So I was walking around Chicago a couple of weeks ago...

Work occasionally sends me away from Motown, and such was the case a couple of weeks ago (nudge/hint to people inclined to wonder about my blogging frequency of late).

I was gone for a full week--a real rarity--but it was something that had to be borne. Since I know Chicago about as well as the topography of Mars, I was cabbed about a lot. Returning to my hotel room on Tuesday evening, I looked forward to dinner and an early sleep. Waiting for the elevator, I arranged my things and grabbed for my hotel key card.

Hmm. Wallet's not in that pocket.

Cue the Wallet Search Macarena--slapping from pocket to pocket until it's found. Very arhythmically, but there you go.

By pocket slap five, I'm starting to develop a nervous tic. Lather, rinse, repeat. No wallet.

Oh, s__t.

It probably fell out in the cab--no worries. I'll just call the cab company using the receipt.

Receipt's basically illegible, with the only recognizable sections saying "Cab Transportation."

I sprint to the service desk of the hotel for some help. Any help. Help! The nice lady behind the counter helped me as much as she could, but Smudge Taxicab was not one she was familiar with.

"Maybe they ran the charge, and you can call your credit card company to find out who it is?"

Great--and clever advice. After struggling to get a good contact number, I called the card company. To quote Mr. Spiccoli: No shirt, no shoes--No Dice.

Hadn't been run yet. But at least they could cancel the card before any damage was done and send me a new one before I checked out of the hotel three days hence.

Which was a start--but I was still without ID. Try to enter any major buildings today without an ID? Can't recommend it. In fact, I was facing the fact I couldn't even get back into my hotel room.

The head of security greeted me, and quizzed me about the contents of my room. We went up to the floor, and he entered the room--carefully shooing me away so I couldn't cheat.

He exited the room, a clear and rising note of exasperation in his voice: "Now, listen Mister..."

I cut him off quickly, and pointed out something I had just noticed: "We're on the 18th floor." At the outset, I had told my room was on the 21st.

Instant mollification: "Oh. Guess that would do it."

We get to the 21st, and after a thorough examination, he said "All right--you check out. By the way, you're going to need to make a police report so you can get on the plane to leave town."

I thanked him, and settled in with the prospect of being stuck in the room, unable to do the work I was in town to do, being sans ID. But at least I was in my room, and ran an internet search for all of the cab companies in Chicago, hoping to find something from Smudge.

There are a lot of cab companies in the Windy City. Defeat.

In despair, I called my wife, eager to hear a sympathetic voice. I finally get through, and we talk for a little while, but not long, as she's driving home with the kids. She'll call when she gets back home.

Good enough.

Ten minutes later she calls back, lottery-winning excitement in her voice:

"CHUCK FROM BLOCKBUSTER CALLED!! HE KNOWS WHERE YOUR WALLET IS!"

As in, yes, Blockbuster Video. She then rattled off a contact number for Chuck, whom I mentally surnamed Easily The Greatest Human Being Walking Our Planet.

But the phone number was odd--it was a home (for us) area code, not a Chicago number.

I shrugged it off--perhaps Chuck was a clairvoyant. I called.

Chuck picked up the phone--yes, he knew about my wallet. And yes, Chuck worked at the Blockbuster nearest our home. How did he know about my wallet?

As it turns out, Chuck had been contacted by a woman named Kristi, who had found my wallet and called him. Chuck gave me her number.

Two orders of bafflement magnitude then became three--Kristi also had a Michigan area code. Never mind. This was good bafflement.

I thanked Chuck profusely, falling just short of offering to name a hypothetical son after him. Charles is a sound boy's name, though...

I call Kristi's number.

A pleasant voice answers and says--Yes! I have your wallet! In Chicago!

She'd found it on the street, walking around with her daughter after visiting the American Girl store on the Magnificent Mile. She'd be delighted to turn it over to a fellow Michigander! Her family's hotel was about a mile away.

I ran an internet map and walked over without incident. By the way, some advice--avoid walking unaccompanied on Columbus Drive at night--it seems like a bad call. The fact I was disheveled, big and moving with a purpose probably helped.

I reached the hotel and met Kristi, who turns out to live in an Oakland County suburb with her children and husband. She saw the wallet sitting there, opened it up and decided she had to get in touch with the poor guy from her home state who had to be in full freakout mode (yep!). She didn't want to fish through the wallet, so she pulled my Blockbuster card and used that to contact me.

Really? Really. We also talked about daughters and the American Girl store, including my Rachel's recent purchase of Lanie. Not so BTW, the American Girl store would be an easy place to go bankrupt.

I thanked her profusely (Kristi's a good name for a girl, too--but we have a Christina, after all) and floated back to my hotel, praising God's providence and the good-heartedness of complete strangers.

I'm also going to Blockbuster and pricing wallet chains.

A diversion into wisdom.

The late, great Fr. Ronald Knox on the recitation of the Creed:

Since we are practically all believers, what is the sense of holding up business to remind ourselves about the things we believe?

