The Purple of Life

Cusp

2012-01-31T21:22:00.004-06:00

We’re riding up Lake Shore Drive in the dark, past 10, after drinks and dinner downtown—Indian or Spanish or Italian. Going home. The lake is opaque, a huge wild darkness on my right; on the left are the twinkling high-rises, the quiet canal, the empty softball fields. The traffic flows smoothly. I play deejay with the iPod: Iron and Wine, the Civil Wars, the Shins, Mason Jennings, Rocky Votolato. The music has changed with time, but we’ve been doing this Saturday-night drive on a regular basis for more than 10 years, just the two of us. Sometimes we sing along:

Life keeps on changing
Tell it to stay still, but it won’t listen
I just want you near me like you are now, for good.

***

It’s been more than two years since I mailed our initial application to adopt from Korea, and we are finally, truly, on the cusp of becoming a family of three. The utter on-the-cuspness of these January days is almost hard to comprehend. I feel compelled to clean out closets and organize drawers. Our extra bedroom is slowly becoming a nursery. There’s a new dresser and lamp, children’s books on the shelf, toys in the closet, gray and yellow and light-orange paint chips on the walls.

I have a coupon for the Gap, and I spend it on tiny track pants, little waffle-knit shirts and an orange T-shirt with a bicycle on it.

There’s a to-do list on our kitchen counter that has items such as “attach bookshelves to wall,” “send Mom addresses for baby shower,” “write list of questions for Will’s foster family.” There’s also a list of restaurants to visit one last time, before restaurant-going becomes a pastime that’s on hold.

On weeknights, while John works, I go to the gym, or meet pals for dinner, or cherish my alone time. I feel slightly freaked out about all of this going away. At the exact same time, I am so ready for everything to change.

***

It’s funny how so many of the best moments of this adoption process have occurred in my office at work. For instance: Yesterday, an email from our social worker, with a video of Will’s first birthday celebration, or dol, taken in November at his foster family’s home. He’s in his hanbok, sitting in his high chair. He smiles, looks around, pounds the table. He can’t reach the traditional dol objects, and his foster brother helps him stand up. He chooses the thread, which signals a long, healthy life, and he looks quite pleased with himself as his foster mother cheers. His foster brother kisses him on the head. Will bonks himself in the face with the thread package. I am utterly transfixed and moved and proud, a little jealous, overwhelmed with love. I watch the video nine times that day.

***

I turn 36. It’s the loveliest of weekends, sunny and crystal cold. It includes a birthday box from Mom and Dad, a beautiful bouquet of flowers from John, a manicure, calls from friends, dinner with family, impromptu drinks with the downstairs neighbor who’s also celebrating his birthday, two outdoor runs, lots of sleep, shopping downtown, dinner at a fabulous Spanish restaurant, drinks at an old jazz club, lunch and a lakefront walk with a friend, and John’s delicious parmesan breaded chicken with homemade tomato sauce. My cup overflows.

***

For my birthday, I wanted a ring with a citrine, which is Will’s birthstone. I scrolled my way through Etsy, and my eye caught a silver honeycombed ring sprinkled with a few small yellow stones. I loved its unique, modern look, so I clicked through to read more about the jeweler—a Korean man who lives in Seoul. Obviously, I bought it.

When the ring arrived, with a beautiful handwritten note of thanks, I emailed the jeweler, told him how much I loved it, and explained why I’d wanted a citrine ring. I told him that Will is in his city right now, and how excited I am to go there. He emailed me back: “Thank you. I hope God bless you. Please take care of him.”

I hope I can do that soon.

2011 lookback: An embarrassment of riches

2012-01-01T15:49:00.007-06:00

Even when I kept a paper journal, back in college, I always loved writing a “year in review” entry at the end of December. This meme, while a meme, makes it easy. Without further ado:

What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Ran a half-marathon in two hours, stood on Cuban soil, became an aunt, took a four-week photography class, took a staycation. Went to six concerts (Iron & Wine, Mason Jennings, Death Cab for Cutie with Frightened Rabbit, Mountain Heart, Amos Lee, and the Civil Wars). Walked on Lake Shore Drive after a blizzard. Attended a mayoral debate. Kept a daily gratitude list for a month. Cheered on runners in the Chicago marathon. Named my son.

Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My 2011 resolutions were to run the half-marathon again and beat my first time (done!), become comfortable driving again (woefully not done!), continue reading at least one book per month (done), take a more in-depth photography class (done), and hang out in my neighborhood café in the winter when I feel sad about the lack of light (semi-done; I could have indulged in this more often).

2012 is going to be a year like no other. Of course, my resolutions are focused on Will—on doing the very best I can to make him feel safe and comfortable and happy in his new home. I’m going to do some intense reading on attachment this winter. I want to focus on patience and calmness. Overall, I want to start learning how to become the best parent I can. I also want to focus on keeping our marriage strong as we embark on this huge change in our life.

I am so, so excited to love my child in person.

I’d like to run my third half-marathon; I think I can do it, depending on the timing of my maternity leave. I want to write here at least once a month, and I want to keep taking ballet classes when possible.

Where did you travel in 2011?
San Francisco and Havana, Cuba! Closer to home: northern Michigan for a weeklong camping trip.

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Obviously, Will.

What dates or images from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory?
November 10, the day I received the phone call at work that changed everything. November 13, the day we knew for sure that Will was our son.

Then, in chronological order:
--April 17, the day I held my week-old nephew for the very first time, and looked down and saw my family in the tiny, red, scrunched-up face of a newborn.
--The Friday night in late May when I stumbled across a blog post discussing the fact that Korean adoptions would be on hold for the rest of the year.
--The morning of June 22, when I wandered into the kitchen and found a small gray box waiting for me on the counter. Beautiful, beautiful diamond earrings from a husband who continues to surprise and delight me after 10 years of marriage.
--The very early morning of August 14, watching the cobalt clouds rush across the downtown skyline as I walked toward the start of the half-marathon.
--December 8, seeing the island of Cuba from the sky for the first time, the passengers clapping as we landed, my hands shaking and a little Cuban-American boy yelling excitedly to his mother, “We’re in CUBA!”
--December 10, visiting the neighborhood where my mother grew up, walking the rooms where my ancestors lived. I will never, ever forget this day and the way it made me feel.

What were your biggest achievements of the year?
As with last year, running! I had a personal best of 24:35 in a 5k, and I shaved 15 minutes off my half-marathon time. I wrote here almost every month, and I took four photo walks: two in Uptown and Edgewater after the blizzard, one in the Loop, and one in the neighborhood this fall. I celebrated 10 years of marriage, and I started taking ballet classes again after 21 years.

What was your biggest failure?
Driving more often. I really, really need to get on this.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Some illnesses here and there, but I’m so happy to be able to type that none of them was serious.

What was the best thing you bought?
New plain white dishes. An oil painting in Cuba. A flowered dress from Akira. My iPhone.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Cuban bloggers who are brave enough to speak out against the oppression and propaganda of their country’s government. Read them. The wider their audience, the more protected they are from persecution.

Whose behavior saddened you?
I wish the Korean government would embrace an adoption policy that works better for children who need families.

Where did most of your money go?
The mortgage, Cuba, adoption fees.

What did you get really excited about?
Will. Cuba. Running. Game of Thrones. Eating at Topolobampo for our 10th wedding anniversary. Living outside on our deck in the summer. Girls’ weekend in Chicago. Our staycation. Working on Will’s nursery. My neighborhood. Lagunita’s A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale. Big Star. The Violet Hour. Watching Stella run on the beach.

What song will always remind you of 2011?
Anything by The Head and the Heart and The Civil Wars. The Beatles song “Till There Was You,” which John learned to play on his guitar.

What do you wish you’d done more of?
Photography and driving.

What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying; thinking in terms of “what ifs.”

What was your favorite TV program?
Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and Modern Family.

What was the best book you read?
I read 12 books this year—three less than last year, but four of them were giant books in the Game of Thrones series. The New Yorker continues to take up a lot of my reading time! The GoT books and Freedom by Jonathan Franzen were my favorites.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Civil Wars

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
I finally tried on a pair of skinny jeans and felt sad that I’d waited so long. Also, I happily wore lots of dresses and skirts in the summer.

What political issue stirred you the most?
Gay rights and health care… same as last year.

What kept you sane?
Late Sunday afternoons with a glass of wine and InStyle magazine, preferably on the deck. Summertime camping. Any stretch of a few days where I didn’t touch a computer. (Mind you, these are exactly the same as 2009 and 2010.)

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
Our family and friends provide us with an embarrassment of riches. I can run faster than I’d ever imagine possible. Also: What you think about the reflection in the mirror isn’t the point; just put on the leotard and go.

1961

2011-12-18T17:31:00.006-06:00

John and I just returned from a three-day trip to Havana, a place we’ve both wanted to visit for a long time. It had been planned for a few months, although it was definitely eclipsed by our news of Will in November! This trip was fascinating, thought-provoking, and utterly unforgettable for me. I’m struggling to process it all. There are so many things I want to write about what we saw and experienced, what an isolated and passionate and crumbling and confusing country it is. How deeply I love it, and how much it makes me appreciate my own freedom. But if I could write only one story about those three days, this would be the one.

The Russian Lada was at least 30 years old, with red carpeting tacked over the dashboard and not a seatbelt to be seen. Before we got in, Alberto explained that after he’d been rear-ended, his mechanic was able to remove the back half of another Lada and attach it to the front half of his. Now the exhaust pipe was acting up and would need to be fixed. This didn’t surprise us, considering all the exhaust blanketing the air in Havana.

It was December 10, our second day in the city, the second of three total, and the only afternoon we had free during a busy schedule with our tour group. (Going with a specially licensed “people-to-people” tour was the only way the U.S. government would allow us to enter the country.) Alberto, our 66-year-old tour guide, a retired scientist and devoted revolutionary, had kindly offered to drive us to my mother’s childhood house if we paid for the gas. And so, clutching the maps she’d drawn for me and the old scanned photos I’d printed, I got in the front seat and John in the back, and off we rumbled, heading for a destination just a few miles away but 51 years back in time.

***

My mother is Cuban. She was born on the island, and she left it in 1961, at age 12, as part of the Operation Pedro Pan exodus. More than 14,000 children were sent out of the country by their parents to escape the communist revolution that had occurred in 1959 and was steadily encroaching on people’s freedoms. People with wealth were particularly affected, and my mother’s family fell into that category; my great-grandfather’s sugar-cane farm was appropriated by the government. Many children were sent to the USSR or the island’s rural interior for reeducation, no matter their parents’ wishes, and people suspected of being counter-revolutionary were spied upon and denounced. Thousands of people saw no choice but to flee, and with a few suitcases and some hidden money and jewelry, they left on planes to “vacation” in the States or Central America. They were never able to return. They left behind their friends, jobs, homes, possessions, pets, their entire lives. Most of them, including my family, had to rebuild those lives from scratch, depending on the generosity of the U.S. government, churches, and other exiles to gain a foothold in a new country.

By the mid-60s, every single person in my mother’s extended family had left the island except for one cousin. My oldest aunt left alone, then my mother left alone; she was told she was going on vacation in Miami, and when she arrived, the relative with whom she was staying told her the truth. The rest of the family was able to join them a few months later. I believe that only three of my relatives have ever returned to Cuba. I was the fourth.

***

Our goal that warm, cloudy Saturday was to find two houses situated next door to each other, one that had belonged to my mother’s family and the other to her grandparents, who were like second parents to her. The neighborhood had been green and gracious, with gardener-tended flowerbeds and gleaming, elegant homes. When we parked our car in the intersection near the houses, we found that now, like so much of Havana, the neighborhood is crumbling. There are weeds and broken sidewalks, rusted chain-link fences, houses with peeling paint and falling plaster. Some houses are in better repair than others, but the overall feel is one of shabbiness.

My mother’s house had been bright white and well-kept, with massive arches and a beautiful side yard and terrace. Now it’s gray and decrepit, only a shadow of its former self… it was a haunting thing to see. With Alberto as our translator, we knocked on the door and spoke with the old woman who lives there. She allowed us in, although she didn’t permit photos (John was able to take some clandestine video with his iPhone). Inside the house was dark, sparsely furnished, and melancholic, a giant cockroach dead in the corner. Even if we’d been able to take photos, I don’t think I could’ve showed them to my mother. The old woman explained that she’s unable to care for the building, and as we left, Alberto muttered that it will fall to the ground in 10 years if it isn’t repaired.

Cuba is a country of contradictions, and in a place where everyone is supposed to be economically equal, it’s surprising to see the disparities. My great-grandparents’ house is beautiful and well-preserved. It’s painted a tropical salmon pink, with the same colorful Spanish tiles in the porch floor that were there when my mother played jacks on them. The 30-something woman who lives there now rents rooms to visitors. She was a bit reserved at first, but she allowed us in to explore and take photos. She has a computer and polished antique furniture. Her husband is a carpenter. The rooms are painted bright colors; the crown molding is still intact. The floors are spotless black and white tile. Using the floor plan my mother had drawn me, we walked from room to room, and I was able to identify them all: my great-grandparents’ bedroom, my great-grandfather’s office, the stairs to the servants’ quarters. The house felt happy and loved. When we left, the owner agreed to pose for a photo with me. She smiled and rubbed my arm when I tearily thanked her for the gift of seeing the house and told her it was one of the best days of my life.

