Chicago

I’m home now from Chicago. A wonderful vacation in a new city with an old friend. I met my friend Brigid in Chicago and we had art, culture, shopping, and endless talking about our lives. Brigid and I know each other 30 years but we haven’t lived in the same city for the last 15. Earlier this year it seemed that the friendship would break from the distance and changes in our lives. We were young, single women together in Baltimore and shared passions for art and food and self-improvement.

In Chicago we went to museums, the symphony in the park and walked Michigan Avenue until our feet burned. Then we went to the Nordstrom shoe department for relief. And we talked nonstop about how our inner lives had improved and the parts that still resisted change. We swapped names of therapists, gurus and self help books.

It also felt good to go away alone—to have all that quiet time in travel---the good news of long waits in airports is that it gives me a huge amount of quiet and solitude and that really feeds my writer/creator self. I was delighted to find that Chicago’s Midway Airport has a Chapel and Spiritual Center in the airport. I went there to pray and meditate and be still.