Well, I think the most important answer is this -- you have to come to Mass to worship God, and that means worshipping God with your whole being, not just with bits of it. Worship doesn't mean merely letting your feelings go out to God, telling him how good he is and getting all worked up about your sins; doesn't mean merely letting your will go out to God, resolving that you are going to live for him and resigning yourself to all the uncomfortable things he may ask you to suffer for him.

It also means letting your intellect go out to God, telling him that he exists, that he is utterly above your comprehension, and that he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ so as to make it possible for you to comprehend him a little. That is why I have taken my text from that passage we all know, but don't always reflect on, in St. John.

The reason why I was born, our Lord tells Pilate, was--what? So as to save the world? So as to heal the sick and give sight to the blind? So as to comfort people who were unhappy? No, so as to tell the truth, so as to bear witness to the truth. That is man's first need; he is a reasonable animal, and he must know what he is and where he stands before he can sit down and be satisfied. And that is man's first duty; to think, and to think right. As part of your worship of him, God demands that you should let your intellect travel on the right lines in thinking about him. Very likely it is not much of an intellect, and shews strong signs of throwing up the sponge when it gets to recurring decimals. But it's the best intellect you've got, and it is all meant to be put at God's disposal.

--Ronald Knox, The Mass in Slow Motion, Sheed & Ward 1948, pp. 46-47.

"You are everything I never knew I always wanted."

Happy Birthday to the love of my life.

A debt I cannot repay.

An overdue note of gratitude to my Mom.

I talk a lot about my Dad here, and for good reason: he's been my hero since I started to talk. My brother and I regarded him as a living god and are still convinced he's immortal, even though we know otherwise. My first published article referred to an incident in my childhood involving a Dad-hater. So I think you have the cut of my jib on Dad.

But.

If you enjoy reading this blog, thank my Mom. From an equally-early age, Mom fed my voracious appetite for all things knowledge-oriented. I became a bibliophile before I hit kindergarten. She plopped the Charlie Brown dictionary down in front of me, got me the 16 volume Book of Knowledge set from a local grocery store--in general, she shaped me into the book-crazed individual I am today.

Yes, Heather, I'm passing the buck. You'll find it harder to blame her. [Worth a shot.]

She went back to college to get her degree when my brother and I were in middle school and let me ransack her college texts (I was especially find of her physical geography text--savannahs! Tundras! Glacial moraines! Yes I'm weird!). In fact, she was the first member of her family to get a college degree, and my sole boast is that I was the first to get the degree right out of high school. She also loves art and worked a lot with ceramics (which rubbed off--you should see our living room wall and bookshelf). Now she's moved on to landscape painting, and one hangs over our computer desk. She also did a neat depiction of Noah's Ark which hangs in the kids' barracks. So, when someone (cough-Heather-cough) asks why I acquired a fifteen volume set of the Encyclopedia of World Art, I think I owe that muse to Mom as well.

Then there's the sense of humor--you'd better be quick on your feet around her or your going to be looking down at a pile of your rhetorical guts. I tend to avoid her when she and Heather are talking--it's usually my intestines looping to the floor in a matter of minutes. You'll walk over--but you'll limp back. Mental quickness isn't a virtue in our household, it's a necessity. Mom, you'll be happy to know that Maddie is using "scare quotes" to punctuate her commentary now.

Oh, I am in such big trouble...

There was another side, too--her professional side. To the extent I care for the least of us, I owe a big debt to her. She was a teacher at the alternative high school in my home town, which was the last chance for a lot of troubled kids. She wept over them and celebrated with them when they bucked the odds. Then she moved on to counseling work with children in the public school system. Same sorrows and rewards.

Finally, there's the Mom side, of course--the one who always waited on me hand and foot when I was wheezing through an asthma attack, the one who was cheering me on during my modest high school football career, and the one who failed to snuff her tears as I left for Europe to study and, later, walked down the aisle on that sunny October day, 9 years ago. The same side that causes all of our kids to swarm over her like a jungle gym whenever we visit.

Thanks, Mom--for everything.

Nine years, far more good than bad.

Enjoy life with the woman whom you love all the days of your fleeting life which He has given to you under the sun; for this is your reward in life and in your toil in which you have labored under the sun.

--Ecclesiastes 9:9 (NASB).

Nine years ago today, my beloved Heather lost her mind and said "yes" at the altar. I was unreasonably happy then, and have only gotten happier since.

The Abduction of Psyche, by Bouguereau.

No, it has nothing to do with our marriage, apart from the fact I sometimes feel like I've gotten away with grand theft, spouse-wise.

Thanks!

To an anonymous benefactor: from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

Thank you.

Anonymous Penitent, thanks--more than I can say--for your humbling generosity.

I'll gladly follow your condition and not try to find out who you are.

With one caveat--it only applies to this side of Heaven. When I (God willing) finally exit Purgatory, you will be one of the first people I look for.

I hope your Triduum has been as blessed as you helped make ours. Thank you, brother.