***

The first thing I did when I returned to Chicago was email the photos of the houses and the neighborhood to my mother. They were very difficult for her to look at, although seeing her grandparents’ well-cared-for home made her happy. Amazingly, she recognized the chandelier in the foyer and two pieces of furniture, a dresser and a dining-room hutch. They have remained in the house since my great-grandparents last locked the front door behind them in 1961.

All my life I have lived with the ghost of Cuba. But it’s a pale specter compared to the ghosts that haunt actual Cuban exiles who long so much for their island home. For me, Cuba has been a mythical, legendary place, the setting for countless tales of my mother’s childhood, her memories of her close-knit family, and also stories of struggle, danger, and desperation. When I look at the photos I took and imagine the past, I’m filled with a vast, palpable sadness for my family, the decisions they had to make and the great loss they endured. I’m also filled with pride at their courage.

I can’t ever know what it would feel like to close the door on a life and start over in a strange country with nothing, or to place my child on an airplane alone, not knowing when I would see him again. But now I know what it feels like to stand where my mother stood almost 51 years ago, suitcase in hand, waving goodbye to her dog and thinking excitedly of her “grownup vacation” to Miami to visit her aunt. I know where my grandmother pruned her rosebushes and where my great-grandparents sat on the porch after dinner. I know the park where my aunts and uncles played, and the pink house across the street where the boy who’d marry my aunt lived. I know the palm trees lining the streets. I stood on the same black-and-white tiled floors. I stood on the same floors.

Snapshots of gratitude

2011-12-01T21:47:00.004-06:00

On Nov. 1 (Will’s first birthday! Oh, still reveling in all this. And yes, his full name when he comes home will be William Jiho—I neglected to mention that in my last post), I noticed that a few friends on Facebook were starting a daily gratitude post for each day in November. I liked that idea, but I didn’t want to update my Facebook status every day. So I decided to keep a list in a notebook.

Of course, my life changed on Nov. 10, and suddenly I was overflowing with so much gratitude I could hardly see straight. But still, I kept up with the little ritual, and I’m so glad I did. It’s a snapshot of a month—who knew it would be the month everything shifted so amazingly?—and although I tend to be a person who’s usually mindful of her good fortune, I still appreciated the exercise of choosing one thing each night to record.

There are a few recurring themes in my list: Will, of course, and friendship, running, and sickness (it wasn’t my healthiest month). Also beer, apparently. Here it is:

11/1: I’m grateful that three of my editors are getting extremely well deserved promotions.

11/2: Grateful that Stella has grown to be able to enjoy and savor her walks! Gone is the super-spooky shy dog; now it’s all sniffing every blade of grass and greeting people with a waggy tail.

11/3: Grateful that my cold is almost gone and I’m able to run a fast three-miler again.

11/4: For the brilliant red and yellow trees that I walk under on my way to the train each morning.

11/5: For friendships that are 16 years old and counting!

11/6: For the discovery of new music—in this case, Milo Greene and the Civil Wars.

11/7: For being able to afford a doctor appointment and sinus infection meds, no sweat.

11/8: For living in a city where I can enjoy cultural events like the Chicago Manual of Style’s 100^th anniversary (editorial geeks unite!).

11/9: Grateful for a good friend with a shared ethnic heritage.

11/10: For Jiho. A thousand times over, for Jiho. [Picture lots of little stars doodled around this one…]

11/11: For early Friday nights, cozy in bed with a book (preferably one from the Game of Thrones series).

11/12: For a sweet peaceful day spent largely with John: errands in the neighborhood (the notary!), Old Town School of Folk Music, drinks and dinner out in Lakeview, sharing a tender new knowledge of a little baby boy living across the world.

11/13: For my son, William Jiho. [This was the day we spoke with the pediatrician who reviewed Will’s files and made our final decision.]

11/14: For the sunshine when I walked to the post office to mail our acceptance package to the agency.

11/15: For the tears shed and sincere joy expressed by my friends when I share the news with them. Feeling overwhelmed with the blessings of friendship and not sure I deserve so much of it…

11/16: For beer, mussels, frites, and a good friend to share them with.

11/17: For a run when you just feel strong and good—even on a treadmill.

11/18: Grateful for a cozy evening at home: guitar, beer, pizza, movie. Him and me.

11/19: Lots to be thankful for today: Sleeping in, ballet class, brunch with friends, artists at the DIY craft fair, the online adoption community, an Italian dinner with John and our favorite bottle of Chianti (which we discovered in Rome!). Also, we’re lucky to have lovely neighbors!

11/20: Grateful for having cousins who are also good friends.

11/21: Thankful that I have the ability and talent to write—working on our first letter to Will’s foster family.

11/22: For having a husband who enjoys—and is good at—cooking.

11/23: For wonderful, supportive, thoughtful and kind coworkers.

11/24: For two beautiful Thanksgiving feasts, for two families that are growing, for all of my relatives who are so genuinely excited about Will.

11/25: For yearly traditions with Mom: Hobby Lobby and lunch!

11/26: For my parents-in-law. I want to be them when I’m older.

11/27: For the glow of indoor Christmas lights.

11/28: For being able to walk to so many restaurants and shops from our home.

11/29: For medicine and our easy access to it.

11/30: For 10 terrific years (today!) in the big, beautiful, brawling and never boring city of Chicago.

What a month.

Traffic patterns changing

2011-11-19T15:42:00.002-06:00

I never realized this before, but November is a month in which good things tend to happen in my life. It’s the month in which we moved to Chicago 10 years ago. It’s the month I was hired in my current job, which I love, and the month in which we mailed off our application to adopt from Korea. (Of course, it’s the month of Thanksgiving, too, a time of gratitude and family and lots of good food.)

On Thursday, November 10, around 10:30 in the morning, I retrieved my phone from the closet in my office to text our dogwalker. I then placed it on my desk, thinking absentmindedly that one of these days, hopefully, hopefully, our social worker would call with our referral, and I’d want to make sure I picked up right away.

Less than three minutes later, it rang, and it was her.

“I’ve received a package with a referral for you,” she said.

Then I was standing, facing away from my open office door, my eyes full, hands shaking, heart beating so hard I could feel it hitting against my chest.

It’s a boy, she told me. He’s healthy. He was born on November 1, 2010. We could come in that afternoon to read his files and see his face.

See his face.

I called John, still shaking, breathless. I think he was shocked to the point where he could barely register what was happening, that it was actually happening. He would pick me up at 2:30 for the drive to the agency.

I called my parents. I told my boss and cried when she hugged me. I pretended to do work for three hours. My stomach somersaulted; I had no appetite for lunch. I tried to remember what we’d been doing on November 1 in 2010. It was a Monday, the day after Halloween. We’d run a 10K on Halloween morning and met up with new friends whose adopted toddler son is Korean. I remembered John and I walking around the neighborhood that night, looking at all the trick-or-treaters, talking about how much our child would love being part of it someday, musing about costume ideas. He was born the next day.

The drive was slow, surreal. We listened to Andrew Bird. We passed the Korean Air warehouse by the airport. I saw a construction sign alongside the highway: “Week of Nov. 7: Traffic patterns changing.”

Our social worker apologized for wearing jeans; she hadn’t expected to meet with clients that day. We sat in her office and she started handing us document after document, so much information about his birthmother, his birth, his medical history, his foster family. And then, oh, then, three pages of typed information from his foster mother: his likes and dislikes, his personality, his schedule, what he eats (and what he spits out—yogurt!). He is curious and likes riding outside in his carriage. He can sometimes be short-tempered. He can find a hidden toy. He likes baths. He laughs. He likes meeting other babies. He dances when his foster mother sings. He cries when his foster father leaves for work. He’s already pulling himself up. He says two words. He has four teeth.

His birthmother gave him the name Jiho. It means “clear wisdom.”

The Korean social worker wrote in the paperwork, “Jiho is a smart, cute-looking baby boy. He babbles well and gives a laugh if you play with him. He is growing up healthy and being loved in the special care of his foster family. We hope that Jiho will meet a good adoptive family as soon as possible. We also hope his adoptive parents will enjoy a happier life as well with him.”

And then, then, the photos. We were given the gift of more than 25 of them, some taken when he was six months old and some just a few weeks ago, at 12 months. He is adorable. He is beautiful. He has big eyes and lots of hair and the smoothest skin. He’s wearing a little hoodie. He’s standing up and holding onto a toy lawnmower. He’s clutching a rattle, then a phone. He’s sitting with his smiling foster mother. He’s propped up between two huge teddy bears.

We took the papers and the photos and we drove home in a daze, in the late-afternoon darkness, straining to look at his face again and again as we passed under the streetlights. When we got home, we spread all the photos out on the counter, a collage of Jiho. We reread his paperwork. That night we slept like the dead, funnily enough; we were just completely drained from the emotion and intensity of the day.

Before formally accepting the referral, we needed to speak with a pediatrician who specializes in internationally adopted children and have him review Jiho’s files. That didn’t happen until Sunday. Friday and Saturday were slow and surreal, spent looking at his photos, talking about him, offering up possible names, just the two of us together, sharing this secret. For the first time since we decided to adopt, John walked into the second bedroom and started talking about what we’d need for the nursery. (He always said he wanted to wait until our referral before doing any real preparation.)

On Sunday afternoon, we spoke with the doctor, who’s raising his family in the city not far from us and will likely be our pediatrician. He said Jiho is healthy and developing well. He told us to “go get him.”

And we are.

We don’t know exactly when that will be. Sometime in the spring, I suspect (and pray). Sometime in the spring we will fly across the world, where there is a baby boy waiting for us, as we’ve been waiting for him. We will meet him and hold him and become a family of three. He is real. This is really happening. For two years—we mailed our first application to adopt on November 12, 2009—this has been our hope and wish and plan, and now it’s actually happened. It’s almost too much to process and grasp, but it’s beginning to feel more normal as each hour of each day passes by. The more I look at his face, the deeper in love I fall with him.

I don’t even know what else to write, or how to talk about this. In the past nine days, I’ve found myself smiling at nothing. Riding on the train, I haven’t been able to focus on my magazine; I just stare out the window. We’ve called our parents and siblings, emailed his photos to the proud new grandparents and aunts and uncles. We’re starting to tell cousins, friends, coworkers. Their tears and sincere joy for us deepens our own. I’ve reflected a lot on what wonderful people we have in our life, and on the miracle of how many people here already love this baby.

I won’t lie, the tears have been coming easily. The moment on Sunday afternoon when we decided to accept, I cried hard, really hard, so overwhelmed by what was happening. And then I gathered myself together, dried my face, pulled my hair back, and went out for my long run, amazed at how different the familiar path and trees and lake looked that miraculous autumn afternoon, on my first run as a mom.

Balance and turns

2011-10-18T21:33:00.002-05:00

I danced ballet for six years, until I was 14 and didn’t want to anymore. I had taken classes several times a week, danced in Nutrackers and Coppelia and Giselle, in pointe shoes and tutus, with girls both mean and sweet. Some of those girls had stiff flappy arms and “feet like milquetoast,” as my larger-than-life teacher would say. Others got better and better until they were whipping out double pirouettes and leaping through solos, their svelte bodies completely under their command. I was in the middle, not bad but not the best. I had graceful arms and good feet, but not a remarkable amount of strength or precision. I wasn’t overweight, but I wasn’t the slenderest. Middling.

When I joined the company as an apprentice and graduated to dancing pointe, everything became harder. I couldn’t seem to keep up as well as I had before. The competition among the girls was more blatant. I started dreading class. I looked at my body in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors and was disappointed. I imagined doing other things after school. And I decided to stop.

It was a big decision for a 14-year-old, and I can still remember my mom standing in my bedroom doorway, motionless and stricken, as I told her the news. It was the right thing for me to do, and I didn’t regret it, but it closed the door on a big part of my life. I nudged it open once in awhile by dancing in a school play, or writing about my experiences in a college workshop, or attending Joffrey performances here in Chicago. But I never took another class until a few weeks ago.

I actually can’t remember now where I got the idea. I still love the art form, and I think I suddenly realized that I could be part of it in that physical way again—put on ballet shoes and practice tendues and developés, follow my hand with my eyes as I Iift it to first position. What did I have to lose? If I didn’t like dancing, I could just stop. So I looked for a low-key adult beginner class and found a well-regarded studio right in my neighborhood. I Googled whether you need to wear a bra with a leotard. (Seriously, I could not remember how I used to handle that. The answer for me: no.) I went to a dance shop and bought a leotard, footless tights, and canvas shoes. I had strange, angsty dreams. And then I showed up on a Saturday morning, and I danced ballet for an hour.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for the past few weeks, now that I’ve taken four classes. The surrealness is wearing off a bit. That first class was alternately amazing and conflicting and just beautifully strange. I could not believe how much my mind and body remembered. I could hear my old teacher’s voice in my head, guiding us through the steps. My feet could still point the way they always had, and my legs felt strong and sharp, my arms and hands graceful. My balance, though—good lord. You’d think my core was made of Jello. And could it be that at 35, my memory’s starting to fuzz around the edges? Or was it always this tough to memorize the combinations?

