We drove around the corner, pulled our bags out of the car and walked down the street to The Palmer House, the ancient hotel where -- several thousand years ago -- I went to my prom.

It was a frigid night, after many like it: We were tired and sleet got into our eyes.

And I was in a nasty mood, having gotten a nasty review on my first novel for teens, after three great ones, (it really IS a good book!) and our son, who was on his way to auditions for yet another college, would rather have spent the evening with a pit viper than with his mother.

On the corner, we ran into a man. Snow was ground into the seat of his jeans. I fumbled for some bills; but I could tell even then that this guy wasn't going to find a shelter for the night. He was singing -- and he was singing beautifully. But you don't sing at 9 p.m. on a street corner, to no one, when it's ten degrees and you're wearing nothing but a blue-jean jacket and a sweatshirt over your jeans.

And I realized that even if I were to ask this guy if he would accept the overnight at a hotel room if I paid for it, he wouldn't. And of the twenty people who died last night in Chicago, of exposure to extreme cold, very likely he may have been one.

Of course, I felt like the luckiest person on earth. And my luck of late would have been the kind that would have made Nathan Detroit reconsider the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York.

About twenty years ago, when things got me down, I used to say to myself, 'Today is the happiest day of someone's life. Today someone got a letter that changed everything. Today, a baby was born. Today, someone fell in love. Today, someone went at a challenge and nailed it. Today, when all hope for a great outcome was gone, someone found out it wasn't so bad as it seemed. Today, someone found out it was only a cyst."

Sometime along the line, I've stopped doing that. My focus has shifted to a fretfulness that makes me ashamed to be who I was. This sounds like wishful thinking, but the song that the homeless man was singing was the old Judy Garland standard 'Get Happy.'

Otherwise I might never have remembered what I remembered.

Last night in Chicago, I remembered.

I have the only thing I need.

One more chance.