It was good to leave skyline behind

As the train moved into the city, I found myself wondering about the choices I’d made in life.
Maybe there’s something about the rhythm of the rails that sparks thoughts like that.
We were on our way into Chicago via the South Shore Line, heading in to Millennium Station where we’d then make our way to the CTA Red Line and head north to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game.
I’d been to Wrigley a couple of times with my father as a kid, but Connie had never seen a game there, so this was intended as a treat for her. Besides, the Cubs are the hottest team in baseball and the seats I’d snagged were great, expensive but great.
Just the same, it wasn’t baseball on my mind as the train made its slow way into the city. I was thinking about choices.
We all have to make them. And we all have to live with the consequences.
As I watched the skyline approach and studied the tower after tower of apartments, I found myself wondering how our lives would be if our choices had been different.
Back when we were married, we were living in Indianapolis. We weren’t making much — sometimes, as a freelancer, I wasn’t making anything — and we had some college debt to deal with.
But we liked the urban life pretty well.
What if, I found myself wondering, what if our careers had taken a decisively urban turn? What if we’d ended up in a metropolis like Chicago?
It could easily have happened. In fact, it was at one point a more likely course than building a career and raising a family in Jay County.
The train moved on, and I pictured us living in a stylish neighborhood, maybe something on the north side so that a trip to Wrigley wouldn’t be a once-in-a-lifetime experience but would be a matter of routine. The vision was pretty tempting, and a little sting of regret started to assert itself.
Then we arrived at Millennium Station.
A solid mass of humanity seemed to pour out of the train, with the two of us a part of it. Our eyes zipped back and forth, reading signs, trying to figure out where the heck we were going, and following a herd that suddenly seemed faceless.
When we came out on the street, there was a moment of respite. We were in the heart of The Loop, an area I’d gotten to know well when I was a kid and my brother was studying at Northwestern. I recognized street names, got my sense of direction back, and began to feel — momentarily — like an urban dweller again.
Two blocks west and half a block north and we were waiting for the Red Line, heading to the ballpark. Maybe, I figured, maybe in spite of this enormous crush of strangers, we could have thrived here.
Then the train arrived.
And we were suddenly part of a human sandwich, or maybe a salad, or maybe a meatloaf. At any rate, there were far too many people jammed into far too little space.
At each stop, a few people got off. But more than a few got on.
I wondered if the train car would bulge at the seams.
And when it finally arrived at the Addison stop, the river of travelers was transformed into a torrent of travelers, maybe a waterfall. The moving crowd swept us along as if we were leaves floating on a stream.
What the crowd did, we did. That’s simply the way it worked.
Later, in our over-priced but outstanding seats, baseball distracted us. And the Cubs won as they so often do this year.
But the game was followed by an even more crowded, more dehumanizing trip south.
And this time, as I looked out on the apartment houses and watched the skyline recede, I came to the conclusion that those particular choices — to choose a rural, small town life in Jay County rather than a life in an urban metropolis — had been the right ones.
And I was glad the train was heading home.