My classmates were mostly women, some younger and some older. Most of them had danced at a young age like me. One of the things I noticed right away was this beautiful open space where the judging used to be—we weren’t sizing each other up, dividing the good and the bad and the middling, bringing the politics of popularity into the mix. We were just spending our Saturday morning doing something that we enjoyed, getting some exercise, admiring and listening to our lithe, petite 50-something teacher who has obviously been a professional ballerina all her life.

So much is different. Instead of an actual piano or a scratchy record player, the music comes from an iPod. My hand that holds the barre has a wedding ring on it. My hair isn’t in a bun, studded with bobby pins and secured with a net; I need my mom for that, so a ponytail does the job. It feels unnatural to turn out my feet, to balance in a passé relevé. Have I mentioned the lack of balance?

So much is the same. I take an inordinate amount of pleasure in doing barre work, just like I always did. Thanks to running and strength training, I’m in decent shape, much as I was back when I was dancing several days a week. My grand battements look pretty darn good. I know how to hold my head, and I don’t sickle my feet. I think my body’s proportions are pretty much the same. Also, newsflash: It still takes a healthy dose of courage to watch yourself move around in a leotard and tights.

My body still doesn’t do what real dancers’ bodies should do. I still am not one of the best. And see, there’s the thing, one of the reasons I’m especially glad to be taking this class. I have always been a perfectionist, a child who abhorred coloring outside the lines, who became accustomed to getting A’s, who was a good writer, a group leader, someone who got the job, who got promoted. Who set goal times for races and then, almost always, achieved them.

The first winter that John and I were dating, he bought me a pair of ice skates so we could go skating together. I didn’t know how to skate. A few turns around the crowded rink, clutching an orange road cone for dear life while 10-year-olds soared past, turned me off completely. I didn’t feel like I could do it, and that embarrassed me greatly, and I put the ice skates away and never used them again.

Being a perfectionist is both a good and a bad thing, of course, and I’ve always felt bad about those skates. So for the past four Saturdays, as I’ve faced myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror and realized I am not the best or thinnest dancer in the room, nor will I ever be, I’ve also told myself that that’s OK. I am not there to be the best and thinnest dancer in the room. I am not there to spin double pirouettes and be cast in the right parts. I am there because I love ballet, and I want to work my body, and it feels good to get in touch with that long-ago part of myself that danced these same steps.

If I can learn that, really learn that, along with balance and turns and combinations, I think this will be one of the best decisions I’ve yet to make for myself. My teacher says that balance can be strengthened simply by standing on one foot as you wait for the train. It can become second nature. I’m going to believe that’s true.

How to have a successful staycation

2011-08-31T13:17:00.007-05:00

Plan your three days off work during a week in which it will be sunny and breezy, with highs in the upper 70s and lower 80s, every single day.

If you feel just a wee bit guilty when you wake up at 8:30 a.m. on a Wednesday and proceed to leisurely drink coffee on the deck with the newspaper, get over it.

Virtuously write up a list of chores, but flagrantly disregard all of them.

Do as much as you can outside. This includes all meals, reading, guitar playing, and daydreaming.

Spend at least two afternoons at the beach. Read, doze, swim, drink Coronas, and watch your dog leap and bound with joy in the waves.

Devour the second book in the Game of Thrones series for two-hour stretches at a time. Do this on the deck if possible, with a few breaks for a slight doze in the sunshine.

Never get up before 8 a.m.

Have breakfast with a friend at a neighborhood café that always reminds you of cafés in Europe. However, unlike Europeans, order scrambled eggs and tortillas and fruit and big mugs of black coffee.

Enjoy shopping in the empty H&M store downtown. Admire your husband in a new tweed jacket with elbow patches and yourself in three fun fall sweaters.

Lazily make your way through the September issue of InStyle magazine, cold beer(s) and pita chips and goat cheese at your side.

Have your world thoroughly rocked during a small concert given by a hugely talented alt-bluegrass band.

Easily get a table at an always-crowded tapas restaurant. Go for the pitcher of sangria, the sausages, the stuffed mushrooms.

Sit out on the deck late on a weeknight. Savor the warm breeze on your skin, drink wine and listen to quiet music, and talk about everything and nothing with the one you love, as your dog sleeps at your feet.

Stay out late on a school night at the awesome Frightened Rabbits/Death Cab for Cutie concert.

See an amazing documentary that you probably wouldn’t make time for otherwise.

Get your name in early for an always insanely crowded taco joint. Kill time with drinks and aimless ambling and hipster watching. (Count the mustaches and hats.)

Do a photo walk downtown, exploring nooks and crannies in the city you’ve lived in for 10 years—but in which there’s always something new to discover, if you just keep your eyes open.

15 minutes

2011-08-15T23:11:00.004-05:00

My second half-marathon: It went so, so well. That’s what I've been thinking since I crossed the finish line at around 8:40 yesterday morning. The weather, the energy, the course, the crowds, the music, and me. It all went just as well as it could have.

This entry is about running, and about me preserving the memory of this race. I did my first half last September, with a primary goal of finishing without walking and a secondary goal of doing it in two hours and 15 minutes. I achieved both, but when I finished, I had this nagging feeling that I could have run faster. I hadn’t left it all on the course. It was my first big race, and I tended toward the conservative; I was afraid of flaming out halfway through and having to walk. I didn’t trust my training or myself as well as I should have.

I wanted this year to be different. During my three months of training, I did long runs with “fast finishes.” I did six- and seven-mile pace runs. My race goals were (1) to finish faster than two hours and 15 minutes and, hopefully, (2) to finish in two hours. I succeeded at both. I shaved 15 minutes off last year’s time. I did that. Me.

Nothing else in my life gives me that kind of high.

I am not a morning person, but on Sunday I woke up before my alarm at 4:45 a.m. The wind was blowing steadily, pushing cobalt-blue clouds across the dark sky. John and I were downtown in less than 20 minutes, flying down Lake Shore Drive with a smattering of other cars, some of them taxis carrying runners. We found parking on State Street and were at the start area with half-hour to spare. I warmed up, milled around, strapped on my Garmin, adjusted my visor about 16 times.

After the anthem, the waves broke quickly—I was in corral 12—and just a few minutes after the starting horn, I was moving through the start line, feeling a little choked up with excitement, that thrill of being one in a crowd of thousands of other runners, that thrill of starting.

The weather was—cool. Yes, on August 14. There was a refreshing breeze, never any real sunshine, the lightest drizzle for a few minutes at one point, and beautifully dramatic dark-gray clouds for the first few miles. No humidity. On August 14.

I liked the course much better than last year’s half, which was primarily on Lake Shore Drive. I love the lake as much as the next Chicagoan, but I run alongside it all the time. This course wound through downtown: River North, Greektown, the South Loop. I ran under the el tracks, by buildings and on blocks I’ve never seen before, up and down a few slight hills that revealed the giant pack of runners owning the street ahead of me. Best of all, the downtown location made it much, much easier for spectators to congregate along the sidewalks. The energy from the crowds was just unbelievable; sometimes I felt like they were buoying me along: musicians, cheerleaders, babies, grandparents, dogs, dancers, people with bells and drums, in costumes and wigs, and so very many signs.

I wore a paper wristband (covered in clear tape) that listed my goal times for each mile to get me to a two-hour finish. I also wrote the four locations where friends would be waiting to see me, so I didn’t have to memorize them. As each mile went by, I realized, almost in shock, that I was meeting each goal. I was on track for two hours. I was doing it!

And I just kept going. I was working hard, but I could do it. My right knee acted up, as it’s wont to do around mile 7 or 8, but I did some high marches at the next two water stops, and that took care of it. I just kept going: miles 9, 10, 11, they slid by under my feet. Just after mile 12, during a stretch where there weren’t many spectators, a friendly-looking man held a homemade sign that proclaimed, “YOU GOT THIS.” It was the exact right thing for me to read at that moment. I knew that I did have it, that I was going to do it. I ran as hard as I could through that finish line, official time of 2:00:26. I did it.

The one other sign that I remember from the race was held by a woman standing on a bridge. It’s a quote I’ve heard before but never chosen as a mantra; I tend to think things like “Believe in your training,” “Your only competitor is yourself,” “I’m 35, I’m strong, and I can run.” Her sign read, “There will come a day when you can no longer do this. Today is not that day.” I thought about that as the miles went by, and especially at the end. There will come a day when I can no longer run. Man, will I miss it. Even when it’s the very last thing I feel like doing, when it hurts or feels like a long dull slog, deep down inside I am so, so glad that I run. Now is the time in my life when I can, and when I can still keep getting faster. What else can I do?

Me with my pen and my summer ale

2011-07-25T21:18:00.004-05:00

I feel the days slipping past, a beaded necklace sliding through my fingers, and I’m trying to feel the texture of each piece before it’s gone, make the most of each balmy green day, but many times I fail.

(Part of me wants it all to whoosh past in a blur—the part of me dreaming of that small someone across the globe—but to be honest, I’ve tamped that part down pretty well. Before we found out about the delay, I thought about our little guy a lot, several times a day. I talked about him with John, ruminated about future-y things, trolled around parenting and baby-gear websites. I’m not really doing that much these days. I don’t know when we’ll see his face, and after that, when we’ll bring him home. I don’t know how old he’ll be. I don’t know what paperwork we’ll have to update and resubmit because of this change in timing. So I’m just trying to focus on other things. It’s easier that way, even though again, I feel the time moving, more and more days in which we’re not parents. I’m sad for John. I do think about that.)

I’m always one to worry that I’m not making the most of things, living my best life, soaking everything in… although I suspect I’m not the only Chicagoan who feels this way in the summer. July is almost over! Am I opening my arms wide enough to embrace it all? I sat on the deck with John last night, he playing Bruce Springsteen on his guitar, Stella snoozing on her mat, and me with my pen and my summer ale, making a “Rest of the Summer” list.

Have more friends over for grilling and deck lounging. Bring a picnic to Millennium Park for one of the free concerts. Visit a few particular restaurants with outdoor seating. Hit the big Green City Market in Lincoln Park a few times. Explore the Cuban and Korean street festivals. Walk down the street for ice cream at least once a week. Sit outside and watch the sky and listen to the crickets. Do a photo walk in the late afternoon. Wear dresses more often.

I’m already doing many of these things, plus bringing Stella to the dog beach, and training for the half-marathon (I broke my 5K personal record with a 25:36 this weekend—pure happiness!), and going to neighborhood fests, and taking a photography class, and eating and reading outside whenever possible. I’m tending my plants, smelling the marigolds and cooking with fresh herbs. We hosted a big outdoor party for friends and neighbors. In July we spent five nights camping in northern Michigan, and we’ll be taking a few days off at the end of August and “vacationing” here at home. I’m working hard, and editing side projects for friends, and not watching much TV.

Sometimes it seems like when I’m busy and booked, I yearn for the couch and a magazine. And when I’m sitting at home with InStyle and a basket of laundry, I think about all the other interesting and edifying things I could be doing. I tend to fret that I’m not making the most of city living, that I’m not exploring, learning, volunteering enough. The truth is that I like doing those things, but I also like sitting outside and watching the sky, feeling the air, listening to the crickets. And watching and feeling and listening are enough. They really are.

One decade

2011-06-22T11:57:00.004-05:00

Ten years ago today, John and I were married. The wedding was in a Catholic church in our neighborhood in Michigan. The reception was just down the street on the grounds of an old mansion. It was outdoors, under a lit-up white tent, surrounded by green grass and candlelight. It rained during the ceremony, briefly, but it stopped just before we exited the church in a gentle storm of bubbles and cheers. Wine flowed at the reception. There was a lot of laughing, especially at the toasts. The dance floor was full at all times. The blessings of that night were so amazingly great I could not wrap my arms around them. I couldn’t fathom the joyfulness.

Ten years ago, I was 25 and John was 26. (Where we lived in western Michigan, we felt we were on the “older side” to be getting married; we’d already attended many, many weddings together.) He was a staff accountant who’d just passed his CPA test. I worked in corporate communications and had recently graduated from filing papers and proofreading emails to editing and writing for employee publications. I was Catholic and John was Christian Reformed.

After our wedding, he moved into my one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a rambling old Victorian house. A raccoon lived in the turret above our bed. We had no Internet connection. I had been wanting to move to Chicago for awhile, and John, who had never left his hometown, not even for college, was game. We looked for jobs, combing the classifieds at work and at the local library’s computers. By late fall, after a few trips around the lake to interview, we’d found work at a CPA firm and an academic press. We moved to the city on Nov. 30, 2001.

Our first apartment had huge windows and one tiny bedroom. When the back window was open, you could hear the crowds cheering at Wrigley Field. During our two years there, we started to put down roots in Chicago. We settled into our jobs. I began attending grad school for a master’s in writing. We decided to become Episcopalians together. We went to Wrigley bars, and we discovered “new” food—Thai! Middle Eastern! I started to run along the lakefront. When the woman who owned our apartment decided to sell it, we decided to move and buy a condo of our own.

We relocated about a mile and a half north. Two bedrooms now, and central air, and free washers and dryers in the basement! We’d stay in this building for six years, becoming close friends with several of our neighbors and getting involved in our block club. John was promoted, then promoted again. I started a new job at a marketing/publishing firm. We had Moose, our beloved greyhound; he lived with us there for four years, until bone cancer took him. Stella joined us a few months later. I graduated with my MA. John brewed homemade beer. I realized I could run three miles at a time, and we started doing 5K races together. We celebrated our fifth anniversary. We turned 30.

