Somewhere In The Stratosphere

The whine of the hydraulics wakes me from a light sleep with my head against the window to discover that I have a crick in the neck that’ll take three days to go away. We’re descending into the world’s busiest—and worst—airport, Chicago-O’Hare. Seriously, I’ve landed on Military airstrips in third world countries that are run better than O’Hare. Everything I’ve spent the last few days working out is about to go completely sideways. Confidence is the feeling you sometimes get before you realize the situation you’re actually in.

It’s August, 1998. I’ve been sober six months, if you don’t count alcohol. Which I don’t. That’s the least of my problems. This is my fourth trip to Chicago in the last ten years. I’m here for a reunion of sorts, and a wedding. It’s been almost three years since I’ve seen or spoken to the friends I’m here to meet. The wedding invitation was the shock to the system that told me my life-dissipation-light had just kicked into overdrive. Had I dreamt those years of my life? How else could time enough have passed for her to meet someone, fall in love, get engaged, and plan a wedding? To have become an actual adult? Did I miss that many letters and phone calls? Had I sleepwalked across three entire years, open-eyed but fast asleep? I had come across the country to find out.

Looking back over the time-lapse lifeline of the past three years was like watching a hamster in his ball, just rolling along a treadmill. A static cycle of obsession and self-sabotage. Lather, rinse, repeat. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t need intoxicants to ponder his navel lint, or other secrets of the universe. A natural philosophical bent leads me to do these things at the expense of progress in life. That’s why, at twenty-seven, I’m a truck driver for an automotive finish company. College had given me a two year start on an education in psychology and philosophy; an unexpected move to the middle of nowhere and subsequent introduction to drugs had made me a well-rounded addict. At twenty-four, that made me the most laid back guy in the room. Three years later it made me the nicest no-account anybody knew. 

Kristin’s wedding invitation was the milepost that told me I was farther down the road than I knew, and it was already much later than I thought. Copernicus and Galileo proved that the cosmos was in constant motion, and not around the fixed center of us. If you’re the only stationary thing while everything else is in motion, then you’re the one going backward. Nothing revolves around you. There is no such thing as standing still. Forward and backward are your only options. So I’m here to watch Kristin go forward.

By the time I’ve cleared baggage claim Lang has already landed. Pre 9/11 I can just walk up to her gate and greet her coming off the plane like civilized people should. The baggage claim greeting is lame. Lang should have been born a hummingbird or a wildflower, but let’s not question the Almighty too closely on that one, eh? She’s one of those people that grew into the name they were given, every inch a Lang. Freckles, curly russet hair with an open countenance and a smile measured in megawatts. The best parts of an elf, an earth mother, and southern bell all rolled into one; it’d be easy to think that she’s a free spirit who knows how to have fun. You wouldn’t be wrong about that, unless you thought that was all there is to it. By the time those people figure out the depth of her wit and sagacity, they’re already in her rearview.

We met in Yellowstone three years earlier, our lives intersecting with Kristin’s at a unique time, under a confluence of events rare as a supernova and just as inimitable. It was a world within our world. Planet Yellowstone we called it. The decade we spent there, weaving the tapestry of our lives together, passed in just three months for everyone else. Einstein said time passes differently in different places and conditions. Extremes of velocity and gravity create elasticity; photons and black holes know no passage of time. Was it the place itself—a land of visions, of omens and portents—where none of the rules seemed to apply? Or perhaps it was us. A syzygy aligning at the will of some vast Order responsible for the turning of ancient wheels. While our family and friends had barely enough time to miss us, we passed a year of blue moons and Sundays tucked away in the quantum looking glass of Planet Yellowstone. It would be impossible to describe the breadth and catholicity of our adventures together in the limited space available upon the world’s paper supply, so I never even try. To do so would render those evanescent days merely life sized. Suffice it to say that a unique affection exists between the three of us that deserves a better word than friendship. When they come up with it, I’ll let you know.

Reason number 6,293 that I hate O’Hare: our rental car is gone. I could just sense the evil of O'Hare plotting against us the instant we walked down the jet-way, and when we get to the car rental desk they confirm that they have, in fact, screwed us. Like Seinfeld said, they do a bang-up job taking the reservation, not so much with holding the reservation. So even the crappy sub-compact that I reserved is gone, along with every other form of internal combustion conveyance. The harried Hertz employee is kind enough to point toward a giant map on the wall as her only solution to our problem. How to get to Crystal Lake, 35 miles away, with no vehicle? We promptly put in a call to Kristin, the Chicago native.       

