Mondays with Mike: The kindness of strangers. And friends.

I’m back from a week off work today. Spent the time traveling a little, doing nothing a little, and being productive a little. All in all, it was the break I really needed.

Our travels took us first to New York—and we got to use our TSA Pre status for the first time. Beth and I joined modernity about a month ago, and it is pretty nice. Though the whole security ordeal makes me curse Osama Bin Laden every time.

Our “it’s a small world” tale from that flight: We always get to pre-board because of Luna. (God I love Luna.) When we entered the plane both bulkhead rows were already occupied by fellow pre-boarders. Not the end of the world, but the bulkhead is best for the dog. A woman in the right-hand row piped up and asked whether the dog would be better in the bulkhead, and she volunteered to move. She did, we sat down, Beth dug into her bag and fished out a copy of one of the children’s books she’d written recently, this one about service dogs.

She turned to the good Samaritan behind us, and handed the little book to her as a thank you. The woman was audibly tickled, and then a few minutes later asked: Are you the Beth Finke I read about whose husband had Covid? (Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens had written a piece about our plight the very beginning of Covid.)

“Yes!” said Beth. “And here’s the husband,” pointing to me. “He survived!”

“I can’t believe you’d remember my name.” Our new friend then added that we might have a mutual friend. Indeed, that friend is Leah, whom I’ve known since our college days at the University of Illinois.

It was one of those little encounters that lightened the whole travel experience. And it all started with a small act of kindness.

We flew into the spacious, modern, attractive…LaGuardia airport. It’s the second time I’ve been to the renovated airport, and both times I had to stop and wonder if I was really in LaGuardia. It was a dump forever, it was worse during construction, and now it’s palatial. Well, as palatial as an airport can be.

In New York we visited friends we met through—who else—Beth. Benita was Beth’s volunteer reader during our early years in Chicago. They bonded and then we met Benita’s husband Henry and we all bonded. Native New Yorkers, they lived in Chicago for several years because Henry was a big shot doctor at Rush Medical Center. Upon his retirement, they moved back to New York to a great place in the Upper West Side, a stone’s throw from Central Park and the Natural History Museum.

That’s Hank on the left, me, Pick, and Beth during a vacation we took together in New Orleans.

We hadn’t seen each other since before Covid and it was food for the soul to be together again, even briefly.

From there we took an Amtrak train to Washington, D.C. to see our pals Pick and Hank, whom we’ve posted about more than once before. Pick and Hank have been an item about as long as  Beth and I have, and we’ve seen each other through lots of changes. Our relationships with them have become kind of that old, favorite, comfortable pair of shoes. We usually eat out once, and this time it was at a Greek Restaurant in Old Town, Alexandria, in a perfect outdoor garden and patio. And, a visit isn’t a visit unless Pick plays the piano and sings a little, and Beth plays, too.

We eat, we walk, we drink, we talk. We don’t do anything special during our visits, but somehow, every single visit is special.