Chicago

My dad's 2nd cousin (and mine), Bebe, is a fan of my writing. That started many years ago when I wrote a poem about her mother and aunt after their death. After that, she wanted to see all of my work. She got copies of my two creative writing theses, and I sent her my yoga chapbook. She loves it all. Though my parents never could make head or tails out of this stuff, she is a different kind of person altogether.
At eighty something, she is still working, and teaches Focusing, which I don't really know much about, but visualize as an approach to the psychological via the physical, kind of like rolfing. She goes to conferences all over the world in Focusing. This year, she will go both to San Francisco and Argentina.
When Jeremy was born, she didn't have any grandchildren, so she adopted him as her surrogate grandchild, and came to see him at least once a year till he was maybe 5, when her own grandchildren began to be born. She still calls and asks about him and about my work.
She called several times a week for at least a month after my parents died. So the other day when she called, she invited me to come stay with her in her Frank Lloyd Wright-designed apartment in Oak Park, in Chicago. I've stayed there before. It's a nice place. But I hardly know Chicago because I was only there for a day, when Jeremy was little, on my way to Virginia with Richard.
So I thought maybe I could take advantage of the week between when classes end and fall semester starts. But when I looked up the price of travel to Chicago, an airline hub, it was ridiculously high right now. Oh well.