If you’ve never been behind the scenes of a wedding being planned and executed, it’s a bit like running a cat rodeo. Nothing going on in O’Hare could hold a candle to the degree of activity going on at the other end of that phone line. We don’t even get through to Kristin personally, but a member of her retinue assures us that if we can make it to the train station in Crystal Lake, someone will be there to pick us up. Till then we’re on our own. Now, Lang has never met a situation that could assail her aplomb. If she fell off the top of the Empire State Building the people inside would hear her say, “So far, so good,” on the way past each floor. And so it was.

We found our way to a rail running under O’Hare that promised to take us where we wanted to go. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be water boarded, but couldn’t get a reservation at Club Gitmo, the next best thing is the lake-effect humidity of a Chicago summer. Stepping from the air conditioned terminals into the railway complex was like strapping a sopping wet sponge over your mouth and trying to breathe. I used to think I knew what humidity was; now the word is defined by that first breath of Chicago. Lang and I spend the next hour catching up on the last three years, our camaraderie as easy and familiar as the best pair of shoes you’ve ever owned. Since the minute we met, a brother-sister dynamic existed between us that’s always made it easy to say anything to the other. Me always wanting to protect her in some fashion, her always laughing at my efforts as she does as she damn well pleases. It works. If a hundred years had passed instead of three, the conversation would have been the same. Seamless and beyond time.

When we get where we’re going a member of the Kristin’s that we’ve never met is there to meet us, as promised. It’s clear that the monkey wrench we’ve thrown into the works is being felt back at Wedding Central Command, and if Lang and I were any other people, we’d have been hoofing it to Kristin’s Mom’s place. Valuable resources were being drained when we were already at DefCon Two and the bunker doors were closing. We make it in under the wire, and finally get to see the beloved third member of our trinity, feeling whole for the first time in three years.

Before us is not the girl I knew, but the woman I had missed out on knowing, as every unreturned phone call and unanswered letter is staring me in the face. In the light of her welcoming smile, every reason for that has evaporated from my mind and I can’t remember why I had let any of it go down the way it did. Kristin was the one we protected, and the one we looked up to. She had a kind of shyness that, coupled with her beauty, often made people assume some sort of snobbery about her. I’ll admit to having made that mistake at first myself, even being intimidated for a time. Thankfully, I brazened my way past all that and found someone other than I had imagined her to be. A soul full of wit, warmth and vulnerability. She was not easy to get to know. She plays her cards close to the vest, an impulse I understand only too well. But during the months of that summer she was making the effort to help us get to her, pulling down walls and protective ramparts of her own creation just a little faster than she could build them. Wanting to be found. Still, the work of uncovering this soul and pulling her from the wreckage of silent reveries was tough at first, and slow. Totally worth it.

Gone now was that youthful insecurity, replaced by a woman’s confidence and grace. Her once ruddy chipmunk cheeks had given way to length of bone and aristocratic definition. In a hundred subtle ways—from the sophistication of the cut and style of her flaxen locks to the vocal timbre and cadence of her speech—she had changed. A winsome girl had become a truly beautiful woman. This was no longer someone lost or in need of saving, but an assured individual who had embraced herself and her place in the world. But the tincture of sadness in her cocoa eyes remained, anchoring her to a depth that the standardly beautiful people could never possess as they smiled and floated through life untouched by any existential thought, neither pain nor heartache. That was the thing you had to know her to see.

But the rodeo was in full swing now, and an entire world I’d never experienced was in effect here. The weight of traditions at once religious, familial, and cultural were swirling in concert with the impulse every little girl feels to create that fairy-tale day they’ve been dreaming of since they were five years old. It’s a complex thing to embrace the future, honor the past, and pay homage to the families that gave you life and station, all the while cutting ties with them to establish your own life franchise. Suffice it to say that brief hugs and platitudes had to stand in where days of coffee, lunches, movies, hiking, drinking, and karaoke were actually needed.

We’re reintroduced to Kristin’s immediate family, having met them for a couple of days when they came to visit Planet Yellowstone. Her youngest sister, Shannon, has no memory of us, but Lindsey is warm and welcoming and winds up being our concierge and ambassador for the weekend, helping us negotiate the travel, lodging, and family dynamics. Entire constellations of aunts, cousins, uncles, grandparents and attendants sweep in their elliptical orbits around Kristin. All these bodies in motion. The gravity of each exerts a pull, a tug, in passing, no matter how minor. Whether a suggestion or well wish, the demand on her time and attention is constant. In an effort to relieve this inexorable gravity, Lang and I move into a holding pattern like comets drifting out to the accretion disk.

