn't stop me from talking to him. I lay with him on the rug, reminiscing while he purred at my side.

"Remember when you almost attacked the raccoons in Vermont, thinking they were a danger to me?" I laughed. "They were twice your size, but you almost went through the screen to get to them. And the time you swatted Maggie's dogs away when they started licking my face?" I rubbed his chin, burying my face in his side, bringing on a louder purr. "You have always had the heart of a lion. Thank you for taking such good care of me."

The hard part is knowing when the time will be right. I know he has cancer; the signs of it are unmistakable in his obscenely swollen belly. He doesn't appear to be in pain, but he lays in one spot practically all the time and sleeps. His head hangs down in a strange new way. But he still thrums with happiness when I stroke his head, his paws kneading the floor in bliss. I think he knows his time is getting short -- he's going out of his way to show me attention, just as I am with him. I don't want him to suffer, but I don't want to rob him of any good days he has left. He spends most of them sleeping, but they are his days to sleep away, on his rug, in his house, with us. And he loves to be with me, sometimes purring so loud he goes up an octave. He loves being here.

I have never let my cats roam the streets, terrified that they would come to harm. When I make the decision to end Harry's life, I know I will do it to spare him suffering, make it as gentle and kind as it can be, but I will also be sending him away to a place where I can't protect him or take care of him. I will be putting him out of my life, exiling him to someplace unknown. For the first time in his life, I will be sending him away from me. The first time ever, and the last.  The decision weighs so heavy.

I put my head against his, twisting my fingers in his paws.

"Do you trust me?" I ask him.

His answer is to purr even louder and knead my fingers gently.

I wish I shared his faith.

Tornado!

So I work on the 46th floor of the Aon building, once known as the Standard Oil Building, a skyscraper right by Lake Michigan. My department is in the southeast corner, and the company has a completely open floor plan, so we have access to some great views.

Friday was a hot, sunny day - at lunch, I walked to City Hall with the intention of getting my car's city sticker (this is a sticker that you have to have to park in Chicago. You have to renew it every year and it costs $75. So you basically have to pay to park in the city where you already pay taxes to cover, one would think, city streets. but I digress.)

The sky was clear, and it was hot - easily high 80s.

After deciding the line out the door was a tad more hassle than I wanted, I decided to just buy the sticker online and pray that if I didn't get it in time I could use the printed receipt on my dash to ward off the ticket cobras.

At one point late in the afternoon, I had this odd sense that something was...off. I looked up, and I saw that the light outside had gotten dim. Looking across to Legal, which has a southern view, I saw one of the secretaries standing by the window, looking out. I joined her.

The view to the south is unobstructed: we overlook Millennium Park, and have a clear shot pretty much all the way to Indiana. The lake sits to our left, and the buildings along Michigan Avenue are to our right.

It's also Illinois, which means it's flat, so you have a western view that stretches pretty far.

From where we stood, a heavy, black blanket of clouds was moving quickly towards us and the lake.

"Holy Cow," I said. "This is like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

The clouds continued to moved toward us rapidly, and we could see the wall of rain underneath. Street lights came on, as did the headlights of the cars traveling along 95 and Lake Shore Drive. It was eerie, like a train-set town.

"Look at the fountain," I said. The plume from Buckingham fountain, which just minutes before had been pointing straight up (if you've seen Married With Children, it's the fountain that turns on in the opening credits) , was now gyrating and twisting like those air-sock figures used to advertise used cars. Waves scudded across the lake; boats pitched in the turbulence. Debris flew past the window.

"Look-- lighting!" said the secretary next to me.

We watched the ground get wet, people run under Anoosh Kapoor's "Cloud Gate."

People were coming over to look out the windows as things got blacker.

"Magnificent," I whispered.

"Hey, come away from the window," I heard my boss say.

"Yes. Step away, right now," said one of the other risk managers.

Were they kidding? Did I look like a child? I ignored them.

"Risk Management people, step away from the windows!" my supervisor called.

I sighed and stepped back a bit.

"Why? What could happen?" I asked in the naivete that can only come from growing up in an area without tornadoes.

Then the window shook like tympani. I saw the glass vibrate.

Oh.

