"Look to this day"

I wrote this last Sunday, been a busy week, WIFI not always available.

I sit in our local commuter based airport. Less than fifty people in the whole terminal. The planes are still asleep with their wheels chocked. Of course the engines are are silent, cold and lack any semblance of energy. I watch the gray sky turn pastel pink then magically light up into a cool summer blue.

My last sponsor, Dick's, favorite greeting was. "Great to be here." To which he would quickly add. "Of course it's great to be anywhere at my age." Dick had 46 years sobriety, 88 years belly-button. Played golf every week until the end, after having both knees replaced at age 82.

I moved through baggage check, shoes off realizing that all my so-called worldly essentials fit into one plastic tub; kind of an eye-opener. Afterthought, grateful they can't make a big enough for the real essentials, God, sobriety ( AA ) and my family. Baggage check sounds like AA, the process is an equalizer for all the travelers.

We'll be boarding soon; the crew is circling the plane making their safety checks. I'm on my way to Vero Beach tp attend a retreat. It's all alcohol and addictions related. Supposedly some fine minds and souls in the addiction field will be there. I think I've been invited to carry bags, get coffee or their token senior citizen. I agree to attend these conferences knowing I can speak their language as well as the the program that got me here.

The meeting will be a far cry from the days back in the early seventies. At that time the governor of Ohio selected myself and a small group of mostly alcoholics (AA) to put together plans for a treatment, detox and county outpatient in Akron and the surrounding seven counties. The treatment complex was one of the first of the Federal Funded public programs. We staffed each of the centers with volunteer and paid recovering AA members. Today it's a much different story. Have to have a ton of credentials.

Yes, like Dick I'm grateful, to be anywhere: especially waiting on a plane to take me to a new learning experience and in some way possibly help the still suffering alcoholic.

JF