Hopes

I’m tired. It’s chemo and it’s cancer. These days, I wake up every morning when my alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. For many years – more than a dozen – I needed no alarm. In the old days, I always woke right at 3 a.m. I made a pot of coffee and started working on the freelance work I did to pay our rent and put food on the table.

Nowadays, I’m lucky if I have enough energy to work for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

Though I’m tired, I simply can’t sleep all day every day, so I spend a lot of time looking at a big, flat-screen television that’s about eight feet from my pillows. Sometimes, I watch shows I’ve already seen a few times. Those are always some version of "Law and Order" or one of the shows about Dr. House and his crew.

Sometimes, now, I’ll watch the Cubs play ball. I’ve been a Cub’s fan for more than four decades. My Cub cheers started in 1967, when I was a student at Chicago’s Art Institute, living just two blocks from Wrigley Field.

The Cubs were slotted by just about everybody to win the National League title this year, possibly to win the World Series. Lately, they’ve been playing terribly. They’ve lost eight straight.

I have mixed feelings about the Cubs’ losing streak. Well, really about their chances this year. You see, the last time the Cubbies were in the series was 1945, the year I was born.

The last time the Cubs won the whole shooting match was 1908. Just over a century ago.

So there’s a part of me hoping the team gets on the right track this year and wins all the games it needs to win to be the champs of the world.

There’s another part of me, though.

That part has promised me, myself, that I can’t die until the Cubs win the whole shooting match.

To be frank, that part of me has felt pretty good as the Cubs lost. If they don’t win the series, maybe, just maybe, there will be something inside me that will hold my cancer off, at least for another year.

We’ll see, right?

(After I wrote this, the Cubs won two games against the Pirates. I have mixed feelings. I guess all I can do is see what happens, right?)