The Glass Wall at O’Hare
This post is part of my pilgrimage series about Rome.
My dad would have turned 72 today. His birthday was always special to me because it falls on the day before mine. The back-to-back celebrations made both days feel extra worthy of honoring. When I was younger, we’d celebrate together with big Italian lasagna dinners at my grandparents’ house. After my grandparents died, we’d go to our favorite restaurants with my closest friends joining us. School always started around our birthdays, marking both celebration and new beginnings.
Now that he’s no longer physically with me, birthdays are both special and sad. This is the fourth year I'm celebrating without him, and it still hurts.
The Back-to-School Spark
The longer my dad is gone and as more birthdays pass, the more I see the parallels between our lives. The parallels became especially pronounced two years ago on August 25, 2023. It would have been my dad’s 70th birthday, and it was my first day of school — sort of.
I was on a bumpy Amtrak train headed to new graduate student orientation at Loyola University Chicago to begin my MA in Counseling for Ministry at Loyola's Institute of Pastoral Studies. As the train approached Union Station, I watched the Chicago skyline come into view. I remembered the many times I drove through Chicago to visit my family back in Milwaukee when I was in graduate school for my PhD at Purdue over a decade earlier.
During one of those trips home, my dad told me he was going back to graduate school. He was in his 50s then, getting ready to retire from his decades-long career as a food broker. He told me his call to ministry grew louder as he got older, and he wanted to pursue his MA in Lay Ministry, which would launch his second career in church administration.
States apart, we were in graduate school together. He took his comprehensive exams the same day I defended my doctoral dissertation. We poured over our course books on trains and planes during family vacations. His books had titles like A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. My books? Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory.
I would page through his ministry books during those vacations. Seeing the titles and skimming through them sparked something in my gut center that was missing when I read my grad school books — something was waking up.
When Sparks Became a Calling
Turns out that spark was a call to ministry, formation, and spirituality. Like him, I would discern that call once I was well-established in my career, and that calling became louder after my dad died in 2022.
So, in 2022, I applied to seminary for an M.Div in chaplaincy, but once accepted, it didn't feel right. That's when Loyola University Chicago's Institute of Pastoral Studies appeared again on my radar, as it had been doing throughout my discernment process.
“I don't need another graduate degree,” I kept telling myself. But as soon as I saw Loyola’s curriculum, everything aligned. They offered the spiritually informed counseling education I'd been longing for since earning my Jesuit undergraduate psychology degree almost 20 years earlier.
Plus, Loyola had been pivotal in my life before. In 2005 during college, I studied abroad at their John Felice Rome Center, an experience that changed my entire life trajectory. I was minoring in Italian studies in college, so studying in Rome made sense. There was one problem: I struggled with homesickness that made it nearly impossible for me to function. The thought of living in Rome for a semester terrified me, despite feeling thrilled at the idea of living in my family’s home country.
I knew that the only way I could get heal the fears that fueled my homesickness was to go halfway around the world. I was leaving everything that made me feel safe and secure for four months. Even though I was going to Rome with a group, I didn’t know anyone. This really was my first time on my own.
From Fear to Faith
During the car ride down to O’Hare, I couldn’t talk because I was trying to hold back tears and sobs. Hours later, the moment I was dreading came. It was time to go through security. This was it. Doubt and fear filled me, but something deeper in me knew I needed get on that plane. Leaving felt both impossible and inevitable.
I hugged my parents. I could tell they were trying to hold back tears. My mom was a champion in that department, but despite his best efforts, my dad was a mess. I told my mom I was counting down the days until she and my brother would visit me over spring break.
I took one last look at my dad, knowing the next time I’d see him would be at O’Hare’s baggage claim in four months. He had a steadfastness I’d always relied on, and it was there as I looked in his tear-filled eyes through my own tears. I hugged him tighter than I ever hugged him before, trying to soak up every ounce of confidence he had in me. Then I took my place in the the security line.
After I passed through security, I looked up to my right to see glass panel walls that divided ticketed and non-ticketed passengers. I hoped to see my parents, but I knew they were so far back in the security line that there was no path for them to get to the walls where I was.
I was wrong.
My dad was there.
Somehow, he made his way up to the glass panel wall to walk alongside me, getting as close as he could to me without violating security. Tears streamed down his face, and he stayed with me as long as he could, like pushing me on a bike without training wheels until he knew I could stay up on my own.
The glass divider turned into a solid wall, and my dad couldn’t continue with me. But I was still walking, full steam ahead. I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t realize I had turned the wrong way out of security.
When I double backed past the glass wall, I did a double take — my dad was still standing there, and now my mom was next to him. We all laughed as I pointed in the correct direction and mouthed, “I went the wrong way!”
With a laugh and an eye roll, my dad playfully threw his hands up in the air as if to say, “Get going, sweetheart, you’re going to be fine.” My dad turned to leave as I found the path to my gate. It was the levity we all needed, and a fitting ending — I was fine. In fact, I was better than fine. During those four months away, I found the faith in myself I had always hoped to have.
Returning to the Glass Wall
Flash forward 20 years to this summer. I returned to Rome for a pilgrimage, once again with Loyola and via O’Hare.
This time, I wasn’t alone. My partner was joining me, and I’d meet my fellow Loyola classmates in my favorite city in the world.
This time, there was no doubt, only excitement and anticipation.
My partner and I walked through O’Hare’s long terminals to our gate. The glass wall dividers were still there at every security checkpoint.
I looked to my right at each one as we walked by. I hoped, and even expected, to see my dad waiting there for me. I hoped he would surprise me just like he did 20 years earlier to spend one more moment together before I left for the great adventure that is Rome.
He wasn’t there physically this time, of course. But I still felt him, striding alongside me: “I’m right here, sweetheart. You can do this.”
Happy birthday, Dad. I hope you never stop walking alongside me at security checkpoints and wherever else life takes me.
Liz hugs her dad during a dinner celebration in Nashville 2009.