Along the way, introductions are made to friends and cousins, and Janet, Kristin’s mom, and briefly to David, the groom. But everything is brief and in passing, as Lang and I have no context here. We’re just her friends here. Not the moon and stars but like those self-same comets—Halley’s, bright and beautiful on its way by. Omens and portents to divine by, but not fixtures by which to navigate. It couldn’t happen any other way, of course. And it shouldn’t. There’s a reason we vow to forsake all others and cleave only to that one, and it really says something about your relationship when being called a friend feels like a demotion. But anyone that comes to a wedding and finds a way to make it about anything other than the Bride and Groom is an asshole. So despite the sense of the attenuation of our orbits around each other, we keep moving. It’s a celebration after all, and a grand, beautiful one at that.

No expense has been spared, and suddenly my best shirt and only tie seem like a Fig Newton on a plate full of Christmas cookies. Looking around, I come to realize the real scope of Kristin’s family and background, which were an entire other biography I hadn’t even imagined existing. And the groom’s clan is yet another half of this new whole that creates a real sense of Chicago royalty. With the exchange rate, this is probably what passes for upper middle class in Chicago, but anywhere else this would at least amount to the union of two great Baronies. 

There are tents in the back yard, brilliant white set against this verdant orchard that’s straight out of Narnia, and caterers trundling to and fro with garnished delights. The Bridesmaids, apparently unaware that they are supposed to be objects of pity, float about wrapped in the elegance of a cerulean sky. David and his groomsmen have a sort of dashing, roguish quality that would have appealed to Gatsby, which seems right, this close to the giant Speakeasy that is Chicago. Photos are being staged and snapped, the champagne has begun to flow, and it’s hot as mercury. There’s a real sense of weight and permanence to whatever is being bestowed here today. There are traditions and ceremonies to be observed and kept, and everyone here knows which fork to use and when.

At the appointed time, when the party before the party is done, things move to the church. It’s been almost twenty years since I last darkened the door of a Catholic Church, but even I know that this is the only place with sufficient gravitas to create this momentous union. We’re here with the advanced party, tagging along with Lindsey now wherever she might go. Somehow Lang and I wind up in the Bride’s antechamber which seems almost sacrilegious. There’s a relative calm here, and with the exception of Janet we are finally alone with Kristin.

Janet makes last minute alterations to the dress, preparing it to be bustled later. We’re reminiscing with our beloved friend, congratulating her and marveling at the finery, and more so the reality of marriage as a milestone of true grown-up life. Being here with her for these few privileged minutes, in this sanctum, is a small but hugely meaningful deference that Kristin has accorded us in homage to our relationship. It feels like getting backstage passes to the Beatles reunion. How any of us can stand inside the corona of her radiance now, in full Bridal resplendence, is beyond me. She is utterly incandescent.

I hadn’t realized how much all the activity had been insulating me from the face to face realization of every road, every door, every choice that has put us in this room with Kristin. According to Isaac Newton, bodies in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Sometimes, just to make myself crazy, I ponder all the trillions of choices that everyone has to make all the time in order for the world to be the exact way that it is—and only this way—at any given moment. NTSB studies have shown that one tap on the brakes out on the freeway is felt for a hundred miles behind it, no matter how remotely. All these bodies in motion.

The “Big Bopper” wasn’t supposed to be on the plane that night with Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly. He literally chose whether to fly with them, or roll on the tour bus instead, based on the flip of a coin. How many things have to go exactly and only the way that they did for a man’s life to literally come down to ending at the flip of a coin? And yet they did, everything perfectly meshing like the finest Swiss clockworks. If not, the Big Bopper would be alive today, and no one would ever have heard of Waylon Jennings, who was a nameless bassist that rode on the tour-bus in his stead. But could it have been otherwise, when so finely tuned a mechanism produced only this one result? And which did The Bopper choose? Heads or tails? Best we not look too closely at that one. That way lies madness.  