I imagined being sucked out of the 46th floor, and I stepped well back. A group had gathered. The rain was beating against the windows, driven by the amazing wind. We felt the building sway. It made me giddy.

Suddenly the alarm lights flashed and a voice informed us that there was a tornado alert. The elevators had been disabled, and we were NOT to evacuate, but to go to an inside corridor away from windows and glass walls.

Our group joined some others in the elevator lobby on our floor. We stood there for about fifteen minutes, talking and passing the time. I imagined having to kick off my low heels should the need arise to run down the fire stairs.

After awhile, we got the all-clear and went back to our desks, while I sang "The Morning After."

At our desks, my Scottish coworker, let's call him Colin, gave me a high five.

"We survived our first tornado, JC," he said.

"Colin, that wasn't a tornado."

"Was it not?"

"No, my dear. We just survived a tornado warning. An almost-tornado."

He looked crestfallen. "You're sure it wasn't a tornado?"

"Trust me, you would have known, and we would not be sitting here. Unless it was a British version of a tornado: small, compact, efficient. Queues behind other tornados to wreak destruction."

"Tidies up after itself."

"Exactly."

Fellow Crack Coworker

My co-worker who's reading the Twilight saga came over to my desk today. She's on Book Three. I know, because I lent it to her.

"So I had some time before they all got back from their meeting," she said, referring to the people in her department.

"So you took out the book," I finished. "Bad move."

"I know. I only had about twenty minutes."

"Whoa. Painful." I sympathized.

"Yeah."

This woman is older than me, I should add. Easily mid-fifties.

"I can't wait until I'm done with them all so we can talk," she said.

This is fun.

This Is Not Your Father's Nosferatu, or, How I Came to Love the Twinkling Undead

At the beginning of this season's "Dr. Who," I watched the first episode with a neighbor and her friend, we'll call her Jocelyn. Jocelyn was funny, acerbic, and refreshingly different. We shared a nerdy love of SciFi and related nerd genres; at one point, she turned to me and blurted out, "Angel or Spike?"

I made a face. "Spike. Duh."

She high-fived me. "I like her," she said to my neighbor.

So a couple of weeks ago I went out with the neighbor and a couple of other women to a drive-in. Jocelyn was out of state attending a nephew's high-school graduation.

"Oh," said my neighbor. "Jocelyn gave me some books to lend you. I guess you two talked about them."

I couldn't remember this. "Books? Really? What books?"

"Some vampire books."

I remember discussing the Interview With a Vampire books, but she knew I'd read them. I couldn't for the life of me recall showing an interest in any books that would motivate her to lend me any.

"They're in a bag in the back seat."

I took the bag an opened it. Inside were two books. 

The first two books of the Twilight saga.

No. Oh no.

I'd just met someone I thought I could really see as a fun friend, and she thought I'd read these? What was she thinking? Then the next thought: I didn't want to offend her. Crap. What would I do? Teenage vampire romance?!?!? Did I look like a 13-year-old girl? My 13-year old intern at my old job had loved the books, and I was glad she liked to read, and never discouraged her, but told her they weren't for me. I let her talk about the books, but her adolescent ardor for the star of the movies was not really a motivation for me to pick them up. If my impression of the books was of teenage pap gone amok, the bubble-gum magazine pin-ups in the intern's cubicle did nothing to counteract it.

My face must have read what I was thinking, because my neighbor said, "You don't have to read them. Jut say you couldn't get through them. She won't mind."

Recovering, I said, "No, that's OK. I can give them a try." Privately, I decided I'd read a chapter or two and then tell Jocelyn honestly that they weren't for me.

The books sat in my house for a week, untouched. I didn't even take them out of the bag. When the craze had hit, I was as uninterested as I could be. I sneered. I called it "Vampire 90210." I was sick of the pervasive Cult of the Teenager. I was offended at the notion that vampires had been repackaged as some sort of Teen Angst figures. They didn't DIE in the SUN? They TWINKLED? TWINKLED?!?!? What kind of heretical convenience was that? It was BS; that's what it was. A typical example of how young people today can't deal with boundaries. And I refused categorically to buy into it.

One evening I decided it was time to read my obligatory chapter that would allow me to honestly say I'd tried. Embarrassed at even holding the first book, I sat down and began to read.

