Floating to Portland Ore.
June 27, 2010—
You can’t outrace your heart.
I went to Portland, Oregon to write some stories for my newspaper. I thought it was good timing. I flew jets and props. I took Amtrak’s scenic Cascades between Portland and Seattle. I kayaked six miles of the Willamette River in Portand.
I walked from the Ace Hotel, a former 28 room flophouse in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle down 1st Street to Safeco Field to watch my Cubs. It is one of my favorite walks in America because I pass lush flower stands, 1950s neon and the Pike Place newspaper stand filled with periodicals of places I’ve never seen and where she went.
I read Willy Vlautin’s “Lean on Pete,” the best novel about broken down horses, stinky road people and an intrepid 15-year-old boy that I have ever read. It is based in Portland and it made me sad.
I met Murph on the final leg of my trip and he always makes me think. He rode with me on the Amtrak from Seattle to Portland. An original 1969 Bleacher Bum, he read an updated hardback reissue of a Hardy Boys book. Before we left the station we thought the train might be traveling backwards. Murph said, “I want to see what’s coming, not what’s already gone.”
Just like life.
The night before I left for Portland I made her a vegetarian pasta dish we enjoyed a couple weeks ago at Great Lakes Brewery in Cleveland, Ohio. The secret is in the butter. And garlic and chives. As she did most of the time, she helped when she didn’t have to. She’s that way.
We sat on my front porch near Humboldt Park in Chicago and listened to distant salsa music. We watched two helicopters beam two spotlights down at the Puerto Rican festival in the park. By the time we went to bed there was only one spotlight left. The people were going home or moving into the tin cup dance clubs on North Avenue.
By the next morning she was gone. It was tougher than I expected. We walked over to a Ukranian deli where immigrant workers unlocked the chains on steel heart shaped tables. We sat down and talked about plans. I later said goodbye near a gate at the side of my house and walked upstairs. I went to my front porch and watched the pick-up truck that would soon gather her last bit of furniture. A big box of composting worms from her classroom were in the back of the truck. They were important.
I tidied up my place, went to my black Pontiac that just hit 100,000 miles and drove to the western suburbs for Father’s Day. After a few hours I drove to O’Hare International Airport to catch my flight. I was early. The heart runs on its own time.
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