I bought plane tickets for the whole family, but at the airport my daughter-in-law gently told me that they had given my seat to their own mother because the children feel “closer to her” and my son quietly accepted. I froze for a moment, then smiled and walked away without raising my voice. A minute later, after calming down, I changed all the $47,000 vacation in Hawaii with a single educated phone call and quietly reorganized my $5.8 million estate in a way no one expected.

All perfect. All planned with love.

I showered, put on comfortable travel clothes: black leggings, a soft sweatshirt from Northwestern, the running shoes I wear for my four-mile trots along the lake shore, and checked my suitcase once again. Passport. Road. Printed confirmations even if everything is in one application now. My cardiology brain doesn’t trust a single point of failure.

At 5:00 a.m., a black sedan from a local car service stopped in front of my reddish stone. The driver loaded my suitcase in the trunk as he closed the front door of my house that he had bought years ago when hospital bonuses were coming in hard and the Chicago housing market was still forgiving.

We drove down Lake Shore Drive to O’Hare International Airport, the Chicago skyline lights shining over Lake Michigan, Willis Tower, and the John Hancock Building simply silhouettes against a still dark sky. Even after all these years, that journey still makes me feel fortunate to have lived my whole life in this city.