The housing market fell, the government offered a credit to first-time homebuyers, and we decided to sell, and to stay in the city. We fell hard for a place just a bit west of us, and the stars aligned, and it was meant to be, and we sold our first condo and bought our second. Three bedrooms, our own washer and dryer, and the huge deck we’d been wanting for years. It was our dream home, and after almost two years there, it still is. In it we’ve watched Stella blossom into a dog who’s no longer afraid of her own shadow. We’ve entertained friends, planted flowers, and mowed the (OK, very small) lawn. And we made the decision to become parents through adoption.

In the past ten years, we have traveled to the Outer Banks, New Hampshire, Key West, Colorado, New York, St. Augustine, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. The British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas. France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy. Next year, Korea.

Of course, I can’t fully describe a decade in one online post. In the past ten years, we have laughed a lot. We have felt grateful. We have worried, and cried, and faced some hard things. But we’ve still, always, felt grateful.

Now, on June 22, 2011, we are 35 and 36. We are both managers. (We have gone through ten married tax seasons together.) I’m a half-marathoner. John is an accomplished guitar player. We’re better cooks, we’re more well traveled, we have different ideas about religion than we used to, although we’re still at the same moderate-liberal spot politically. My hair is grayer, John’s is a little more sparse, and both of us have laugh lines around our eyes. Although we’re healthy and in good shape, I should say that my back hurts if I stand at a concert for too long.

I have a partner who is adventurous, patient, understanding, fun, honest, loyal, and supportive. He is a man who is going to be everything our child could want in a father. I look at the past decade, feel extremely satisfied with it, and feel excited to turn the page. I will never stop realizing how lucky I am to turn that page with him.

Running, registering, and this past weekend

2011-06-06T23:07:00.005-05:00

I. Running

I’m in training again. My second half-marathon. When my friend-slash-coach emailed me my training plan, all twelve weeks lined up in a neat chart of miles, I was simultaneously elated and daunted. There are pace runs and intervals and fast finishes on that chart. My weekly long runs started with seven-milers. It’s a more aggressive plan than last year, because I want to run those 13.1 miles faster. I believe I can run them faster.

I know this is an eye-rolling, cringe-inducing statement to some, but I really do love to run. It makes me feel powerful and healthy, it helps me zip my jeans, it earns me membership in a community, it connects me to my city in a unique way. But I’ve realized that, like anything else, just because you love something doesn’t mean it’s pink roses and calico kittens all the time. I worry about getting hurt. I worry about failing. Sometimes I don’t want to run. Sometimes I set out for my long run and hate the entire first mile; the weight of the distance left to go seem so unbearable. My mind boggles at the fact that there are still seven, eight, twelve miles to cover.

Long runs are funny things. I find myself needing a day or two to psych myself up for them, especially when I’m in the above-ten-miles range. Our minds hold a lot of power; completing a long run is a physical achievement, of course, but your brain has to be on board to propel you through. When I’m running for two hours, my thoughts swing from ecstasy to agony, bliss to torture. I look at my fellow runners, at the dogs and boats and soccer players, then I zone out and don’t notice anything for a mile. My right knee twinges and aches. I worry that I’m getting sunburned. Then I round a bend and see the sun glittering on the mighty lake and feel like my chest is going to burst with joy, because I get to have this experience, this feeling, this accomplishment.

Two miles later, I hate every step and can think of nothing but the shower and beer waiting for me back home.

It’s fascinating to me, those mental and physical shifts. But above all else, running gives me space to think, to truly be alone in my head, if that makes sense, even as I’m surrounded by hundreds of Chicagoans. I suspect I’m going to value this time even more when I’m a mom. And certainly my main topic of thought while running these days is our little guy. The miles fly by when you’re thinking of names, mentally debating whether you need a pack-n-play, and scrutinizing every jogging stroller that flies down the path.

II. Registering

I went to Babies R Us for the first time a couple weeks ago. My friend Mandy came along to help me start our registry. Mandy and I have a lot in common: we both waited until our mid-30s to have our first child, we live in similar-sized city condos, and our reaction to places like Babies R Us is more overwhelmed-ness than excitement. Don’t get me wrong; I was extremely excited to register, but I definitely needed some navigational assistance. So we spent two hours on a Wednesday night roaming the store, waving the little gun over changing-pad covers and thermometers and wipes and plastic utensils and a carseat. We discussed the merits of homemade baby food. We tried on diaper bags. I got a little choked up around the bath toys. It was so, so much fun.

In the past month, John and I have allowed ourselves to realize that we’re actually going to become parents. For the first time, it’s all seemed so real. Based on referrals coming to other families who are with our agency, we realized that ours could come at the early end of the six-to-nine-month wait we were quoted. In fact, it could come in early June. And then, we could be in Seoul in as little as twelve weeks after that. I didn’t want to cram all our preparations into three months. And I wanted to give adequate advance notice at work. So I told my boss the news (she was over the moon). My college girlfriends gave me a beautiful shower at our annual reunion in May. I signed up for a weekly e-newsletter that tracks your baby’s development, guessing that maybe he’d been born in February. John and I made plans to paint the nursery on the weekend of our tenth wedding anniversary in June. I made sure my phone’s ringer was always turned on.

III. This past weekend

Friday was warm and summer-like. We decided to grill after work, and we lounged on the deck, enjoying the balmy air, savoring our beers, John flipping the bison burgers as they seared. Life felt so perfect. “When do you think our referral will come?” he asked me out of the blue, his eyes alight.

Later, before bed, I went online to check the weekend forecast and plan when to do my long run. I zipped around a few sites and visited Cheese Curds and Kimchi, a blog written by a couple who just brought their son home from Seoul a few weeks ago. As soon as I began to read the news in her latest post, my stomach turned over, and then I was crying, and all of those happy expectations and plans and hopes were just—not there anymore.

I definitely recommend clicking on that link; Pix is a terrific writer and she explains the situation really well. In a nutshell, the Korean government is attempting to slow, and eventually end, international adoption. They’re allowing fewer and fewer babies to leave the country each year—there’s an annual quota for how many can be adopted internationally. But domestic adoption rates aren’t rising fast enough to make up the difference. So more and more babies are having to wait longer to join their international families. If they’re matched with a family but the quota is then reached, they have to wait until the following year to travel, when a new batch of annual permits is issued.

Our agency historically hasn't been as affected by this quota as others, which is why we switched to it. But as of last month, that changed. Somehow, we fell through the cracks and weren’t informed—our social worker hasn’t explained why, but she confirmed what I read online. There will be no more referrals until late fall, there will be no travel until 2012, and our child will very likely be older than twelve months when he comes home. We had been expecting him to be nine or ten months, and we didn’t imagine Christmas 2011 without him.

What else to say? This was a tough blow. We aren’t in control of this process, but it’s really hard to readjust our expectations. We don’t have a choice. But it’s still really hard. I feel like we’re back at that place where it doesn’t feel real. We can fill our lives with work and classes and dinner with friends, summer festivals, camping trips, and the beach, and we will. But part of me feels like I’m ready for this era of my life to end, for the new one to begin, and now I don’t know when that will happen.

***

On Saturday night, we decided to go downtown for dinner at an Indian place. The car ride down Lake Shore Drive was a quiet one. We parked in a garage, and when I got out, I found a black wallet at my feet. It contained a driver’s license, credit card, about $30, and some mints. Amazingly, the owner lived just three blocks west of us, on the same street. We found him on Facebook, saw that he was a server at a nearby restaurant, and called there to let him know we’d found his wallet. We offered to bring it by after our meal.

The restaurant is a swanky new steakhouse overlooking the river. We showed up around 10, and when we spoke with the hostess, she began gushing about how kind we were and insisted we have a round of drinks on the house. So we found ourselves sitting in the dark, hushed bar, raising two glasses to good karma. We’ll take all we can get.

There were bells on a hill

2011-05-11T14:18:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I read an article about a new study showing that South Korean children seem to have much higher rates of autism than American children.

Yesterday I got home from work, looked in the mirror, and saw a ladybug clinging to the collar of my jacket.

That’s pretty much how life seems to be going these days, swinging on a pendulum from fear/worry/angst to excitement/joy/hopefulness. I mean, it’s not like every day is a rollercoaster of emotions, but they crop up pretty regularly. It’s strange how you can want something so badly and be so afraid of it at the same time.

We’re entering the timeframe when our referral could come. Still a bit early, yes, but it could conceivably come anytime between the end of May and August. We could travel anytime between September and December, I think, if the current agency timeframes hold steady. This stage of our adoption process—which started in November 2009, when I mailed our first agency application—feels the most “real” yet. Our child is most likely born. We are eyeing every stroller we see on the street. I’m trolling around local message boards that discuss child care. We’re going to register in June. I’m going to tell my boss this month, and after that, we won’t have a reason to keep the whole thing secret any longer.

I’ve been having lots of big thoughts—about nature versus nurture, what we can control and what we can’t, about personal courage and strength, about what makes a strong marriage. What it means to be happy and just how important that really is. (I think we Americans place a higher emphasis on personal happiness than some other cultures do.) I think about those studies that say childless adults are happier than adults with kids. I wonder about that, thinking about things like getting good sleep, lounging with the newspaper, running four or five days a week, meeting friends for dinner, lingering and laughing with John at a bar or over a meal. Those things make me happy, and I won’t do them as often once we’re parents.

The thing that is taking their place will make me happy in a whole different—and, arguably, deeper and more fulfilling—way. I know that. But it will also bring worry and frustration and fear, and that’s going to mean a new way of living, a new way of feeling. Right now, we’re fortunate enough to not have any major stressors, other than the usual mild work or family challenges. I want this new life, but I also like my current, simpler life (even though sometimes it feels like something is missing, like I’m ready to move on to the next chapter). So I guess I’m just thinking my way through all that right now.

Of course, it’s not like I spend all my waking hours immersed in deep thought! Spring is finally springing in Chicago. I’m back to running outside, and I’ve decided to attempt my second half-marathon this summer, so I’ll start training for that soon. We’ve started planting in the backyard, and we’ll get our deck flowers planted soon. After almost three years with us, Stella has suddenly noticed the existence of squirrels, making our walks much more amusing. I’ve signed up for a four-week photography class, and I’m copyediting a friend’s first novel. John just learned to play “Till There Was You” on his guitar, which I’ve decided will make a great lullaby. We recently went to Michigan to meet my perfect little nephew. And we spent a fabulous weekend in San Francisco, celebrating the end of tax season and just enjoying a few days of doing whatever we wanted to, together, in one of our favorite cities in the world.

Last weekend we had brunch with some dear friends who live in the suburbs. We were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for a table at a restaurant. I was holding my friend’s blond-haired, blue-eyed nine-month-old, and a woman walking by wished me a happy Mother’s Day. “So funny,” I told my friend, “it’s not like she looks like me at all!” Then I realized, um, yes, neither will my actual child, and we all laughed, me feeling grateful for the woman's assumption. I pressed my cheek against the baby’s soft head and pretended.

There are so many things I want to write about this whole process

2011-03-24T23:05:00.004-05:00

My little sister is pregnant with her first child, the first grandchild in my family. I am so over the moon about this, so ready to meet my nephew and to add the role of aunt to wife, daughter, and sister. He’s due to show up at the end of April, and I can already feel the soft heavy warm weight of him in my arms. It’s a sheer miracle to think of looking into his face and seeing my sister’s face, our family face.

My mother and I threw a baby shower a few weeks ago. Eighteen women gathered in the living room, eating cupcakes and passing around the baby gifts as my sister opened them. I handled each one as it came to me, exclaiming over the little pants, the pacifiers, the blankets and bibs. My sister laughed and tugged at her maternity shirt, made a joke about her breastfeeding pump. And I felt no envy. I’ve never had a yearning to be pregnant, to experience what it’s like to carry a baby to term and give birth. I don’t look at pregnant women and wish I were one of them.

I do feel the loss of not creating a child with John. I will never forget our first meeting with our social worker, on a white-sky winter day last year, when she told us that we had to come to terms with that—the fact that our child won’t look like us, won’t inherit our family’s traits, won’t come from me and John. She pointed out that that was a loss, and I guess I’d been so focused on the excitement of starting the adoption process that I hadn’t really thought of it. It brought tears to my eyes then, and every once in awhile, I think of it and still feel that sadness.

When it comes down to it, being pregnant isn’t what I want. Having a child is. For certain health reasons, and because we’ve always had open hearts for adoption, that’s how we’re going to grow our family. At the core of me, it does feel right.

-----

There are so many things I want to write about this whole process.

I might not envy the state of being pregnant, but sometimes I do envy the simplicity of it. People understand pregnancy and biological children. They don’t have so many questions, whether asked or unasked. John and I still haven’t told many people about our plans. Of course, our families know, and several close friends, but we haven’t announced it at work or said anything about it on Facebook. Most of the people we’ve told have been thrilled and excited and supportive. (The ones who haven’t been that way seem mildly happy for us but also confused, and they haven’t asked us about it much afterward.) Most people have some questions, but nothing that’s odd or rude. They check in with us for updates and ask how the process is going. And maybe it’s just me being overly sensitive (and that’s a very strong possibility), but sometimes I wonder what they’re really thinking. Do they think we’re crazy? Do they think international adoption isn’t a good thing? Do they have preconceived ideas about what adopted kids are like? If our child has any problems whatsoever, will people always point to his adoption?

