Back then I was an orderly in the surgery department at West Suburban Hospital in Oak Park. I'd been thinking that I'd work in the medical racket the rest of my life. I was already an Emergency Medical Technician and had taken EEG tech training. I figured I'd become a Physician's Assistant.
But life, as usual, got in the way of my plans. I was taking some science courses at Wright Community College in preparation for the PA program. I also took a composition course just for the hell of it. I discovered there that I was as superior to the rest of my classmates in the art of writing as Alex Rodriguez is to your seven-year-old T-baller. Quick as that, I decided to become a writer and have been one, come hell, high water, poverty, angst, bounced checks, and excessive navel-gazing, ever since.
I stayed at the hospital for about a year after making the decision, mainly due to the presence of a pretty young Operating Room Technician named Tami.
She was diffident and apparently as pure as the driven snow. She'd been raised in a born-again christian family but I sensed she'd be happy to throw off the chains of that peculiar madness. She had blonde hair, piercing gray eyes, a brilliant smile, and an hourglass figure that stood out even in her baggy hospital greens.
We started dating in the winter and by the time March rolled around we were madly in love. We both called in sick that St. Patrick's Day and rode the Lake Street el into the Loop to catch the parade. It was unseasonably warm so we were able to stroll slowly, hand-in-hand past the highrises and through the throngs. We were so smitten, we hardly knew anybody or anything else existed.
Tami and I jay-walked across Wacker Drive west of Clark Street and got stuck on the median island. As we waited for traffic to clear, we turned toward each other and kissed. Not a crazy mad kiss, but softly and slowly. As we pulled our lips away from each other, the sun shone gold around us. We were junkies on love.
That single moment, that kiss, became a touchstone for my life. Call me stupid, call me naive, but I thought from that moment on that love, true love, was that kiss. Months later, when Tami and I were breaking up, I pleaded, "But what about that kiss on St. Patrick's Day?" as if that could outweigh all the emotional craziness we'd laid on each other (alright, that I'd laid on her.)
Tami and I went to every St. Patrick's Day parade for the next few years, in homage to that moment on Wacker Drive. Fifteen and twenty years later, we'd call each other on St. Patrick's Day for the same reason.
For the next couple of decades, I took the fact that I'd never experienced that same high from a kiss as proof positive that Tami was the one true love of my life. I'd say this to myself even though I'd been married, divorced, and lived with a bevy of fabulous women in the ensuing years.
As I write this, I realize I sound like a junior-high girl with a Jonas Brothers fixation. And the truth is, that would perfectly characterize my outlook on love for most of my adult life. I saw it as a drug, a simcha, even a sacred ritual that would cleanse my conscience of sin and my heart of angst.
It took me until well into my 40s to realize that love has a tad more to do with things like commitment, compromise, understanding, mutual goals, forgiveness, and - shock of shocks - the ennui of everyday life.
Maybe I was lucky. Maybe, if I hadn't transformed love into a fix, I might have turned instead to some hard-assed drugs. I might be dead by now or have been a veteran of repeated stays in a rehab center had I not spent years trying to replicate the high of that kiss.
I like to think I'm better and smarter now. The memory of that kiss won't ever go away. I still talk to Tami on occasion. We're both married and as happy as clams with our respective mates. But I'll bet we can still turn each other into Jello merely by mentioning the median island on Wacker Drive.
But, as Barack Obama advised us in his inauguration speech, we must leave childish things behind. As soon as I finish writing this, I'm going to run over to Kroger and pick up a slab of corned beef. I'll boil it up tonight and have sandwiches tomorrow. That's how I celebrate St. Patrick's Day now.
