Day 1: next day.
Jet lag! Who’d care?. I dozed on & off on my couch whenever I felt like and woke up
whenever I felt like. I awakened in the near dark , found myself in the familiar bed .
Tip-toed out of bed quietly and looked outside through the living room windows.
There was wash of pale light in lower sky in the east, over the dark silhouettes of
my oak trees in the front yard . My leisurely morning started over a cup of coffee in
my study, checking E-mails, putting some electronic signatures(결재) for the hospital
business, reviewing patients’ census through SNUBH-EMR(electronic medical record).
“All quiet on the Eastern Front.” noted……
In the matter of short hour, the sun light came all of a sudden, as the birds chirping
bright in clusters. Walking in my back yard, I noted a new bird nest under the western
eaves of the roof . The leaves of the grass were fresh green , painted with morning dew
and the sun was shining bright white light through the thin early morning mist.
“It is going to be another beautiful, perfect summer day in Midwest, USA” I thought.
I asked my wife “What you wanna do today?”
“Nothing! Do you have to do something, always? ‘’answered she in some sarcasm.
After few hours of do-nothing, we got itch and got out of the house.
It was already mid afternoon. Walked along my beloved Fox River in the neighborhood,
stopping on and off under shadows of the trees, watching the clouds float across
the blue sky, listened to the murmur of the warm river slowly flowing south
to join the Mississipi.
A young guy was sitting in a bench with a girl on the river-walk . He said “Hi!” to us
and introduced himself that he was an anesthesiologist briefly at our hospital few years
ago, also worked with my son, Mark, in the downtown hospital,as well..
Now vaguely remembering his face, we talked about mutual friends for a while and
caught up each other.
We decided to stop by the St. Charles Library to renew the membership card, especially
to borrow E Books from Korea and downloaded three for my I PAD and couple for my
wife’s. With an ambitious plan for this vacation, I chose “Lord Jim”, “Old man and Sea”
and Collected Poems(English) of Marcel Proust, knowing very well that I would be lucky if I
could finish half of these. Anyway, I felt I am well deserved this luxury of free service given by
the local government of St Charles, considering all the taxes I paid over the years.
We wandered to the cozy downtown-plaza area to have early light dinner.
The streets were charming & picturesque as ever, with the familiar old archtectures
of 19th century buildings, old shops, antique shops,rusty old style barber shops----
Six PM.
The sun was still bright, not ready to go down yet. Cool breeze still pleasant.
It was gentle evening wind from the West, an ode across the endless prarie, green
corn fields of of Iowa , Wisconsin, Nebraska
People were coming out from the small local play house “Steel Beam Theatre” after
a show, which I never got the chance to explore over the years, in spite of 5 minutes’
driving-distance from my house. They were announcing the year-end program, “It’s a
wonderful life” and "Christmas Carol” on the bill board. For sure, I will bring my
grand-kids this time to watch one of those plays for a family night out, when I come
back around Thanksgiving time.
This evening, through the windows of the small Italian restaurant, yes ! my wife and I saw
"the colors of the rainbow pretty in the sky, on the faces of people walking by,
the friends shaking hands, saying “how do you do?”’(What a wonderful world! by
Bob Thiele & George David Weiss).
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Wrote this piece with some hope that in 3-4 years ,maybe my grand son could have a chance to read this.