Obviously, dealing with these types of issues is going to be part of our “new normal.” We knew that going into it, and we know we will handle it. But still, it can feel a little jarring and isolating. Recently I went out to dinner with a few friends, one of whom didn’t know about the adoption, and I told her. She seemed happy for us, asked me a few questions, and that was it. It wasn’t brought up again for the rest of the night. The next day, we all emailed back and forth about how fun the dinner was, and she never mentioned it. I can’t help wondering if it would be the same if I were pregnant.

-----

It’s not hard for me to get too deeply inside my own head, if that makes sense. On some days I think about how he’s already somewhere out there, crying or sleeping or gurgling, waving his arms around. I see the three of us visiting playgrounds, taking Stella to the beach, reading bedtime stories. I see him dancing while John plays the guitar, all of us laughing. Other days I fear that he won’t attach, he won’t sleep, he’ll have separation anxiety, he’ll be afraid of the playground (I know, right?). That we won’t be good parents; that I’ll be frustrated or confused or desperate or just plain old worried all the time. Logically, I know that parenting is going to contain all of these emotions and experiences in one big messy bundle, that there will be very high highs and very low lows. I suppose I’m just afraid of the unknown sometimes, even though I’m still moving steadily toward it with my arms open wide.

The winter that I turned 35

2011-02-19T16:23:00.003-06:00

I just got back from a brisk six-miler in the bright cold winter sunshine. The sky was impossibly blue, the bike path bone-dry, sparsely populated with other runners. Last weekend when I ran outside, I saw cross-country skiers traversing the white soccer fields. This weekend it was guys playing touch football on green turf. The landscape has changed dramatically in seven days; towering snow piles have shrunken to dirty scrapes of ice on the grass. I’ll take it.

Although the Groundhog Day Blizzard was definitely an exciting one—we were engulfed in about 22 inches of snow in less than 24 hours. Both my office and John’s closed for the day, public transport was barely running, people were trapped in their cars for hours on Lake Shore Drive, and the Drive was shut down, which meant pedestrians could amble around on it, taking photos from a once-in-a-lifetime vantage point. A few hours after the storm passed us by, I headed out with my camera, exchanging smiles with strangers as we jockeyed for space on the sidewalks, narrow, winding valleys between mountains of snow. I walked on the beach (I wasn’t brave enough to step onto the frozen lake’s waves, though) and then walked a few blocks down the middle of Lake Shore Drive. Definitely an unforgettable experience… all of those people meandering on the snowy asphalt, making the most of a grownup snow day.

I think my wintervention has been going well. I’ve spent some hours in my local café, met friends for lunch and dinner, made progress on my Italy photo album, tried cooking one new meal, watched the Lunar New Year parade on Argyle Street, and attended a mayoral candidate debate. (It was sponsored by local Asian-American community groups, and to kick it off, a group of excited Korean teens performed a traditional drumming routine that brought a lump to my throat.) I'm going to the ballet tomorrow. My sister’s first baby is due at the end of April (I’m going to have a nephew!), and I’ve been planning her shower. I’ve been working a lot, editing a lot. I’ve been savoring quiet, lazy Saturday mornings with endless cups of coffee and the newspaper. I turned 35 and decided I was OK with that. My parents sent me a box of fun presents in the mail, but the best piece of mail that’s come this winter is our appointment to have our fingerprints done for our I600-A, the Application for Advance Processing of an Orphan Petition. It means things are moving along, the cogs in the wheels are turning, turning, turning. Don’t look now, but March is beckoning.

Wintervention

2011-01-17T21:19:00.003-06:00

So, winter, we meet again. Here you are, with your salty sidewalks and broken snow shovel and thick, opaque layer of darkness, fully cloaking us before 5 p.m. Tax season has begun, and while John is at work until 9:30 p.m., I’m watching DVRed episodes of What Not to Wear and struggling not to eat eight pieces of dark chocolate while the dog stares at me reproachfully.

In the winter it is so dark in Chicago, so early.

I wrote about this a little last year, and this year I’m determined to not bemoan this season (um, despite the opening paragraph of this entry, I mean). I do not live in Antarctica. Just because it’s dark doesn’t mean I can’t go places and do things. And in this last winter before parenthood, I have a measure of freedom that won’t come again for a long, long time.

Hence, the Wintervention.

I’m putting together this to-do list to consult when I start looking at the sweatpants and the candy jar too often. When I feel sorry for myself because I miss the sunshine and the farmers’ market and long runs under green trees. To everything there is a season, even this one.

The list:

--Research baby gear: strollers, diapers, cribs, children’s books. (I just bought a copy of Baby Bargains to help get started.)
--Relax after work with a book without feeling vaguely guilty that I should be doing something more “productive.”
--Write a letter to my grandma.
--Go to the café around the corner and sit in the cozy warm light with The New Yorker and a chai.
--Work out five days per week, a mix of running and strength training/recumbent biking. Aim for running close to 15 miles a week. Run outside every weekend, no matter how cold it is—being outside in that quiet stillness along the lake is incredibly therapeutic.
--Read about attachment.
--Try cooking five new recipes (and relish the freedom of choosing ones that don’t have to appeal to both of us).
--Put my Italy photos and souvenirs in a scrapbook.
--Attend at least one literary reading.
--Plan a weekend getaway in New York City after tax season.
--Read about around-twelve-months-old children. Seriously, I do not know all that much about them.
--Collect ideas for decorating the nursery.
--Start a list of non-children-friendly restaurants to visit or revisit before we are three.
--Oh, hey! Write here on this site.
--When all else fails, start organizing the closets. We’ve been here just over a year but somehow, maddeningly, they already need it.

If winters are hard for you, how do you get through?

2010 lookback: In which I mention the word "deck" a lot

2010-12-31T09:42:00.005-06:00

Even when I kept a paper journal, back in college, I always loved writing a “year in review” entry at the end of December. This meme, while a meme, makes it easy. I think I’ve only done it twice before, in January 2008 and 2010, and in looking at those old entries I see I’ve been resolving to write more for awhile. Maybe 2011 is the Year of Writing Regularly! Ahem.

What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
Ran more than four miles (in fact, I ran 13!), took a photography class, visited the Amalfi Coast, got fingerprinted and tested for TB (those were for the adoption), bought a toddler-sized T-shirt, colored my grays, and hosted a big outdoor party on our deck.

Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
My 2010 resolutions were to run the Chicago half-marathon, make time to read more books, do more photo walks, write online, and make the most of our new neighborhood. I’m pretty proud that I accomplished most of these—I could’ve done more photography and writing, but I did some, and that counts.

Resolutions for 2011: Run the half-marathon again and beat my first time, become comfortable driving again (it’s been nine years since I regularly drove a car, and I’m woefully rusty and somewhat fearful), continue reading at least one book per month, take a more in-depth photography class, and hang out in my neighborhood café in the winter when I feel particularly sad about the lack of light and warmth.

Where did you travel?
Italy! Closer to home: Washington DC, Michigan, Wisconsin.

What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
My child. I’ll at least know his face in 2011, but I might not meet him until early 2012.

What dates or images from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory?
Several from our September/October trip to Italy: Dinner on our final night at that little neighborhood restaurant we stumbled upon near the Colosseum… complimentary glasses of prosecco while we waited, an amazing bottle of reserve Chianti, sitting outside near the fountain, feeling like we blended in just a little. Weaving through the Tuscan hills in our little Fiat Panda, the unreal landscape unfurling around us—green and brown hills, pointed cypress trees marching in straight lines, centuries-old farmhouses brooding over it all. The first time we opened the terrace doors of our hotel in Positano and saw the town spilling down the cliff to the glittering sea. I will never, ever forget that.

August 12, a screening of Once at an intimate concert space in Lincoln Park, followed by a five-song show by Glen and Marketa. They played one of the suggestions I called out (“You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”). Before the show, while we were eating dinner at a nearby restaurant, seated near the window, Marketa walked by outside and we smiled at each other.

August 22, what was hopefully our First Annual Rooftop Deck Party. Seeing so many of our friends gathered in one place and having a blast. Feeling grateful for them and for the life we’ve made here in Chicago.

September 12, gliding along Lakeshore Drive, a thin glowing band of sunrise on the water’s horizon, my first half-marathon just two hours away. The pure adrenaline and excitement of running that race, strong, and meeting my goal time of 2:15.

December 9, when I checked my email at work and finally saw the message from our social worker that our homestudy had been sent to Korea.

What were your biggest achievements of the year?
Running! Realizing what I can do if I work hard enough at it—it’s still kind of mind-boggling to me. I ran my first 8k, 10k, and half-marathon. I did training runs of 11, 12, 13 miles. I had a personal best of 26:24 in a 5k.

With John, I completed the homestudy for our adoption. That’s no small feat.

I also bought my first DSLR camera, took a one-day boot-camp photography class, and began to gain a faint understanding of things like aperture and shutter speed. I’m proud of the photos I took in Italy.

What was your biggest failure?
I’m glad I did some writing here, but I could have and should have done more.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
I think this may be the first year I did not miss one day of work because of sickness. Of course, after typing that, it will probably be the last.

What was the best thing you bought?
I love the colorful painted tile that I bought in Positano and the sideboard we found for the dining room. The geraniums, impatiens, and petunias that we bought for our first summer having a deck were greatly enjoyed as well. And my trusty Garmin watch was a constant companion during my training.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Stella’s! This dog has come such a long way from the fearful girl who was literally afraid of her walks. I’m not sure if she just needed time or if perhaps the new neighborhood made a difference, but she’s regularly taking long strolls now and pausing to sniff everything in her path. She enjoys meeting other dogs, isn’t afraid of trash cans or street signs, and even has a dogwalker. She’s still timid about some things, but the change is remarkable. I’m so proud of her.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Republicans in the Senate and Congress, especially toward the end of the year.

Where did most of your money go?
The mortgage, Italy, adoption fees.

What did you get really excited about?
Running. Italy. Living outside on our deck in the summer. Girls’ weekend in DC. My neighborhood. Meeting a great group of fun, generous, local parents who have adopted from Korea. Finally watching Mad Men. David Gray/Ray Lamontagne, Swell Season, and The Frames concerts. Half Acre’s Daisy Cutter beer. Watching Stella run on the beach and in the snow.

What song will always remind you of 2010?
I can’t think of a particular song, but probably something by Frightened Rabbit, Mason Jennings, Mumford and Sons, or the Avett Brothers.

What do you wish you’d done more of?
Photography and writing.

What do you wish you’d done less of?
Being sad in the wintertime because it’s so dark. Worrying about the possibility of a running injury. Being snarky when it’s really not called for.

What was your favorite TV program?
Mad Men, with Modern Family as runner-up

What was the best book you read?
I read 15 books this year, two more than last year. The New Yorker takes up a lot of my reading time! I liked The Road and The History of Love best.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Frightened Rabbit

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
I dress pretty conservatively for work, I put on stretchy pants as soon as I get home, and I love getting dressed to go out on the weekends—heels, slim jeans, a fun top, and always interesting jewelry, especially long necklaces, bangle bracelets, and big rings (not all at the same time). I tend to buy too many coats.

What political issue stirred you the most?
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell—really, anything to do with gay rights. Health care is still a biggie, too.

What kept you sane?
Late Sunday afternoons with a glass of wine and InStyle magazine, preferably on the deck. Summertime camping. Any stretch of a few days where I didn’t touch a computer. (Mind you, these are exactly the same as 2009.)

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
If I try hard enough, I can do something I never, ever thought I could.

One year later, some thoughts

2010-11-14T22:49:00.002-06:00

Sometimes it happens at odd times. On Sunday afternoon I’m doing the big Seasonal Clothing Switch, carefully folding my short-sleeved shirts into the plastic storage container that lives under my bed, and suddenly I think—when I see this T-shirt again, will I already know his face?

Other times it’s more expected. It’s Halloween, and we’re walking Stella around the neighborhood among the dark hordes of happy kids, and I think—will there be four of us next year, doing this walk? Maybe we’ll dress him as Yoda, or as a little frog. As he gets older, he’s going to love trick-or-treating in our neighborhood, I think, where Halloween is a holiday on par with the Fourth or Christmas.

Will he be here this time next year? Will I have his photo in the spring? Is he born yet? Is his birth mother all right? Where is he now? What is he doing, right this instant, 9:52 p.m. in Chicago, 12:52 p.m. in Seoul?

Question marks are a big part of this process, I’m realizing. Where, when, how, who.

*****

On November 12, it was exactly one year since I mailed our application to our agency. I remember walking to the post office, watching the envelope slide into the mail slot, stepping back outside into the pale autumn sunlight, smiling at no one. It’s hard to comprehend that a whole year has passed since that day. I turned 34, bought a real camera and started learning to use it, trained for and ran a half-marathon, spent two weeks in Italy. There was camping and reunions with friends and long summer afternoons on the deck. It’s been a good year. And of course, peppered throughout it, small adoption mile markers—our joint visit with our social worker. Our individual visits. Her visit to our home. Getting fingerprinted, getting tested for TB. Chasing paper. Visiting the notary. And making the difficult decision to switch our placement agency to one that’s currently experiencing a faster timeline between referral (when you’re matched with your child) and travel to Seoul. Of course, there’s no guarantee that that shorter timeline will stay in place, but for now, it is. We wanted to do whatever we could to bring our child home at as young an age as possible.