Three hours later I had to force myself to go to bed.

I finished the book the next evening and began the second one. I finished that the following day. And I learned a lesson I should have learned by now: don't judge something by anything other than itself. I'd judged these books by their young fan base, by the mania over the teens who played in the movie and yes, perversely, I'd judged the books by their popularity ("If they are this widely appealing, they must be lowest-common-denominator.")

What I'd not realized is that these books are popular for the simple fact that they are really compelling to read. They are light, fast reads, but the writing is solid, the story complex, and the characters engrossing. I loved everything about the world this author has created.

And yes, the central romance is ... well, romantic. Whether you're a teenager or an adult, do you really ever stop hoping that someday you'll meet someone who loves you so devotedly that he puts your happiness and well-being before his own? Who can be trusted completely to be mature and loving and protective, and sexy as hell? Who will always have your back? Yes, yes, yes, it's a fiction, a fantasy, but I live every day in reality and I can tell you I need a break from it sometimes. In my experience, "I love you" means "You're the one I've decided to take for granted more than anyone else." It's a nice change to have "I Love You" mean, "Your happiness is inseparable from my own, so I'll deny my most basic urges (in this case, drinking your blood and killing you) and dedicate my life to making you happy and safe."  

I was still too embarrassed to admit I was reading them, much less admit I was loving the books, so I kept my shame to myself. I read only in my house. I needed book three, Eclipse, though, and I needed it fast. On the train in to work, I saw a woman my age reading, and I realized what a pretentious ninny I was being. Since when did I care what people thought? Still, after work I went to Borders and furtively looked for the books, doing a search on the in-store computer while blocking the screen. I had to go to Young Adult, carefully avoiding salespeople (I confess I was prepared to tell them I was getting a birthday present for my niece).

I found the books, grabbed Eclipse.

It felt uncomfortably like the first time I had to buy a box of sanitary napkins at the age of twelve.

I walked to the register. Do or die time. Face it, JC. Face it head on.

"I can help you over here," called out a young man at a register.

I marched to face him. "You can help me, BUT--" I tossed the book onto the counter -- "will you sneer at me?"

He stared at the book, his mouth open, and then quickly regained his composure. "No," he stammered, clearly putting a lot of effort into keeping his voice neutral, "these are very ...um...popular."

"Yes, I know, among teenage girls. And I've sneered at these for years now, and you know what? I'm addicted to them like crack. CRACK. And I know what you're thinking, because I've thought it too, and nobody could convince me otherwise. But trust me; these are way better than snobs like me gave them credit for."

"No, I see lots of----" he stopped, stuck, then continued, "people --your age-- reading these."

"I know what you're reeeeeally thinking," I said, again, torturing him some more, because he was very cute and clearly uncomfortable, and as long as he was uncomfortable, the focus was diverted and I didn't have to admit to myself that I had a crush on a fictional vampire in the body of a teenage boy. "I forgive you. And I'll be back in a couple of days for the final book." I smiled.

He was very nice, and gave me my Borders discount.

I gave him a final ironic smile as I put the book in my bag. I leaned over the counter. "Like. CRACK." I said, and left.

By Friday I was ready for Book Four, Breaking Dawn, the final book. I was back at Borders, bee-lining it to the Young Adult section. It was still only available in hardcover. I rarely buy hardcover, because I take my books everywhere and hardcover is not very portable. 

I didn't care. I'd have bought it if it were carved into stone tablets. I hefted the large hardcover, paid for it, and read 70 pages by the time my train got to its stop.

I spent most of the weekend reading it, pacing myself so as to prolong the story and savor the experience. On one hand, I wanted to know how it ended; on the other, I didn't want it to end. Finally, on Sunday, I just parked myself in the evening and read until I'd finished it at 1am.

And yes, the ending was fantastic. 

After a week of being immersed in that world, it feels odd not to be there anymore. I loved that world, and I loved the characters, and will truly miss them.

I'd come clean to my best friend and to my coworkers and others, some of who persisted in rolling their eyes at me. Penance for my years of behaving the same way, I suppose. Today, though, one of my coworkers told me she'd gotten the first two books on my suggestion, and when she'd started reading she didn't stop until four hours later. They do that to you. I'm bringing Book Three in tomorrow for her.