Newton says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That if you could just look far enough back you could see every ricochet, every effect matched to its cause. If you follow each reaction back to its equal and opposite action, through all the seeming randomness, accounting for every factor, every cause, you must arrive at the primary mover. The first domino to fall. The First Cause. Whatever you choose to call that, it is God. Now, here in this antechamber, I wonder about the turnings of those clockworks and how things might have been different, or if they even could have. I could have answered phone calls, returned letters, surely. I didn’t. Three years before that, on Planet Yellowstone, a “stop” could have been a “go.” But we stopped on a threshold without crossing, and remained friends. Actual friends, not the kind you’re thinking of.

At the time it seemed the wisest and most humane path. I knew I was caught at the event horizon of the ruinous intersection of my own emotional pathology, and a corresponding one in the beautiful sociopath I’d been sharing a two year long death-spiral with. And even though I’d come to Yellowstone to exorcise those demons, when I realized I hadn’t yet achieved that end I knew that to go forward with anyone else would have been unfair. More than that, one does not rebound with Kristin. You do not settle for her. You aspire. Regrettably, experience had taught me not to take anyone else down that terrible gravity well with me, where not even the light of reason can escape.

Because even in the Yellowstone days, before I even met Lang or Kristin, I was already living with the memory of the tragic consequences of trying to anchor myself to someone amazing, to save myself from the crushing vortex of my own self-sabotaging romantic compulsions. It may have technically been a totally different sociopath at the bottom of the well that time pulling me down, but really only the names had been changed. It had been life-long static cycle of obsession and self-sabotage that I dared not drag any other innocent into. The previous aftermath had been disastrous, altering the course of a true believer’s life, and giving birth to the last thing the world needed: another cynic. Ironically, she now lived in Chicago as well.

Thankfully this hadn’t been so with Kristin, and for that I could be grateful at my momentary lapse of self-involved idiocy, which had probably saved a relationship as rare and precious as plutonium. Three years later, it’s 1998. I was one year out of that destructive relationship—free of the black hole that had chewed up almost five years of my life—and six months sober. Seeing now the causal chain that put me in this room, watching orbits move out of alignment as Kristin went forward, and I stood still. She and Dave would become a firmament with satellites and constellations all their own.

The service is unbearably beautiful, equal parts somber and joyous. And then the party after the party begins. We make our way to a third location now, the country club, for the reception. It’s time for the traditions and expectations to take their place behind us now, right after dinner, which is exquisite. I’ve never had fish prepared in any way that is the least bit palatable to me, until now. Up to this point, I’ve had a zero tolerance policy for anything that lives in water. But now I’ve seen where my policies have gotten me, so what the hell? Turns out it’s not just palatable, but consummately prepared and savory to the last.

The numerous tables are arranged in some kind of arcane strata that no doubt had the bride in fits at some point, since there must have been some social consequence or meaning to each assignment. It was lost on me, but I was with Lang and everything comes up sevens with her around, so I didn’t give it a second thought. That is, until a young fellow at the table produces a generous flask filled with Jaegermeister, at which point I begin to wonder whether I’m at the kids’ table. Or, more likely, the “single for a reason” table. Deciding not to look too closely at that, I take the proffered flask and drink deeply. Although there is wine aplenty here, and no doubt of the finest vintage, there’s something furtive about the flask in this context, which makes the nectar all the sweeter. The rest of the room will soon be flowing with Grey Goose and Courvoisier, but the Jaeger is ours alone and passed to and fro under the table by the members of a this new fraternity, thus proving the wisdom of the seating assignment. If this is the kids’ table, I definitely belong here.

And so the layers of civilization begin to fray and peel back like delaminating veneers, the weight of years and tradition satisfied. The music begins. The elders among us know that it’s our time now; they begin making their goodbyes and well wishes, as the rest of us begin making our plans. No longer confined to our assignments, groups begin to break apart and merge with others. I stick with Lang of course, but we incorporate others, including the Maid of Honor, Lindsey—wrapped in a sumptuous swath of Cerulean satin—and the guy who gave us the ride to the country club. Matt, I believe. If there’s any trouble on Earth, we’re in the place that it’s farthest from.

There is no party like one thrown by genteel people living nicely appointed lives. When they let their hair down, it's really something to behold. The blue collar bruisers I most often rub elbows with have nothing on these people. You expect those cusses to drink hard and smoke and dance like their asses are on fire. But when this coterie of well-heeled souls—trained in the ways of civilization and culture—blow off steam it’s a whole other animal. While the traditional dances are getting under way, the rest of the room is sizing itself up, and the possibilities seem endless. When a game of chess starts, there are literally more possible moves than stars in all of the galaxies combined. Ten with one hundred twenty zeroes after it. But as the game progresses, each move rules out billions of other possibilities. The further the game progresses, the fewer options remain. So we begin, our choices—each dance and every word— ruling out millions of possibilities.