In 2011, we will see our child’s face for the very first time, a photograph that will be the most precious photograph I can imagine holding in my hands. We will send him care packages. We will fly across the world to Seoul, our first time in Asia, and we will meet him and hold him and bring him across an ocean to his new home. We’ll start a new life as three that will be hard and scary and the most beautiful, meaningful thing that we’ve ever done in our lives. I am terrified, and I am so excited.

*****

(The not-as-romantic details: Our homestudy is complete and is with the state adoption coordinator for endorsement. Once it’s endorsed, it will be sent to our placement agency. Barring them needing any changes made to it (and all possible limbs are crossed in the hopes that doesn’t happen), it will be sent on to the agency in Korea, and we’ll officially be waiting for our referral. That’s a big milestone that we’re anxiously awaiting. We hope to travel in late summer or early fall, but we know anything is possible.)

*****

This past weekend, we attended a parent education seminar at our agency. It was a fascinating five hours, with a child psychologist presenting and a panel of adoptive parents telling their stories and answering questions. One of the panelists was a woman who brought her Korean son, Will, home in April. He’s 21 months old now, a calm, quiet boy who sat on her lap for almost an hour, thoughtfully chewing his Cheerios and looking at all of the prospective parents as we grinned at him, trying not to stare too much but unable to look away.

After the seminar, John and I went up to the woman to thank her for coming and meet Will. He watched us as we talked, clutching his big yellow Lego, staring at John as his mom talked about how well he’s adjusted to his new home. There was a lull in the conversation, and John reached out and rubbed Will’s back. “He’s so beautiful,” he said to the woman, a tinge of awe in his voice, and something in me welled up and I could not speak. It’s like there’s this whole other dimension of life, a different kind of beauty and humanity and love, and I’m just now starting to glimpse it. Soon, I’m going to get to live it.

Italy: Nine snapshots of twelve days

2010-10-11T21:51:00.002-05:00

One
The bar on the first floor of our B&B is tiny, with round tables for two outside, faded newspaper clippings of football stars on the walls inside. In the morning, we pay for coffee and a cornetto at the register, then go to the bar and place our order, two café lattes. Old men are drinking espresso and eating pastries, greeting friends loudly in Italian. In the afternoon, we look down from our window and see people sharing a drink and a chat, reading the newspaper. Way into the evening and beyond midnight, youngish, coolish (but not obnoxiously trendy) people are drinking beer and wine, smoking, debating, laughing. We join them, pay for our Peronis from the same man at the register, spill out with the Romans into the narrow cobblestoned piazza (the tables have long been taken), sidestepping passing scooters.

Two
Inside the Colosseum you can see below where the floor used to be, to the crumbling, grassy tunnels where animals and gladiators awaited their fate, listening to the roar and crash of the crowd above. Our tour guide, a young South African woman, explains that the Roman people so adored gladiators that when the winners bathed in olive oil after a fight, their attendants would carefully scrape the oil from their skin into bottles and sell them to an eager public. She tells us about matches between lions and crocodiles, shows us where the emperor used to sit. The dust of the Forum coats her turquoise leather ballet flats.

Three
In Pompei, dogs. For years, strays have roamed the ruins, and now there’s a movement for them to be adopted. A nonprofit group makes sure the dogs are fed and cared for while working to find them forever homes. We see several of these dogs wandering among the devastated houses and eerily empty lanes, snoozing in the sunlight against a 2,000-year-old wall.

Four
As we ride the tiny elevator up to our room in Positano, the hotel employee who’s bringing us there remarks that she has the same purse. H&M. We get off on the fifth floor, and she leads us down the hallway to a door at the end, #540. The room is dim and cool, with a coral and blue tiled floor. Curtained double doors lead out to the terrace we requested. She opens the doors and we step outside, and I literally gasp, become choked up, swallow back tears at the pure beauty of what’s before me. In the bright sunshine, the town of Positano tumbles down the cliff to the diamonded blue sea below, pink and white houses everywhere, green mountains, little boats so far below. I have never seen anything like it. John opens the bottle of limoncello.

Five
Hordes of older American tourists everywhere. Denim capris, Reeboks, baseball hats. They speak so loudly; we can’t get over how often we can hear every word. They talk about the price of a Burger King Whopper in euros. They cannot get over the fact that they have to pay (50 cents) to use a public bathroom. That the light wasn’t working in the bathroom. When they’re seated next to us in a restaurant and hear us talking, they say, “Oh good, Americans!” On the train to the airport, they ask a white South African couple “how [they] ended up down there” (they were, you know, born there) and ask if South Africa is “third world.” We’re never quite sure what our ratio of amusement to horror should be.

Six
There are dark clouds gathering over the medieval hill town of Montepulciano, but we park the car and begin to climb the steep streets anyway, looking for views and red wine. I tug on my black raincoat, grateful that I wedged it into my suitcase at the last minute. We approach an old church and see a young girl sitting on its steps with a man we assume is her grandfather. She has a small jet-black crow perched on her arm. I have to stop and look at this, the little girl in her school clothes with her pet crow. She feeds it pellets of food. The crow gulps them down, then attacks a faltering moth on the steps. I am still watching. She sees me, gestures me over, and asks “English?” “Si,” I say, “Do you speak it?” “Ehh,” she replies, shrugging. She motions for me to sit down and gently pushes my arm onto the stone step. “She’s showing you how to get the crow to come to you,” explains John. I rest my forearm on the step, and the crow nimbly climbs onto my arm and perches there, dainty claws gripping my jacket sleeve. I stare at it in wonder, and it stares back. The girl tells me that its name is Giulia.

Seven
Merely ordering a “latte” in the morning will earn you a glass of warm milk. The word “café” is key.

Eight
On our last night in Rome we wander down toward the Colosseum and take our chance on a restaurant that’s bustling with outdoor seating on a Tuesday night. The host explains in broken English that we’ll need to wait for 10 minutes for an outdoor table. He ushers us inside to the bar. Unfathomably, he brings us slices of warm garlic bread and two glasses of prosecco on the house, to enjoy while we wait. We are aghast. This little neighborhood place, which serves only appetizers and pasta, ends up being one of our best meals in Italy. As non-Italians we are in the minority. The 2006 reserve Chianti is so good we take a picture of the bottle. The foccacia bread is warm and studded with rosemary; my gnocchi has been baked in the oven. We sit and sip our wine, watching Romans walking home from work, gathering at the fountain near the restaurant. We eavesdrop without understanding.

Nine
Many times he walks ahead of me; I dawdle, staring up at the buildings, stopping to make a photograph. He is the keeper of the map and almost always knows where we’re going, except in Trastevere, where the ancient crooked streets would confound the most seasoned explorer. He wears a gray cargo jacket and expensive aviators that he drops twice on the cobblestones, no damage. He always suggests a drink after dinner. He’s interested in history, explains to me why medieval people lived in tower houses, why the windows were so narrow (so that armored knights couldn’t fit through them). He makes fun of the reverent way I say, “Mmm, wow,” after my first bite of something particularly delicious. He does not make fun of me when I’m too scared to climb the narrow bell tower in Siena. Sometimes we snipe at each other. Then we eat gelato (I introduce him to pistachio), and all is well. He is not gifted in languages, but he listens to Italian for Dummies podcasts and after a few days, he can pronounce “Dov'e il bagno?” with ease. He wants to see the Sistine Chapel. He drives the Fiat in Rome like he’s been doing it for years, in three-lane traffic where the lanes aren’t marked and scooters are weaving with abandon. After nine years of marriage and five trips to Europe, we still go together so well. I cannot imagine any other traveling companion.

In which I geek out about running

2010-09-12T17:56:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I think about the things that I’ve been able to accomplish and experience in my 34 years so far, and I feel pretty darn proud and fortunate. John and I moved to Chicago nine years ago without knowing anyone; I started a new job and a brand-new life. I earned a master’s degree in writing and had a poem published. I’ve been to the countries of Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, the British Virgin Islands. I spent two weeks backpacking around Italy by myself when I was 23. I was promoted to an editorial manager three years ago. I was able to be in Grant Park the night that Obama won the election.

Today I had another experience that fits right in with those. I ran my first half-marathon: 13.1 miles, in 2 hours, 15 minutes, 9 seconds. My goals were (1) to finish strong, without walking and without knee pain, and (2) to finish at 2:15. I achieved both.

I am not athletic and never have been. I don’t like playing most sports. As a kid I danced ballet and played outside, but that’s about it. When I was 23, I ran my first 5k with my roommate; we’d taken up running to fight the negative effects of our new desk jobs. I enjoyed running, but I never got into the racing groove, and I settled on walking as my main form of exercise.

Around three years ago, I felt inspired to try running again. I can still recall quitting at 2.5 miles on the treadmill, and how excited I felt when I began regularly doing three. Last winter, I started doing four. The night I ran five, I thought I could move mountains.

Soon after we decided to adopt last fall, I read about parents-to-be who trained for big events like marathons and triathlons in order to have something to focus on besides the interminable waiting. Even though we’re not in the hardest stage of waiting yet, that resonated with me, and I decided to attempt a half-marathon. There was one in Chicago in September. A good friend of mine is a Boston marathoner and offered to be my coach and put together a training plan for me.

In May, I did my first weekend long run of six miles. It didn’t seem quite possible, but I did it, and I remember walking the last few blocks home with the biggest grin on my face. I had set a goal and reached it. Why not keep going?

And that’s how the summer went. On many weekends, I added another mile to what I’d done the weekend before: 7, 8, 9, then 10, double digits! I ran 13 miles twice—one time in pain and bad spirits, one time in 2:21 with a smile on my face at the end.

I feel like I need to write about today so I don’t forget how it felt: waking up at 5, eating toast and raspberry jam in the dark kitchen. Watching the glowing line of sunrise widen over the water’s horizon as we sped down Lake Shore Drive. Reaching the course start and milling around with 18,500 other runners. Grasping my Shot Bloks and feeling butterflies in my stomach. The amazing rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Then, the starting horn, and more than 10 minutes until reaching the start line. The girl who fell before making it to mile 1, who scraped her knees and was crying. Forcing myself to not open up and run fast, to not feed off the energy and the promise of fresh legs. Trying not to look at the people passing me; hoping I’d pass them in the end.

I cannot believe how quickly the miles passed; I wasn’t prepared for that. The course was beautiful in spots, but no more beautiful than the lakefront path where I run; it’s not like I was staring at the scenery in wonder. I had my iPod but was listening to my usual running playlist. For whatever reason, though, time whipped by. There were rock bands playing every few miles, and high-school cheerleaders, a small marching band. So many spectators with big grins and funny signs: “Run like an angry Kenyan,” “Sarah, will you go to homecoming with me?”, “You are all very good at exercise” (this one held by a short, pale guy dressed in black), “Keep it up, Claire, your ass will thank you!” The course ran on Lake Shore Drive for awhile, and people were lined up on the pedestrian overpasses blasting Bruce Springsteen, cheering, dancing.

The energy and adrenaline of running in a race like this really floored me. I knew there’d be some level of it, but not this much and not this powerful. I just kept on running, and my bothersome right knee didn’t bother me except for a twinge here and there, and I didn’t feel exhausted or low-energy or like I had dead legs. I stopped for water and Gatorade a few times. I ate my Shot Bloks. I ran through the misters, grateful that it was barely 70 degrees out. And at around mile 10, I realized what I had to do to make 2:15, and I found that I had it in me to do that. I ran faster in those three miles than I had in the rest of the race. (This makes me suspect I could’ve finished with a better time, but I had a plan and followed it; I can save that faster goal for my next half!)

In the last mile, I saw John, and he cheered and ran alongside me a little ways. And I weaved around people (I was surprised by all the walkers!) and crossed the finish line at a fast pace, with my head up, breathing hard and unable to push myself more than I was. As I collected water and Gatorade and a banana, I realized how much my training mattered and what it had equipped me to do—one of my mantras had been “Believe in your training,” and man, was that ever true.

This post is very stream-of-consciousness—I’m tired and still in a little bit of disbelief. But I did it. I told myself I was going to run a half-marathon, and I trained for it for four months, and sometimes it was very hard, but I persevered. I did it. And I don’t want to forget what it feels like.

In my head lately

2010-08-29T10:10:00.003-05:00

Things I have been thinking lately, in no particular order:

I can run 13 miles. I know this because I did it twice. The first time was fairly hellish. The second time, yesterday, was much better. I’m excited to do this with thousands of my closest friends in exactly two weeks (!!).

What if, when the baby comes, the person who picks him up from child care is also the first person home and has to walk the dog? How do we do both in a fast and efficient manner, where no one cries or has an accident on the rug?

Also, what kind of child care should we use?

Apparently we’re going to Italy in less than four weeks. Apparently one should make some loose itineraries when fortunate enough to have three days in Rome, five days on the Amalfi Coast, and four days in Tuscany. One now has plans for the long Labor Day weekend…

Throwing a party for 40 people on your rooftop deck is stressful, but realizing you have 40 friends who want to spend a Saturday night on your roof is pretty darn awesome.

Sometimes, when I’m watching TV at night, I look to the entrance of the hallway off the living room, and I see a tiny little boy standing there in a sleeper, holding a blanket and sucking his thumb.

I suspect adopting a baby from Korea is going to bring some really good new friendships into our lives.

