Good day in the city

     This space skews toward the negative — concerns about the national health, complaints about this or that, criticism of various and sundry, the constant airing of problems and worrisome situations.
     Even with occasional joyful forays into birds, food and etymology, happiness gets the short shrift.
     Though I am not — not not not — a complaining, querulous person. I hope. Rather I am, I believe, a generally happy person. Though you wouldn't know it, reading this blog.
     Why? Perhaps because happiness is so fleeting, or banal, or private. It feels uninteresting and gets overlooked, making me seem gloomier than I actually am, a suspicion that hit me suddenly standing on the Washington bridge Wednesday afternoon.
     Granted, I had just enjoyed an unusually restful, social day. Taking the 7:43 train downtown with my wife. Making phone calls in the Great Hall of Union Station, where I noticed a man photographing a stuffed toy frog. I ran over and interviewed him — that'll be in the paper eventually. I walked away buoyant, his life story tucked in my pocket like a $20 bill snagged from the sidewalk. Do I have a great job or what?

      Then to Lou Mitchell's — and how well does that perk up a day? A spinach and mozzarella omelet, well done. Thick toast. With a historian participating in the big conclave of the Organization of American Historians in Chicago this weekend. I'm going there Thursday afternoon.

      That lasted a couple hours. Just as we stepped out of Lou's into the rain, a cab pulled up and dropped someone off. So we cabbed over to River North, where I hung out at a Starbucks, then walked over to Gene & Georgetti to meet a pair of former colleagues, both retired. We spent another couple hours happily jawboning away, until we finally got up, with hugs and handshakes and promises to meet together soon.

     There was nothing to do but go home. Firing up a primo Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 brought along for just such a purpose, I walked it down Wacker Drive, the rain finally ended, the sun out, the afternoon waning.

     Crossing the Washington bridge, I glanced north, and saw the yellow Water Taxi steaming toward me. I love the water taxi. It's just a beautiful boat. And a sweet ride. Back when it cost $2, it was an astounding bargain, and now that it costs $5 it still is. I try to catch it whenever I can from the foot of Madison Street to the Wrigley Building. It's like taking a little vacation.

      Pulling out my phone, I took three shots, and then lowered the camera just in time to catch the eye of the water taxi operator, a bearded fellow. I raised my thumb and smiled. He raised his thumb in reply and smiled back.

     Bingo. That was it, happiness. And I realized happiness can be caused by many things, but connection to other people is key — whether talking for hours in a restaurant, or flashing a quick thumbs up to a guy you've never seen before and will never see again, but for a single second, shared a moment of optimism. Isn't everything great? Yes, everything is great. Right now, right here. 

     I paused at the Daily News Plaza, took up my usual position just north of the Madison Bridge, puffing away, looking at the river and the Civic Opera Building. I checked my email. There was a phone message from a reader, 88, who was unhappy. She has been a subscriber for as long as I had been alive, enjoyed my column mightily until recently. Because I had taken the Lord's name in vain — a trio of interjections of "Jesus!" — and she is a Christian. So she's scrapping her subscription, renouncing the folly of my column.

     I phoned her back — I told myself I shouldn't, but that doing so would spoil my mood. These calls never go well. But it was that very good mood that prodded me onward. Her daughter put her on the phone. She explained how she enjoys my writing about my boys, and loved watching them grow up in the newspaper, but she can't cotton having her Lord's name tossed about as an exclamation. I took a deep breath, then told her that I'm sorry; being Jewish, sometimes I miss the significance of such things, and that I apologize, renounce the sin, and hope that, being Christian, she could find it in her heart to forgive me.

     "It'll never happen again," I said, and she seemed satisfied, and I ended the call confident that I kept one reader from defecting from the fold. Sometimes that's all a person needs, to have their concerns heard and be treated with respect. We all need to be seen by each other, every now and then. It makes us happy.