For Spring Break I went to Chicago to visit my brother. I had been looking forward to it for weeks. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to spend much time with him but that was ok because I would still be in the same city and state as him for a while. The morning I arrived my brother’s girlfriend picked me up at the El stop in O’Hare and we traveled back to Logan Square where she and my brother live – not together; they have different apartments on different streets. I got to see my brother for a brief few minutes while we walked him to his bus stop. At first I didn’t see him but Annie did. Then all the sudden I see Chris running as fast as he can towards me with a big goofy grin on his face. He slammed into me and gave me bear hug.
There is nothing I love more than my family. My brother is probably on the top of the list. What I love most is how he’s always happy to see me when we’ve been away from each other for a while. I know most people are happy to people they have missed but this is different. This is true happiness. I don’t know how to explain it. It seems like such a simple concept yet it’s hard to describe. Part of it is our close relationship. I don’t know anyone else who loves their sibling like we do. It can be obnoxious. But it’s so simple to me that I take it for granted.
It seems the simple things are what people take for granted. Sometimes small things can be built up to be something grander in a person’s mind and when they come to pass it doesn’t seem quite so wonderful as what we’d hoped for in the beginning. After Annie and I left Chris at the bus stop we met up with Annie’s brother who was also visiting and the three of us went downtown to watch the river turn green. This is a huge event that happens every year during St. Patrick’s week in Chicago. I say week because that’s what it is – a whole week, not a day. People wait for two hours in the cold and wind for the river to turn green. I wasn’t sure how this was going to happen. In my mind it would be gradual not all at once. What ended up actually happening was a speed boat came by and dumped the dye in the river. I thought it was pretty cool but a woman standing near me said, “That’s it? That’s what we waited two hours for? That was lame.” I just rolled my eyes and continued to watch as the dye spread out across the water.
What the woman didn’t realize is that the Chicago River is disgusting. A while back some environmentalists wanted to know what was in the dye because it might be hurting what animal and plant life lived in the river. The response was that if anything was living in the river the dye sure as hell wasn’t going to kill it. It’s a dirty river; probably one of the dirtiest in the country. The dye is neon green… I mean neon green. Now think how green the dye has to actually be to make a dirty river turn neon green. It’s seems so simple to the people watching it but the science of it is beyond me, especially since the recipe of the dye has been kept secret.
The simple things. The love of siblings, the dying of a river. At first glance they seem ordinary, things that happen all the time – or at least once a year. It makes me stop to think about all the other things that seem simple that are actually small miracles going unnoticed. It sound like a good thing to think about over a hot cup of tea which seems like it’s just the dying and flavoring of water but is that all there is to it? Or is that, too, a small miracle?
