There are a few ways to get back home to Chicago after a long hiatus. Of course, if you’re familiar with John Candy, you know the best routes utilize planes, trains, and automobiles. I had been traveling through Latin America and living in Quito, Ecuador, looking for what most sons of immigrants look for when they leave the United States – their fathers’ memories. I did find some, by the way, as well as stories of my grandfather and great-grandfather, who could ride a horse for days on end, founded a small farming town in the Andes, and could read in French. Real world-class hombres, you know.  It didn’t take me long to realize that I was not yet a real world-class hombre and the only accomplishments in my life were: convincing Jenny Parkin in the 12^th grade to date me, and reading half of The Brothers Karamazov my sophomore year of college. So, after a year in Ecuador trying to catch up by accumulating a few of my own memories and meeting a few of my own ghosts (in Latin America they are everywhere and they are always babbling about Simón Bolívar and the best way to cook a pig), I booked a flight back to Chicago.

But you’ve seen the movie right? It’s never that easy.

The night before my 7AM flight, my cousin Santi proposed to his girlfriend. To my family in Ecuador, this is the familial equivalent of New Years and Carnival combined. This is the ghosts of all your ancestors pouring you endless shots of tequila and telling you that if you play your cards right Simón Bolívar himself will show up with a pig slung over his massive shoulders.

So, when I tried to check in the airport at 5:30AM, a cruel immigration official determined that I was either a disturbed castaway from Lost (probably Sayid) or that I was much too drunk to go anywhere. He asked a lot of questions about where I had been drinking the night before and my nationality. As to the former question, I told him everywhere in Quito. I held off on the high-five. I’m 30. It’s just not appropriate anymore. As to the latter, I told him I have dual nationality with the US and Ecuador. I told him I was goin’ to Chicago. I asked him if he knew the song.  I think I then started a bacchanalian monologue about my great-grandfather, about his kick-ass Francophonism and extraordinary equestrian talent, but the immigration officer just held his finger to his lips and asked for my papers. He checked my documents and sternly told me that I couldn’t be in two places at the same time. I had no idea what he meant, though for a moment, I imagined the parallel universe that would grant me the ability to be at two places at the same time. It was wonderful, but it wasn’t Earth. After a lengthy argument with another immigration official about the ability to be in two places at the same time, (I think they determined that this was possible in Latin America, but not the United States. A Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel might have been proof) and a lengthier bag check, they decided that I was okay to fly. I was the last person to board and everyone on the plane seemed to be scowling at me. Five minutes later the plane jerked alive, and I promptly grabbed the puke bag. The Frenchman next to me squirmed and swore. I decided that I would not tell him about my great-grandfather. Hours later, somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico, or what I thought should be the Gulf of Mexico, I looked out the window and noticed that the sea touched the sky and the sky was blue and alien and kamikaze. I imagined that in the distant future the world would end there and this, somehow, put my nausea at ease. The Frenchman sitting next to me didn’t want to sit next to me anymore and he asked the stewardess if he could change seats.

Trains are a wonderful civic institution. We should all be thankful that we live in a city with trains. The City of Trains, to be exact. But they are also a romantic institution. The saddest films of the 40’s end in train stations. Most immigrants who arrived in Chicago during its first 100 years came by train. On her way to work, my mother reads romance novels on the train. Proof enough. Trains serve as interludes between one experience and the next, and there is nothing more romantic than anticipation.  Riding a train is like reading a poem that ends just where it needs to.

I thought for sure that I would feel like I was home at last after riding the L for the first time in a year and half. But somehow, it didn’t work. After living in the Andes, everything in Chicago seemed too flat, too immense. The Windy City, I always forget, is immense on a mythological scale. It has the sheer will of a Titan. It felt discouragingly unfamiliar after the density and remoteness of the mountains. I rode around the Loop and watched a whirlwind of passengers get on and off and waited for the end of my unfamiliar poem.

It wasn’t until two weeks later when I was driving around Logan Square on Kedzie Avenue that I felt like I had arrived home. It was a near-tropical, pellucid August night and in the distance Henry Bacon’s eagle monument shone his piercing gaze on the neighborhood. I was stopped at a light and a white construction van pulled up next to me.  I noticed that a man inside was watching me. He looked Eastern-European, a man from the Ural Mountains or a Serb with his own ghosts (ones constantly babbling about the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the best way to cook a pig). He motioned for me to roll down my window. I did. He then yelled something, but I couldn’t understand what. In the distance, a siren sounded. I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled back, “WHAT?” He yelled again, “Hey asshole, your lights are out!” He then smirked the way only a Chicagoan can – after helping and insulting you at the same time, which, in my mother’s Chicago Jewish family is as common as breaking bread, so, sure, it feels good. It feels comfortable. I know this. I know how to respond. “Thanks shithead!” I yelled back.  The light turned green and the Balkan sped off, a benevolent force in the twilight.  I turned on my headlights and reminded myself of the following: No matter who the hell you are or where in the damn world you’ve been, you’re still an asshole with his lights turned off.

Oh yeah, I thought and pressed on the accelerator, I’m definitely home.

Photo by Daniel Schwen