The Math of Living

I've been working for the Chicago Tribune for about a year when it strikes me that I will go home in six months. The ticket has been booked, and I'm ready. My boss has reviewed the JavaScript code and made his updates for the day. The code is in production.

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I've been working for the Chicago Tribune for about two years when it strikes me that I will go home again in five months. The ticket has been booked, and I'm ready. My boss has reviewed the JavaScript code and made his updates for the day. The code is in production.

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I've been working for the Chicago Tribune for about four years when it strikes me that I will go home again in three months. The ticket has been booked, and I'm ready. My boss has reviewed the JavaScript code and made his updates for the day. The code is in production.

Everything about my going home is formulaic. Sometimes I think this is my legacy—not everyone can write themselves a home. I tell myself it's the next best thing to being on a plane.

Math of Living [i] {

________

By the time this plane lands, I will have traveled for twenty-six hours.

This is not new to me.

The distance between the place I live and the place that lives in me is more than eight thousand miles.

Each hour of the journey home, I will look at my watch, even though the screen in front of me has a world clock. This is so I'm not fooled by the time zone changes. Each minute of the journey, I will have the consciousness of going home. I will try to forget it and involve myself in a good book. But there is no such thing as a good book when you are going home after [x] months. I can't but sense where the plane is heading.

The plane will land, and people will rise. There will be an extraordinary wait to get off the plane; men and women will argue about their place in the queue after retrieving bags stowed elsewhere. Then it will be over. I'll get through customs and exit the terminal. This is the moment I've been waiting for. My parents will be at the airport, waving at me from a sea of onlookers. They will be as excited as children. My father will do [a] or [b]. My mother will do [b] or [c] or [d]. It's not surprising that my parents will shower me with love. I know they cannot help it; they haven't seen me for a long time. They will offer to take my bag and ask [e] questions about my well-being. I will feel the weather greeting my skin. At this point, I haven't gotten into the cab yet, but I don't have to reach the house to know the conclusion of this journey. I've already walked through the door in that moment outside the terminal. Home is the recognition of the lives we led together once, the things that only we knew of. It is the sound of the river that runs in our veins. Or rather the shape of a story we tell ourselves. Who doesn't love a good river?

In the cab, my father will ask me either [f] or [g] before proceeding to tell me everything that has changed in the city since I last visited. My mother will ask [h] questions about the food I'd like to eat. I will enjoy this attention, this care that was missing when I was a child. It is also inevitable that [j] minutes later, my parents will start quarrelling with each other. That is who they are, they cannot stop. I will start feeling anxious; I'll never be as happy as I am in the moment I arrive. The magic will be over, there will only be mundaneness...