Purls of Wisdom

Today's entry on my wife's knitting desk calendar reads:

"Knitters are frequently accused of being obsessed with the process and the stuff we use to do it with. I think that sounds sort of negative. Instead of describing myself as 'obsessed with knitting,' I prefer to think of my lifestyle as exquisitely focused in a very narrow direction."

Knitting, baseball, God ... fill in the blank. It works.

High school reunion

Beverly Clark sits on the end of a bed, confessing to an acquaintance her fear of losing her husband. Her deepest lament? “We need a witness to our lives,” says Clark, played by Susan Sarandon in Shall We Dance. “There's a billion people on the planet … I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things ... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’ ”

Some of us have been blessed by spouses or partners. Others have led lives as single people. Others have been married, then not, then maybe partnered anew. Which really isn’t the point here.

The point is, who are the witnesses to our life?

Our class is having its 30th high school reunion this weekend. We’ll blow three decades of dust off memories that have accumulated like so many old record albums in some closet of our brain. What is the allure of going back, metaphorically if not literally?

For some, I suppose it’s to be reminded of the days when life seemed simpler. Or of how little we’ve changed. Or of how much we have.

But these friends really are unique witnesses to our lives.

Beverly Clark feared losing her husband because he came home late, night after night. Ultimately, her fears were unfounded. He (Richard Gere) had been out taking dancing lessons in hopes of rekindling their relationship.

Those of us who spent years together through high school and then went our separate ways – we’ve been out learning lessons, too, dancing or otherwise. After being gone so long, we’ll come back home to remind ourselves that in a world of relative anonymity, we are rare witnesses to the long spans of our respective lives.

Photo courtesy of Helen Bryan

Paint it Blue

Photo © Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune

A ball falls between three Cubs fielders in a Friday afternoon loss to the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field.

Not that it's taken me 38 years of being a Cubs fan to figure this out, but the obvious became moreso this weekend: the reason one remains a Cubs fan is that when they win, Wrigley Field is more fun than any ballpark in America. When they lose, none is more blue.

So it's for the former that I stick it out. I've just got to work on my timing.

Friday, we're in the 10th row, directly behind home plate. The Cubs implode in the 6th inning and lose 8-3 to St. Louis.

Today, we're listening to the car radio on the way home, and the fading crackle of AM-720 is barely audible as the Cubs beat those same Cardinals 5-2. And Wrigley is singing again.

So, we went the wrong day. But that is a long-established corollary of my life as a Cub fan, two others being primary among them:

• The outcome of the game is inversely proportional to the quality of my seats. (I've seen a lot of victories from the upper deck and watched a lot of losses from the box seats.)


• Never get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the game; the other team will hit a home run. (Friday: top of the 5th, I go to the men's room and Albert Pujols parks a fastball in the center field bleachers. Sixth straight game that's happened. Next time, I'm not even drinking water on game days.)

Road trip

What do you take on a two-day road trip? I mean, packing light is sort of the point of a road trip, isn't it? If you have to pack at all? Jump in the car (preferably a convertible), some cash in your wallet, a baseball cap, and you're off. It's not like a vacation, where you need different pairs of shoes, clothes for changing weather, several pairs of socks, toiletries beyond your toothbrush, a lint brush if your hosts have a cat ...

Because I essentially live in two places nine months of the year, I've become an obsessively minimalist traveler. I don't even like lugging my laptop anymore. With cargo shorts, a good pair of walking shoes and two pair of tech-fabric travel underwear, you can be pretty minimalist. At least for five months out of the year.

Don't have a convertible, but I'm heading out anyway.

Madison, Evanston, the El, Wrigley Field, Milwaukee, 48 hours. Begins now.