A Veteran’s Return

Visiting The Bench Where My Parents’ Future Began

I’ve been trying for years to write something about my mother’s bench in the waiting room at Union Station in Chicago. The bench where she sat and waited the day my father got home from World War II (his train was late). The bench she began to revisit when, 44 years and nine children later, he died.

I’ve been trying to write about the two of them and that moment that day at that bench, but everything keeps sliding out of focus. Nothing holds still long enough for me to capture it.

One …