I have seen the Chicago skyline from the north many, many times, but it never gets less breathtaking, especially the first time it’s approached on foot, after running six miles south on the lakefront path. Turning the bend around the domino tables, and pow—I actually consider it a kind of reward.

Stella actually understands when it’s the weekend and that that should equal a ride to the dog beach. She follows us around the house, and she starts dancing in place and wagging her pointy hound head if I change my clothes. Apparently something is working inside that golf-ball-sized brain.

I do not approve of darkness at 8 p.m.

If I worked at an adoption agency in Seoul and my responsibility was to match infants with their parents, what kinds of photos of those parents would I want to see?

Where is the child who will become our child right this very second?

******

This past week, we went to an outdoor concert at Millennium Park downtown. David Gray and Ray Lamontagne—oh yes, we were excited. We packed our picnic basket (including a clandestine bottle of wine under the cloth napkins), hoisted up our camping chairs, and I grabbed a light scarf because it was unseasonably cool, daytime highs in the 70s. We claimed a patch of turf close to the stage and proceeded to enjoy a really fabulous show, while the sun set behind the skyline and couples held hands and swayed together and someone, somewhere, smoked some pot.

Ray played my favorite song of his, a sad, quiet one with a violin called “Jolene.” There is this plaintive line that just pulls at the proverbial heartstrings, that I always sing along to: “Still don’t know what love means.” And so I sang along to it in my camping chair, with my plastic cup of cabernet, and suddenly it had a new meaning. I thought that it was very true, that there is a type of love that I don’t know yet, the meaning and experience of which I don’t understand. I know love, but not in all its manifestations, not yet. We are so, so incredibly on the cusp, sometimes I’m in awe of it.

In a suburban Starbucks, waiting

2010-08-01T09:57:00.003-05:00

** This post was written on Jan. 11, 2010.**

I’m sitting in one of those Starbucks-within-a-grocery store, in a nondescript ghost town of a suburb near an airport. Through the window there is pale January sunlight, icy snow piled up on an outdoor café table, a parking lot, a gas station, a Long John Silver’s. There’s no WiFi here, so my plan to stay on top of work email this morning has been scrapped. I edited some articles, and now I have about an hour to kill before John’s meeting is over and he picks me up for lunch.

Having both of our individual meetings with the caseworker in one day is easiest—what with our one car, which John drives to work, and the fact that I can’t even remember the last time I drove it. (I probably should practice before any attempt to pilot it out to the suburbs.) So I’m here while he has his meeting, then, after lunch, I’ll have mine. I’ll take a cab to the Blue Line afterward and head home.

We are adopting a baby. I’m going to type it again: We are adopting a baby. It doesn’t seem real, somehow, although this is our second visit with our caseworker, and we’ve already written two not-inconsequentially sized checks, penned our autobiographies, had our agreement for agency services notarized. My parents know (I could not resist telling them). Our five personal references know. John’s parents don’t know yet, and I think that’s because again, somehow, it just doesn’t seem all that real. That’s largely because we still have at least a year and a half to go, I think. We don’t know who our child is yet. (Although it’s occurred to me that he might be conceived already, might be growing and developing somewhere on the other side of the world, in South Korea. And yes, in my mind, he is a he.)

I am excited. Well, duh, of course, right? But I want to write it here, how very excited I am. We are going to be parents. We will be three (plus one dog). Somewhere there is a child who will be born without parents who can keep him, and we will be the parents who can.

The decision to have a child is one I’ve been wrestling with for many years now (as long-time readers of this site know!). At some point in spring 2009, I felt ready. I had been inching toward readiness, one tiny little step at a time, seeing babies and smiling, holding babies and feeling good inside, getting warmer, warmer, warmer. John had been ready for a few years, and I caught up. There was a time when I didn’t know if I’d ever want children. I still don’t feel any yearning to be pregnant. But I want to be a parent. I think we’re going to be pretty good at it. I know we want to love a child. We’re ready to start a new chapter—no, it’s more than that; it’s starting the next part of the book, with many chapters contained within.

I am excited. And I’m scared; I have a good idea of the changes to my life that are coming, since the majority of my friends have walked this path before me. I still cherish my alone time. Hitting the gym for an hour, four or five days a week, is a priority for me. I love going out to eat (and not at 5 p.m.). There’s my job, all the strides I’ve made in my career. Sitting next to me here in Starbucks are two stay-at-home moms with their little girls running among the tables, and nothing’s changed for me in that regard; I do not think I want that to be my 8–5 life, at least not every day.

But I’ve come to a place where I’m ready to embrace a new way of living, a new Amy. She won’t visit the gym so regularly, but in the warm months, she’ll take the jogging stroller out along the lake. I think she’ll still love her job, but she’ll often miss her child while she’s there. She won’t care as much about late-night dining or being disconnected from work email for a morning. She will be somebody’s mom. And now my heart has jumped into my throat a little, imagining that, and I’m smiling at no one. We are going to be parents. We are adopting a baby.

This is summer 2010

2010-07-13T17:05:00.004-05:00

John is in our new backyard, cutting the grass. OK, it’s not really a backyard; more like a backpatch. Our yard's dimensions are about equal to a king-size bedspread. But it’s still grass and it still grows, so he bought an electric grass trimmer—the kind people use to trim around sidewalks—and it does the trick. Next he takes on staining the deck. It all feels so grownup, so white-picket-fence, so summer.

I think about my dad cutting the lawn with the old push mower. A quintessential summer smell, that and the marigolds ringing our vegetable garden to keep the rabbits away. We have a pot with some yellow marigolds on our back deck, and sometimes I stop to breathe it in, that sharp clean sent that abruptly rockets me back to, say, 1984, to a Pennsylvania suburb, to playing spy with my little sister around the corners of our backyard…fireflies in plastic bug houses, zucchini bread and sprinklers and bee stings and the apple tree, the cherry tree. How lucky am I to have those memories?

We make new ones now, in our new home, in our little family of two, three with the dog. Now we have a deck; we sit outside to eat dinner and, on the weekends, breakfast—“It feels like we’re on vacation,” I always remark. We bring Stella’s bed outside and she drowses in the warm breeze. I deadhead the geraniums and petunias when I return from my runs. I’m up to 11 miles now—I did that this past weekend, I ran 11 miles, no walking except for water stops, and although that last mile was hell in the scorching sun, I did it. This summer, I run three times during the week and do my long run on Saturday mornings. I dread it and I love it. I think about it often as Monday slides toward Friday. I wonder if I can do 9, 10, 11, and now 12, but each time, I can. The half-marathon is in two months.

I walk Stella and listen to the old church bells tolling through our neighborhood that I love so much. I’m starting to recognize faces now, and we smile at each other as we pass. I shop at the neighborhood farmers’ market for greens, berries, lamb, mushrooms, milk. We drive to the dog beach and watch our greyhound sprint and leap in the waves and across the sand. We go to street fests to hear music. We pack picnics and sit in the grass. We camp with a horde of family on the dunes of Lake Michigan. We choose our weekend restaurants based on whether they have outdoor seating.

John plays his guitar better than he ever has before, thanks to lessons, and I play with my new DSLR camera. We eat a lot of grilled food and invite people over to eat it with us. We drink a lot of microbrews. We feel stressed about work, but then the stress passes. I do freelance editing. When I finish a chapter, I eat an ice cream bar and watch an episode of Season 1 of Mad Men. The money will help pay for plane tickets to Italy.

This is summer 2010, and there probably will never be another summer quite like it.

Six miles

2010-05-15T13:18:00.001-05:00

Today I ran six miles for the first time, without walking (except for the first two minutes), and with just a few stops for water. 55:35 minutes total.

I’ve never ran farther than five miles, ever. But I’ve decided to train for the Chicago half-marathon in September, and a friend of mine who’s pretty much a professional runner is coaching me, and she told me to run six this weekend. She said that if you can run six, you can run 13—that she considers six a “long run,” and the ability to do that means you can go even farther.

Apparently I can go even farther.

I won’t lie, I was nervous. In the beginning I worried about my headband sliding back, and should I have worn short sleeves instead of long? Was half a banana with some peanut butter the right pre-run snack? And, most important, was it going to be a Good Run? Anyone who runs, I think, will know what I mean—sometimes you start running and realize it’s going to be a Bad Run. Maybe it’s too windy or the weather isn’t cooperating somehow, or it might just be that your body doesn’t feel right—blocky and heavy and awkward, not smooth and strong and fast. I’ve had runs where I’ve toiled through to 3.5 miles and it’s never gotten any better; it’s been torture the whole time, and I really don’t know why.

(Of course, even on Good Runs, there’s this strange mix of feelings going on… somehow I’m hating running and loving running at the same time. I’m tired, but I’m energized. Some of this is probably the conversation, or the conflict, that’s taking place between my body and my mind. It’s an odd sensation, and I’m not sure it happens anywhere else in my life.)

Thank God, this morning’s run was not a Bad Run. I felt strong and even-paced, the weather was in the mid-50s with only a light breeze, and the sun was behind the clouds. The lakefront path was full of runners, and I enjoyed that sense of community, being one of them. I was faster than some people and slower than others. I felt good. And I reached five miles and still felt good. Toward the end, my knees began to complain a bit, but even then, and even when my Garmin announced six miles and I turned onto my street, I knew that my body has the capability to run longer. I need to train and build up my stamina, but inside me there’s this ability. I have it. I can do it.

I have never been athletic. I was chosen last for teams in gym class, and even as an adult, I don’t want to play in your softball game or line up for beach volleyball. But it turns out that I can run. I’m 34, I’m strong, and I can run.

About Stella

2010-04-17T15:52:00.005-05:00

My dog is afraid of the wind.

Although Chicago is nicknamed the Windy City for its gasbag politicians, not the gusts that blow along the mighty lake, we still get our fair share of wind. And wind tends to move things… house for-sale signs, errant plastic bags, tree branches. I don’t know why, but the sight and sound of things swaying in the wind is terrifying to Stella. When it’s windy outside, our walks are short. When it’s really windy outside, she even stays away from open windows in our home. We had 30 mph gusts last week that drove her into the safety of our bathroom for the entire night.

John and I have often remarked that the "perfect" dog most likely doesn't exist. Dogs can't be ordered from catalogs to your specifications, even $1,000 cross-bred, purebred, flavor-of-the-month dogs. Like people, they each have their tics and issues, and also like people, while nurture can go a long way, it may never quite override nature. When I think of it this way, I feel grateful that Stella's particular issues are limited to skittishness, rather than aggression, separation anxiety, or fondness for indoor bathroom breaks.

I haven't written much here about Stella, and today I wanted to. She has been with us for almost two years now. She’ll be six next month. This dog has stolen our hearts to the same degree as dear Moose did, even though she’s very different from him in many ways. She loves pouncing on and playing with stuffed toys; he ignored them. She’s cuddly and snuggly and loves to lie on her back, four paws in the air; he was a bit more independent and dignified. Moose often whined piteously when we left him alone; in this way, Stella’s the more independent one; she has no issues with her “me-time.” Moose had a stronger prey drive and couldn’t be trusted at the dog beach or park if small dogs were there; Stella… well, see the photo above. Moose wasn’t afraid of anything and loved long walks. But Stella is afraid of many things, including, at times, her walks. (This presents a problem for city dwellers who have no backyard.)

She’s come a long way, though, our scaredy cat. For whatever reason, our move has been good for Stella. She seems to do better on her walks in our new neighborhood. In our old one, she’s often freeze up in fear at a certain corner or near a city trash can. She’d refuse to walk on, and we’d end up having taken a six-minute walk on a gorgeous summer afternoon. Granted, a traumatic thing had happened to her in that neighborhood. In December 2008, while she was wearing a new collar that we’d neglected to tighten enough, a large metal sign clanking in the wind spooked her. In one fluid moment she’d pulled out of the collar and was sprinting away from me down the sidewalk. Greyhounds are fast, obviously, and a terrified greyhound is a bullet. Two hours later, she was picked up in an alleyway by a dog-loving police officer, and our greyhound adoption group reunited us. She had crossed several busy intersections and was more than two miles from home.

This was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and although I don’t know how much dogs actually remember, I’m sure it must’ve made some impression on her. Perhaps starting over in a new neighborhood has helped blur that impression a bit, but whatever it is, now we’re up to 20-minute walks on some days. And she’s actually stopping to sniff things. I know this sounds ridiculous—what kind of dog doesn’t sniff things?—but, well, a scared dog on a walk is just focused on getting the hell home.

Spring is here, full-force. Last week, we took Stella to the dog beach for the first time since November. She ran, strolled, sniffed, chased, and splashed. On weekdays after work, we’ve been taking leisurely walks, stopping to admire tulips and daffodils, to smell the dirt and chat with people. This morning we brought her bed outside on the deck, and she lolled in the sunshine while we read the newspaper and drank coffee. When the breeze moved the grill cover, she pricked up her ears and trembled a little, but soon she was back to snoozing in the sun.

March malaise

2010-03-11T17:00:00.003-06:00

So we have a whirlpool tub in our second bathroom. And for the past few days, whenever I’ve gone in there, I’ve seen a small daddy longlegs spider in the tub, quietly hanging out. Sometimes he’s at one end of the tub, then at the other; I’ve also seen him resting halfway up the tub wall. But I don’t think he can climb out, since it’s been five days now and he’s still there.

