End of days

If you watched the news here today, you'd think that we are all going to die. Did I miss something? When did snow become as dangerous as radioactive fallout?

(Entry interrupted to tend to a wailing, soon-to-be one-year old who appears to have had a nightmare, poor guy. But all is well. There is nothing quite like a mom.)

I'm just blown away by the way the media here in Chicago reacts to winter storms. It's Chicago. It's winter. What do you expect? Two days ago a four inch storm hit at the peak of the evening rush hour, and anyone trying to go more than a few miles was stuck in crawling traffic for at least a few hours.

If there is no traffic you can drive from the Loop to O'Hare Airport in about twenty minutes. Tuesday evening at five, it was four and a half hours. On the CBS station here at ten o'clock, they had a feature where a reporter drove from the downtown studio to the airport, which took four hours. How is that news?

Flakes start falling, and it's like an OJ trial around here. Bizarre.

Just three days until Desmond's first birthday. On this day last year we went to the doctor and made the appointment to induce labor on the 21st. I'll never forget the feeling sitting in that office, knowing that it was now a sure thing that in three days our first child was going to be born. It was like plunging your head into ice water-I never felt more aware of my surroundings.

Those three days turned out to be the longest three days since the dawn of time, seventy-two hours of anxiety, anticipation and just plain waiting. I did five hundred crossword puzzles, read fifty-seven magazines and learned twelve languages. Seems like I remember every second.