A neighbor invited me to watch the first two movies on Netflix, and I think I will, but I'm concerned: the trailers I've seen on YouTube don't fit with what I've read. Edward is supposed to be impossibly beautiful, and his voice is consistently described as velvety, musical. The Edward I heard on the trailers sounds like he's going to be an accountant when he grows up. And while he has a certain offbeat physical appeal, I can't say he'd be my choice.

My neighbor tells me that her teenage stepdaughter was incensed at the first movie, claiming that they got the first kiss all wrong. It's stuff like that I'm not sure I want to see. The books are absolutely engaging, but the movies....hmmm. Still, I'm learning not to prejudge.

Right?

Yesterday

On my bike, I was behind a van that was making a turn when one of its bumper stickers jumped out at me with such force that it might have been booming right at me:

"Remember who you wanted to be."

I gasped. Literally gasped. And knew it was right.

Rump-fed runion, anyone?

In my freshman year of college, I'd mentioned to friends that I'd wanted to get involved in theater. So it was that one day three of them came pounding on my door to tell me that there would be auditions for Macbeth, and they insisted  I try out.

To understand how I was at the time, you have to understand that while I was very expressive and fun and witty, I was also horrifically self-conscious. (College helped me with that, but during my first semester I was still changing in the closet and could not go to the cafeteria without first securing a dining companion. I'd once just gone alone, and upon seeing no one I knew, had put my full tray on the counter and walked out.)

I went to the audition. Now, I'd like to be able to tell you exactly what happened, but I was so petrified I've blocked most of it out. I do remember that I stood in a room and faced the Communications Department head and the director, a young man with whom I would end up working, and who would be a great teacher for me. But at the time, they were simply the most intimidating people in the entire universe.

I remember they had me read Lady Macbeth's "unsex me here" scene and I was too terrified to do anything but jump. I recall flashes of flailing arms, and I think I went for loud. In other words, a college freshman audition.

I caught a break: not enough men auditioned, so they gave me the part of Malcolm, changing it to Margaret. I got a role, and Scotland got a little liberated. It was an experimental production, abbreviated, so it wasn't a huge part, but I was thrilled that I got a little soliloquy, and the final line to the show. Not to mention freeing Dunsinane.

That was my only Shakespeare experience, and it was fun. I got good feedback from the director, but never since had the opportunity to do more. I read aloud when I read Shakespeare; it's almost a compulsion to feel the words in my mouth.

So when I saw auditions posted for a production of Macbeth to be held outdoors this summer, I jumped at the chance. I had to prepare a monologue. At first I selected something form the Merry Wives of Windsor, something easy I could do well, one that would not require a lot of study and interpretation. Then I decided that I was going about it all wrong. I wanted the role of Lady Macbeth, and I needed to show that all five feet of me could command a presence on stage. So I chose a scene with Queen Margaret in Henry VI.

In this scene, Margaret is sadistic, contemptuous. I ate it up. I worked this monologue for two weeks, testing every line to see that it rang true and worked with the line before and after, I worked on my paces, my gestures, every nuanced facial expression. I obsessed. I ran through it in my mind on the El, while doing laundry, on the elevator.

"What, was it you that would be England's king?" I muttered at Au Bon Pain. "Thou should'st be mad, and I to make thee mad, do mock thee thus," I told passersby as I walked to the El. "But how is it that great Plantagenet is crowned so soon?"

The day came, and I drove to Evanston, full of optimism. Almost thirty years later, I had the maturity, the creativity, the confidence, to do this play. I understood her. I understood a woman who could be so blinded by ambition that she could delude herself that she could do anything, even survive the loss of her humanity. I knew what it was to pretend to be someone I wasn't to prove to myself that I could. In the end, I know, that never works. Lady M learns it, too.

I'd even practiced some Lady Macbeth lines in anticipation of learning them once I was cast. "Who'd have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" is such an anguished line that it brings tears to my eyes.

So when I saw that the two women waiting to audition were in their twenties, I had a familiar sense of foreboding. Ditto when I saw that the man ushering people into the audition was also very, very young. Chin up, I thought. Judi Dench.

