Small ball is the best…

The world is a possibility only

if you’ll discover it.”

- Ralph Ellison, 

Invisible Man

The people I like the most when I travel are the invisible ones.  

Those are the folk who make things happen, providing logistical support, making the engines run smoothly. You know, when things work well, it’s easy to forget all the pieces that make them operate. I like those apparently ‘incidental pieces,’ because this is often where the richness lies. Without them, things would be very different!

For example, I have just finished a weeklong convention with a spine organization to which I belong.

Hitting the road…

Preparing to head out of town is by now a well-exercised ritual. The only variables…when the flight leaves and where it is going.  
This trip departed at 5am – destination Chicago…the early morning hour because of an afternoon meeting and the two-hour time difference.

Tuesday morning began at 3:30am leading to cognizant dissonance in the cats. Hannah, the early morning house alarm clock – beginning generally between 4:30 and 5:00am, had a confused look on her face like,

“Hey, you are seriously interfering with my biorhythmic whining routine!”

Leah, having gotten up, sat by in the living room seemingly a little confused, while Sarah, looked up and promptly returned to her quiet snoring…clearly it wasn’t time for breakfast, so “What’s the big deal.”

The logistics for the morning went pretty well, and we were on the road a scant 5 minutes later than our 4:15am target. 

The great thing about early morning drives to the airport is the almost total lack of traffic on the roads. The horrible thing about early morning drives to the airport is…well…they are in the early morning!

The flight to Chicago was direct and the three hour flight (giving the impression of a five hour flight because of the time zone difference), simply ‘flew by’ – yeah that was bad…

On the ground...
Brian drove the airport shuttle into the city. He was extremely friendly and chatted us up all the way to our respective hotels.  He came from Irish stock and brought everyone up to date – if they didn’t already know – on the Chicago Cubs appearance in the Major League Baseball (MLB) play offs. He had great hopes the infamous curse of the Billy Goat Murphy started in the 1945 World Series was a thing of the past…it had been 109 years for the Cubbies, and yet hope does spring eternal!

I had access to a small breakfast/afternoon snack lounge at the hotel. One of those deals where you can grab a continental breakfast in the morning, coffee anytime during the day, and snack on small stuff between 5 and 7 PM.

In the morning it was ‘Bright’ and ‘Aretha’ that kept the place stocked up. Both of them told me it took them about an hour to get in to the hotel to begin their day. Bright, came in on the ‘EL’ (Chicago’s rail service) and Aretha took a bus, then the EL to get the hotel. Both got up at 3:30am to get in to make sure everything was prepared and ready when folk showed up at 6:30…The worked from 5am until 2PM.

Annie came on sometime in the early afternoon, because she was there at the end of my conference day – 5:30 or so – making sure the hot snack food and salad and dressing bowls were replenished. We didn’t talk the first day, but on the second, I dropped a couple of ‘tater tots’ (riced potatoes) on the floor and picked them up. As I headed for the trash she said,

“Here mister give ‘em to me.”

“No, that’s alright, I can just put them in over there.”

Proactively taking them from my hand she said, “You get a A+ honey just for pickin ‘em up. Most folks just leave ‘em there.”

That led to a short conversation and a similar story about how long it took her to get to work…she had a odd schedule, but got home sometime after 9PM.

She had one of those smiles that coaxed one out of me...then she glanced around with a bit of a conspiratorial expression and pointed up. I pointed up too and she said,

“You believe in God and Jesus?”

I was still smiling and nodded…she continued,

“Then we’re family in Jesus!”

“Yes we are,” I said. 

We had found a spot, and I’m pretty sure we both felt a little wave of goose bumps slip through our bodies. Over the next few days, when we saw each other, a 'knowing look' passed between us. It wasn’t much, but it didn’t need to be…I gotta say, I looked forward to seeing her.

Three times I took taxis to the convention center. I had three African taxi drivers: One each from Ghana, Nigeria and the Congo. All three guys had been professionals in their countries, and were at various stages of ‘time in country’ here. The Ghanaian and Nigerian (a micro biologist and pharmacist respectively in their home countries) were both taking technical courses, soon to finish, so they would be able to stop driving the cabs. Both were grateful that unemployment rates were down for them and they could get work. The Congolese, a much newer immigrant, had just started driving, and spoke only about the difference in personal safety he felt living here as opposed to his home country.

Heading home…

This morning it was Darrin who made the 7am pickup to take me to the airport. Sunday morning the traffic was sparse and the trip shorter. He had been driving a shuttle for 15 years.

“How do you like the GPS tablet and video/audio monitoring in the bus?’ I said.

“It’s okay, but it would be nice if they put an extra dollar or two per hour to our pockets, instead of all this stuff.”

“Sometimes it tells you to do crazy things. Maybe it makes sense to the computer, but it don’t make sense if you know the city!”

He wasn’t grumbling, just saying what he thought.

“Minimum wage,” he said, “ain’t easy.”

I was his last stop at the airport; I asked his name and thanked him for the ride.

This trip to Chicago was one of the most informative and productive experiences of my professional career.  I chaired a symposium, spoke on the topic of measurement in spine care, and was privileged to moderate four days of a working group with some of the best spine researchers in the world, and yet there were a cast of invisible characters that made all of it…every single bit of it work.

Not invisible to me…

The Chicago meeting was one of the more memorable adventures of my professional career, but without people like Brian, Bright, Aretha, Annie, the taxi drivers and Darrin – all of whom had stories of their own…lives of meaning – it would not have been as thoughtfully contextual…reminding me that every single thread in the fabric gives the ‘cloth’ strength and resiliency.

I am uncertain what the future will bring…perhaps this week was the top of the mountain – one never knows, but when I reflect on the blessings and access this life has given me…those invisible folk step out of the shadows of my mind into the bright sunshine of my life experiences.

- ted