At first the wedding is about what the guests bring to the bride and groom, but it’s at this moment that the party becomes their gift to us. I trade off dancing with Lang and Lindsey, two safe choices. Although dancing with Lang is like dancing with my sister, and dancing with Lindsey… definitely isn't. As the night progresses and more and more booze begins to flow, the whole tempo of things pick up, and the feel of the room becomes less and less civilized and more primal, like some kind of tribal rite. The effect is not unpleasant. When the moment comes for the bouquet and garter, the bequeathment of our beloved benefactors, the buzz and energy of the crowd increases palpably. Usually the bouquet is the hotly contested divining totem, but not so tonight. There is the usual cacophony of courtly squeals, as Kristin bestows her gift upon the sorority of her single friends to the standard fanfare. But the moment is entirely different when that garter comes off.

This is typically the moment when a polite effort is made by the groom’s buddies to “catch” the garter, satisfy the tradition, and get on with the night. Tonight that garter may as well have been the One Ring with Sauron’s forces massing at the gates of Mordor. There is real jostling going on as we jockey for position beneath the dais, and some nervous laughter as the groom winds up to take his shot. I don’t know if anyone is prepared for what the moment devolved into almost instantly. The dance floor is momentarily transformed into some kind of Darwinian Thunderdome as every ounce of testosterone is suddenly aimed at coming up with that prize. I make probably the single most athletic move of my life as I go up and to the left with a vertical clearance that would have made Kareem proud. I only succeed in keeping the garter out of the hands of the guy it was most likely to have landed on, and sending the coveted satin slip to the ground whereupon four of us descend on it together, the whole scene nothing but asses and elbows. Perhaps compelled by the long shadow of eclipse moving across my life, the sense of unraveling and endings—and certainly buoyed by a generous supply of Jaegermeister—I emerge triumphant from the dogpile with the silky garter in my hands.

I have a number of vague but pleasant recollections from the rest of the evening, not the least of which is wearing that garter on my head. I think that color of blue—cerulean to be exact—really brought out my eyes. Having won the heated gladiatorial contest for the Bride’s garter, I thus became King of the Party. I used my powers only for good, of course. For example, as I was making a genteel ass of myself, I knocked a very nice fellow named Matt out of the running with Lindsey. I think I even cut in on one of their dances just because, as King of the Party, I could. Not the most sporting way I could have repaid the largesse of the transportation he provided. 

Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t monopolized Lindsey's time the rest of the evening? Matt could have been the future Mr. Lindsey. He certainly seemed interested in trying out for the part. But I was not interested in watching another of Kristin’s clan go off the market—not on my watch. So for one of only two times in my life, I engaged in a cheap tactic known crudely, but accurately, as “cock blocking." No intention of going there myself, but none of allowing him to either. So to Matt, wherever you may be, sorry about that, brother. And to whatever guy was lucky enough to marry Lindsey, you’re welcome. You owe me one.

There are a hundred other stories to tell about those four days in Chicago which, measured hour for hour, were among the most fateful and interesting of my life. A tale of chivalrous sleepwalking that ended with me out on Interstate 74 at 3 AM going commando in a pair of Levi's, no shoes or shirt. It could have been worse, at least I remembered the pants. A visit to the other Chicago true believer, the first since we broke each other’s hearts five years before. An amazing day with Lang and the House of Blues. But to tell them all would require more of your life than you have to spare. Sooner or later, we had to wind up back at O’Hare.

Upon hearing of the more disturbing conclusions that quantum physics was arriving at, Einstein rejected a theory by Werner Heisenberg, stating that “God does not play dice with the universe.” If there’s an exception to that rule, it’s O’Hare. It’s all dice at O’Hare, and they only deal in hard eights. While I’m with Lang, that’s no sweat. Everything she touches turns to gold. But eventually I have to put her on a plane to go back to the life of a wildflower in whatever meadow she belongs. After that, it’s all snake eyes. Seriously, the instant she’s gone my flight gets cancelled. Some weather-related phenomenon out of Maine, so they aren’t even going to put me up for the night because it’s not their fault. The cancellation of that flight equals a twelve hour wait at O’Hare, followed by five more in San Francisco, before I can get back to Eugene. That butterfly in China is absolutely killing me.

