Sunday Morning Gratitudes

Thanks to you, Chicago Marathon runners who brought such beauty to our first look out the window this morning with your mass of flickering legs against the morning sun and who brought such inspiration when we got to the edge of your stream and called your names and made you smile.

You sucked up the sounds of the city as you poured by and left in your wake a strange stillness as I trotted a little fraction of your distance down the canyons of Michigan and Randolph. Thank you for providing a little adventure for us later as we tried to get off the island you made out of the Loop.

Thanks to you, sweet and funny doorman at the Merchandise Mart Holiday Inn who was determined to find us a way out of the labyrinth of pedways and stalled escalators and back hallways and service exits and down to Kinzie, the only street allowing passage under the runners.

Thanks to Publican for a fine salty brunch and to Alma for the idea. Thanks for making Randy so happy with the wine-poached eggs on his Benny and thanks to Randy for letting me steal the spicy raw beets from his Bloody.

Thanks for the Sunday morning memories of Saturday night, Chicago Blackhawks. Your national anthem spectacle, your twin Zambonis, your hilarious between-period obstacle course for toddlers on skates, all made fans of my girls at their first game. And thanks to dear sweet husband who took the girls while I got to head out appropriately alone to In The Next Room or the vibrator play at Victory Gardens.

And thanks to you, Sarah Ruhl, (formerly of Wilmette!) for the sweet and funny poetry you conjured out of the subjects of electricity, 19th century clinical vibrators, and the discovery of love between a husband and wife.