Prelude and Fugue, in Minors

Abstract

The first thing you notice about the Shriner's Hospital for Children is the vast expanse of handicapped spaces in the parking area. It immediately imparts a sense of grim pragmatism to an edifice built upon the most optimistic of ideas-that children who need special medical care should be able to get it for free. The handicap signs form a single column stretching into the distance, a long chain of stern metal posts, a sturdy phalanx set to defend the choicest spots from the lucky ones who still enjoy a full range ofmotion. We park in the back of the lot. I was ten yeats old die fitst time I came to the hospital. Chicago was a wonderful oddity to me then, a schizophrenic metropolis. Chicago was the Latino quarter, where wholesalers gave us coffee and bagels and my dad bought exotic goods for our family grocery store. Or it was the alien mystique ofChinatown, with its beautifully strange architecture and herbal boutiques and pigs and ducks hanging in butcher's windows. Other times it was Michigan Avenue, bustling with fashion and movement, buildings taller dian God. It seemed as if the city was constantly disappearing and reappearing, a series of urban Brigadoons, each unaware of the existence of other Chicagos. It was any other city, as it would look shone dirough a prism, each component expanded and more than the sum of its parts, every hue distinct and luminous. The Shriner's Hospital was not a color I had seen before. I was accustomed to the conventional strangenesses of Chinatown or the wholesale district, but here was a thoroughly unimportant-looking building crawling with old men in peculiar hats. The red fez is a great symbol of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, distinguishing it from the other Masonic orders. It's considered a sign of nobility and philanthropy, proudly worn by members for over a hundred years. The Shriner's take their fez seriously. I, however, could not. Nothing in the entire history of secret playground clubs and special handshakes could rival the absurdity of these men wearing those