I was ushered into a large room where the director, her stage manager, and her designer sat. All were women. The director, at least, looked over thirty (I later learned from a friend that she'd graduated from Julliard and directs a lot of Shakespeare. I'm glad I didn't know that at the time.)

I did my scene, trying to control my nervousness, but pretty sure I got across that I can deliver Shakespeare decently.

"Great, thanks," the director said when I'd finished. "Can you go out and look over these pieces, and come back and read them when you're ready?"

Excited, I took the sheets of paper and walked toward the door. I looked down to see what I'd be preparing. The name on the top sheet jumped at me.

MALCOLM.

No.

I looked at the other two sheets. Witches.

I felt all the air leave my body. Men and witches. I made them think of men and witches. Nice.

I went back out, and the two 20ish girls were there, clearly nervous, bolstering each other in that false way that the two finalists in the Miss America pageant do.

As I stood in a stairwell going over the pieces (they were fairly uninteresting, not particularly easy to get anything out of), I realized they were bringing each woman in more than once. I heard loud wailing from inside the audition room.

"I will be damned," I thought to myself, "If I will be in a production where Lady MacBeth is a freaking twentysomething."

I took a breath and focused. At least one of the witch scenes was my favorite to say, about the sailor's wife who won't share her chestnuts. ("'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed runion cried.")

The two girls avoided my eyes and spoke only to themselves, and the young man never cracked a smile, instead being stiffly polite. I call it the "I don't know how to behave socially with anyone more than three years older than I am" syndrome. And yes, I was the ugly duckling next to the tall, willowy girls. I'm used to that, and it doesn't usually get to me, because I like myself, not to mention that having a thin skin is pointless when you decide to audition. But I was having a hard week. And... men and witches.

I went back in and delivered the Malcolm scene - I wasn't really feeling it, and they asked me to speak louder, so I belted out the witch scenes, already feeling like this was a courtesy. I've been on enough blind dates to know when I won't get called. They were polite (ack! Not polite!) and I left.

I doubt I'll get a callback. Still, maybe I'll luck out and Margaret, daughter of Duncan, will once more need to rise to the battle to liberate Dunsinane and Scotland from the tyrant.

Not holding my breath, though. there's always tomorrow. And tomorrow....

The best shows are on Broadway. The Broadway bus, that is.

On Saturday the weather was nice, so I decided to make it a low-key errand running day, leave the bike at home, wear a skirt, and walk a lot.

After picking up cat food at Parkview and tailoring in Andersonville, I headed to Sheridan to try Tweet, which I'd been meaning to try for awhile.

The menu was extremely vegetarian/vegan friendly, and I had the biscuits and veggie breakfast patties with white gravy.  This decadently rich dish was delicious, but should come with a side of angioplasty. The proprietress, Michelle, liked my summer color combination, and recommended I check out an installation at the Cultural Center, because my colors were similar to that used by the artist. I've never had someone suggest an exhibit based on my clothing, and I was intrigued.

I walked to Broadway and decided to take the bus to Edgewater for my final purchase: a new broom, at the hardware store near my old apartment. The bus I got on was fairly empty; one woman sat in front of me and a few people sat behind.

We pulled to one stop where several people waited, among them an older black woman with an oxygen tank.

"YOU GET ON THE BUS BEFORE ME. I WANT TO GET ON AFTER EVERYONE!" She yelled. I marveled that someone who needed an oxygen tank could project so well.

"Here we go," I thought.

See, the Broadway bus is The People's Bus. A great deal of its route goes by senior assisted-living facilities and low-income apartments for the elderly, and as a consequence, these people use the bus a lot. Many of them have physical challenges. Many is the time I've spent wrestling with myself as the bus stopped yet again to lower itself or extend a ramp in a painfully laborious process so that passengers with walkers, canes, wheelchairs, or just plain stiff legs could get on. It's like a tour bus at Lourdes.

There is one passenger I see from time to time; I call him the Tuba Man because he has, among other detritus bungee'd to the back of his wheelchair, a dented tuba. I have never heard him play, and I'm not sure that I'm unhappy about that.

So on one hand I watch this and am pleased that we as a society make accommodaton for physical impairments, and I muse that I might need the same mercy one day.