The second law of thermodynamics says that things move from a state of higher order to one of lesser order. Entropy. Things fall apart, the center does not hold. Alignments change, the wheels keep turning. I’ve never seen Lang or Kristin since, and whatever Order brought us together seems to have forgotten all about us. Entropy. It all feels like an emblem for the slow death of faith, with one last hurrah to send us on our way, orbits hurtling away from one another at celestial speeds. Entropy, the heat-death of the Universe, is how all stories end.

Before completely sinking into the morass of chaos and entropy that is O’Hare, I find a payphone to call in to work and let them know I won’t be making it in the next day. Nanette, the HR rep that I need to inform, is a good friend and regular Friday drinking companion. She answers the phone at work, which is unusual enough since she is not the receptionist, and listens to my tale of woe, commiserating like I’m doing her a favor just by telling it. Maybe I am; I know the battle-axe crone she shares an office with. Nanette arranges to get me some “sick time” to cover the lost hours, since every last minute of vacation time has been used up on this pilgrimage. We BS for as long as she can justify, before she lets me go with the promise of a beer when I get back. Then I go settle in for a twelve hour wait on a plush, black naugahyde bench in the terminal.

I’m trying to power through a John Irving novel, "A Son of the Circus," only to nod off with the Joshua Tree blaring into my ears from my Sony Discman, the minutes passing glacially. Only God knows what made me wake up at the only possible second I could have to see him walking by. Judging by how many songs had serenaded me, passing unawares, I know I’d been asleep for about twenty minutes on that awful bench, Bono totally ignored as the terminal filled up with people whose flights had not been cancelled. I barely saw the guy as he went past the gate I’d randomly selected to pass the next twelve hours at (based solely on the availability of a padded bench I could sprawl out on). With only a bleary-eyed moment to recognize him in profile and motion, I still manage to get his name out of my mouth before he’s out of earshot. 

Randy Friesen. The Chief Financial Officer of Industrial Finishes, the outfit I drive truck for. The Boss of all the bosses. In O’Hare, and looking for me.

Turns out Randy was just back from a month-long European vacation, and flew into O’Hare. He called in to work to check his messages and update his schedule for his first day back to work in over a month. Somehow—during the ten minutes per day she covered the receptionist's phone— Nanette answered his call too, and happened to relate the coincidental overlap of our lives. So Randy decided to go looking for me. In O’Hare, literally the world’s busiest—and worst—airport. Me, the lowest paid, smallest cog in the vast multimillion-dollar machine that he runs. Amidst the one hundred ninety thousand people per day that traipse through O’Hare, I may as well have been needle in warehouse full of needles. Still, I woke up for the one second window I could have seen him, for the scant minutes he was there, on his way home from goddamn Switzerland. Via O’Hare.

Some days, timing is all the miracle you need.

Randy helps get my flight changed to one bound for Portland, still a two hour drive from my home in Eugene. But he arranges that transport as well, though it was in the cargo area of his daughter’s SUV on the Oregon end. He even pays the three hundred bucks difference for last minute ticket changes. All things considered, it’s still better than a night in O’Hare. The only catch? We get to my house well after three in the morning and the sonofabitch still wants me at work at 7:30 AM. Guess you don’t get to be CFO of an outfit like that by being soft. And just to show that it isn’t a fairy tale, O’Hare manages to lose my luggage. Like, forever lose it. I never saw that suitcase or its contents again, but it’s still the least awful experience I’ve ever had there.

If God was playing dice, they were loaded. Maybe they always are, but I still roll with my fingers crossed. Because there’s another law of Thermodynamics to tell you about. The first one. The one that trumps them all: The Law of the Conservation of Matter and Energy. Turns out matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. They just change. Change is the only constant. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. Unbeknownst to me that day in O’Hare, I wasn’t standing still at all. No one ever is. My Bride-to-be was only two hundred nine days in my future. Our wedding only seven hundred and two days after that. And my first communication with Kristin and Lang? Only three thousand four hundred forty two days after that. Turns out matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. They just change. And nothing ends.

Nothing ever ends.

Nothing ever ends.

—I just saw Halley’s Comet, she waved
Said, Why you always running in place?
Even the man in the moon disappears,
Somewhere in the Stratosphere