On the other hand, after the third walker/wheelchair in as many stops, my inner voice screams, "OH MY GOD I JUST WANT TO GET HOME!" and I know I'm going to hell.

So I wasn't surprised to see an old person with an oxygen tank waiting. As she requested, everyone else got on first. On Chicago buses, you can use one kind of pass, which requires you to insert it into the box right in front of the driver, or you can use a touch card, the reader for which is just to your left, on a pole at the beginning of the aisle. An older black gentleman was trying to use this reader, and was having no luck.

"CAN'T YOU MOVE IN YOU'RE BLOCKING THE WAY" bellowed Oxygen Woman.

The man quietly ignored her and kept trying to get his card to read.

"YOU ARE BLOCKING THE WAY! THERE ARE PLENTY OF SEATS AND PEOPLE CAN'T GET TO THEM BECAUSE YOU ARE BLOCKING THE WAY!" She was the only one behind him.

I heard murmurs of disapproval behind me. The kind of church-sounding murmurs you associate with black folks.

The man finally gave up and used the reader by the driver (these aren't interchangeable, and I suspect he was simply using the wrong reader in the first place).

The man proceeded quietly down the aisle to the back of the bus, and Oxygen Woman sat at the front, facing sideways.

"THERE IS NO NEED TO TAKE UP AN ENTIRE BUS AND MAKE PEOPLE WAIT!" she roared.

From behind me came the voice of another black woman: "You're sick because you're evil."

I sucked in a breath. The woman had said it neither loud nor soft; she spoke almost as if speaking to herself.

"You got an oxygen tank because you're evil."

I settled back for the show. I was facing forward, looking at Oxygen Woman's profile. One row of forward-facing seats separated us, and an older white woman in a wild-colored top and straw hat sat in front of me.

"ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?" yelled Oxygen Woman, staring ahead out the window.

I was sure she was addressing the woman who'd commented, but then the older white woman leaned forward and said, "I said I like your fingernail polish; it's very pretty."

I thought this was sweet, and wondered what effect it would have.

"IF YOU WANT SOMEONE TO TALK TO, BUY YOURSELF A DOG," blared Oxygen Woman, still staring ahead out the side window.  The other passengers gasped, and I had two simultaneous thoughts: one, this was breathtakingly rude; two, this woman had the comeback of an improv pro.

"You don't have all that much time left," the voice behind me said, "and you shouldn't waste it being so full of bitterness."

We'd come to a stop, and the owner of the voice was getting off with a couple of other people. She was a black woman about 35-40.

(I mention race here because I have noticed that black folks will take each other to task in ways that white folks won't, and frankly, I thoroughly enjoy it.)

"IT SAYS MOVE TO THE BACK OF THE BUS. HE WAS BLOCKING THE BUS AND NOBODY COULD GET ON. THERE IS NO NEED TO BLOCK PEOPLE LIKE THAT!"

"You TOLD everyone to get on the bus before you. You SAID you wanted to get on last. So I GOT you."

The woman and a few others got off. An older black woman with perfect hair and the kind of attention to her appearance that reminded me of my grandmother remained directly behind me. The white woman came and sat next to me and spoke to us both.

"Did you hear what she said to me?!?!" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "and that was too bad, because you were being so nice." I sensed that this woman was a little off herself; she seemed childlike and sweet, though. I complimented her on her ring, a huge, zinnia-looking bauble done in some kind of enamel. it was actually pretty groovy.

"She's just full of malice and bitterness. That's what a life of being bitter will do to you," said the older black woman.

"Well," I said, "I think she's not right on the head." I was appalled by the woman's behavior, but she was clearly off her rocker, so I didn't want to be too harsh.

A black man sitting across the aisle from us smiled a mouth full of gums. "She got a demon; that's what she got."

We chatted about the elderly, about growing old, about what it can do to you, hoping we didn't turn out that way. Oxygen Woman got off at her stop with a declaration that she was GOING TO FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS AND GET OFF AT THE BACK LIKE EVERYONE SHOULD. I wondered whether anyone in her life was close to her, and hoped someone was.

Shortly after, I got off and bought my broom from the nice Korean couple at Kim's Hardware.

It was a People's Day. A good day. Bitterness and demons notwithstanding.