When I was a kid, my family vacationed in the Pocono Mountains every summer. One August day, we came back from a hike, and as I washed my hands and looked at myself in the cabin’s bathroom mirror, a large daddy longlegs appeared in my hair, crawling from the back of my head around toward my face. Understatement: This was a very traumatic experience, and let’s just say that now, in adulthood, when I’m very stressed out, I have nightmares in which insects play a starring role. In other words, I’m too much of a wuss to somehow capture the tub dweller and release him outdoors. I also don’t want to kill him. So I guess I’m just watching his slow demise, trapped in a big blank white tub, endlessly attempting to climb the walls with no way out.

Oh, March. The malaise wants to anchor in and I’m trying to knock it back. The days are getting longer—some evenings I’ve been walking Stella in watery, faded light, instead of a solid dark blue—and good spring things are on the horizon, but still, it’s March. Some weeks feel so much like a hamster wheel I can hardly believe it. I think about traveling, camping, about sitting out on the back deck, about going to the farmers’ market and the dog beach, 5k’s and running outside. There are so many things that I do in the warm months that disappear in the cold ones, and I’m left feeling a little bored and one-dimensional.

I’m attempting to combat this in small ways. One day after work last week, I sat in a café with my New Yorker and a chai for an hour, enjoying the bustle of people around me, good words and good tea. Next week I’m going to a fiction reading downtown. I often feel like I should take better advantage of living in the city. I mean, I do things—I see the ballet, attend readings, go to a museum a few times a year (in the past few weeks I’ve done the Art Institute and the Chicago History Museum). John and I usually see three or four concerts a year. I spend a large amount of time eating and drinking with friends. I volunteer once a month at a meal for the hungry. And in the summer we’re out in full force: street festivals, markets, races, the free outdoor concerts in Millennium Park. Then again, I don’t usually feel this way in July.

I guess what it comes down to is that right now, I want more variety in my life, something that’s stimulating and different. I feel like I’m wasting time, which kills me. I’m not doing the things I do during the warmer months, and I feel blah as a result. So a few days ago I decided that I need to take some sort of class… Cooking? A language? Art? (I used to love to draw.) A history or literature course? Ballet? Or, the one that makes the most sense: photography? I’d need to finally buy a DSLR and learn how to use it, which I find so daunting, for some reason, even though I adore taking photos and looking at photos and am often frustrated with my limited little point-and-shoot.

Then, yesterday, a surprise. A bonus—and a totally unexpected one—fell into my lap at work. It was like the universe was saying, Go. Do it. Stop the whining and the malaising and just go.

So I’m going. I’m going to buy a real camera, with a real lens (my friend Jessie provided some terrific guidance on this last fall), and then I’m going to sign up for a real, serious photography class, with computer labs and shooting assignments and everything I need to really take this interest of mine and make the most of it. Even though I’ll do this during spring and summer, when I’ll be busier and more uplifted than I am now, I know I’ll still have the time for it—and this does feel like the right time in my life for such an undertaking. And for photography, the light—the light will be better in spring anyway.

Postscript: To really tie up this entry neatly, I should also say something poetic about rescuing the spider, right? Not sure I’m ready to go that far, but I’m thinking John could fill in…

It’s all going to turn out beautifully

2010-02-16T22:11:00.005-06:00

This photo of us was taken in May 2009, at a bar in the Jordaan neighborhood of Amsterdam. It was very late at night, and we were there with a Dutch friend, in one of our favorite cities, drinking beer in a snug, dark little bar with nary another American in sight. I love this image because of the happiness it captures. We were both fully thrilled with where we were and what we were doing, and it shows.

***

Valentine’s Day has never been a big deal in our little family. We usually mark it with a good meal out—it’s a bright spot in the long tax-season winter, especially when it falls on a weeknight, since John usually doesn’t get home until 10 or so on weeknights. An exception is made on Valentine’s Day, though, and his office empties out around 7, all the accountants hurrying home to their tax-widow spouses. We usually hit a local BYOB Italian place for some good catching-up conversation over a bottle of cabernet and a long, comforting meal.

This year, of course, Valentine’s Day was on a Sunday—the one day of the week that John doesn’t go to the office. We slept in. He made breakfast: waffles with strawberries, fresh turkey sausage from the indoor Green City Market, mugs and mugs of coffee. We ate at the dining-room table by the windows, turning our newspaper pages, watching the dog watch the turkey sausage.

I did the dishes while he did some work. We went to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy new pillows, an outing that we were both pretty pathetically excited about. (No need for a dozen roses; a new pillow will suffice!) I went for a run in the cold sunshine. He took a nap. I finished a freelance project. A quiet, good, peaceful day.

***

We had reservations for a five-course meal, paired with wine tastings, at a local winebar. It felt decadent, going out to dinner on a Sunday, and the two hours we spent eating figs and goat cheese and brie/potato soup and lobster gnocchi and short ribs and pepper beignets and oatmeal risotto were pretty damn enjoyable. We talked about upcoming visits from friends. We compared work stories. We reminisced about travels past and dreamed about travels future. There was a lot of talk labeled “future.” We laughed and smiled and rolled our eyes at each other a little, that particular brand of gentle exasperation that comes after so many years together. He didn’t like the white-wine pairings. I didn’t care for the short ribs. We both wanted the lobster gnocchi to go on forever.

Seated next to us was a foursome made up of two couples. When we got up to leave, one of the women, a young blond with a round, cheerful face, said, “How long have you guys been together? You seem like you’re on your second or third date.” A high compliment, for sure, and we told her we’d been married for eight and a half years. “So what’s your secret?" she asked.

“No kids yet,” John replied with a grin. And, hey! It turned out that the other woman at the table was pregnant. But she also had a good sense of humor, so no harm done. I added, “We do things together, and we do things apart. I think that makes a difference.”

There was some more small talk, and then our coats were buttoned, our gloves pulled on, and as we turned to leave, the blond girl said, very earnestly, “Whatever it is you two are hoping for, whatever you’re dreaming of…it’s all going to turn out beautifully. Like the most beautiful work of modern art you can imagine. It’s going to turn out beautifully.”

I don’t know if this person was drunk, or if perhaps she says this to everyone. She seemed sincere, and her tablemates weren’t fazed. I, however, was teary-eyed, and oddly buoyant-feeling. We walked home in the dark icy air, arm in arm, to our new home, closing in on our mid-thirties, going on nine years of marriage. I suspect we were both fully thrilled with where we were and what we were doing, and it showed.

Saddishness

2010-02-10T15:31:00.002-06:00

It’s the only word I can think of that describes how I feel during January and February. I am not sad, really, nor am I depressed. I don’t feel an unrelenting blueness for days on end. But I do feel saddish on some days… a little melancholy, a little like there’s a dark cloud overhead, a weight. It starts after the New Year, and I expect it to clear right around March 14, when daylight saving time begins. Because then, then, when I get home it will still be light out. And that feels like a key.

There’s the winter darkness, and there’s John’s absence, too. I’ve been married to a CPA for more than eight years, so I know the drill come tax season. Nothing is surprising about it. I’m a person who enjoys alone time, but still, there’s a lot of alone time this time of year, and a lot of inflexibility around John’s job. I suppose the best part is that Friday nights truly feel like “date nights”—we go out for dinner and talk and laugh and catch up, and it’s special, somehow, in a way that isn’t often the case when you’ve been married this long. So thanks for that, tax season, I guess!

I turned 34 a few weeks ago, and I took this photo of myself on my birthday. That week was a good one—weeknight drinks with friends, a fun dinner downtown with John, shopping, blond brownies homemade by Mom. I made a concerted effort to focus on the good stuff. I felt happy about myself, my new age, what that new age will bring.

Our days can’t all be presents and brownies and nights out, obviously, but sometimes life does feel very run-of-the-mill, doesn’t it? The routine can be stifling. The same bowl of cereal, closet of clothes, walk to the el. The same issues at work. The same commute home. Unlocking the door, turning off the alarm, leashing up the dog for her walk in the dark. Struggling against eating the whole box of Triscuits before heading to the gym. Home again, cooking dinner, washing all the dishes. Maybe watching TV, maybe doing some editing, then “The Daily Show,” shower-floss-toothpaste-moisturizer-bed. The same thing the next day.

I don’t want to wish away time, even dark, wintry time. This is the only February 10 of my 34th year that I’m going to get. So lately, I’ve been trying to notice the small flares of brightness and beauty in each day, because they’re there, and they deserve to be savored. Once I start thinking about it, it’s not hard to find them. I may try recording some of them here. Yesterday, a really heartening and cheerful conversation with my doc during my checkup. Homemade chipotle mac-and-cheese at lunch. Stella spying a dark cat running across the snowy sidewalk, her ears pointed straight up like antennae. The neighborhood greystones glowing in the deep silent snow. A mug of peppermint hot cocoa after dinner. There may not be a lot of light to illuminate the good things at this time of year, but the good things are still there.

New in the neighborhood

2010-01-09T14:09:00.001-06:00

I mentioned our new place several times in my last entry, but I didn’t really say anything substantial about it. Hence, this.

So we decided to put our place on the market this summer. I know, who would do such a thing in 2009 unless they were forced to? We had no compelling reason to move, other than a feeling of having outgrown our little condo and a desire to buy a bigger place for less than it would’ve cost a few years ago. After much deliberation, we’d decided to stay in the city rather than move to a nearby suburb. We felt ready for our next chapter.

We’ve pretty much been living below our means the last six years, so we could take a loss on the sale (and take a loss we did). So we hired a realtor, looked at surrounding two-bedrooms that had sold recently, priced our place competitively (another identical unit was for sale in the building), took down all our fridge magnets and framed photos, cleaned up the piles of books, moved an armchair down to the basement, and onto the market we went.

Within three weeks, after three open houses, several showings, and many half-hour increments spent at the dog beach, in the basement rec room, and walking very slowly around the neighborhood, we had three offers. Three! Yes, one was a total lowball, but still. Our place seemed to appeal to first-time buyers, what with the low price and the government tax credit. We hosted a little bidding war between two parties, and we settled at a price that was pretty close to our asking one. Done.

In the meantime, we had found The Dream Place (TDP). Before we even listed ours, we’d spent a sunny Sunday afternoon biking around the neighborhood we really wanted to live in. John noticed an open house, we stopped in with only 10 minutes to spare, and we fell in love, hard. The unit was absolutely beautiful, a new gut-rehab of a 100-year-old building… tall ceilings, huge windows, a dining room, three bedrooms, two baths, a fireplace, a covered garage, a huge deck… all on a quiet, gracious, green street just a few steps away from shops, bars, and restaurants. Within walking distance of the lake. Within walking distance of the el. It seemed too good to be true.

John snapped several photos with his iPhone, and he pored over them in the coming days while I stoically refused to look and cautioned him against falling for a place before ours was sold. We visited 10 or 11 other homes—condos, townhouses, even two small houses—but nothing could quite compare to TDP.

Many more things happened between the time we made an offer on TDP and Monday, Sept. 28, the day we moved in. Anyone who’s bought and sold real estate knows that it’s an extremely bumpy, stressful, and nausea-inducing ride, and our experience was no different… so much haggling, waiting, strategizing, finding out that TDP’s association rules forbid dogs over 30 pounds… you name it. But in the end, we sat around a table in a Loop high-rise, signed our names 146 times, and were given a set of keys. Unbelievably, magically, The Dream Place was ours.

Moving was weird, sad, exciting. The day we cleaned out our old condo and shut the door on it forever was a bit melancholic. It was the first home we owned, and we lived there for six years, along with Moose and then Stella. We painted the walls with colors we loved. We listened (unwillingly) to our neighbors doing Vietnamese karaoke. We sat on the tiny deck and grilled out and drank beer, fighting small battles with the pigeons determined to roost above our back door (we won in the end). We walked countless loads of laundry down three flights, through the courtyard, onto the sidewalk, through another door, and down to the basement. We stayed up late laughing with neighbors during summer courtyard parties. We made exceptionally dear friends. We watched some of those friends become parents, and then we grew to love their kids.

The old neighborhood is rough around the edges; there’s litter, and people on the corners yelling, and if you’d like to buy drugs, well, they’re not hard to find. It’s crowded because of nearby high rises, making it tough to find parking. It’s near a busy street that’s scary to cross. People are somewhat lax about shoveling snow off the sidewalks.

But it’s full of interesting people. It’s incredibly diverse—very young people and very old, Ukrainian, Russian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, white, black, Latino. There are lots of people with dogs, and in six years we became acquainted with many of them, enough to give a friendly greeting, stop to ask how life is going, let the dogs say hello to each other.

I miss my old neighbors, and there are things about my old neighborhood that I miss, too, even though I adore the new one and still can’t quite believe I get to call it home. There are no crumpled beer cans on the grass. Construction dumpsters don’t overflow with household trash. People don’t scream at each other in the street. The block club is an active one, and although the area is less diverse, it’s also less transient… people stay for a long time, raise kids, become middle-aged. It’s what we plan to do. This is going to be our home for a long time. And because of that, I know that eventually, I’ll get to know my fellow dog-walkers. When the weather’s warm again, we’ll be out on the deck, chatting with our neighbors on their deck across the way. I can’t expect our home of three months to feel as familiar as our home of six years. But it will.

So this is what it takes for me to write online again

2010-01-01T15:00:00.001-06:00

A meme. And the same one I did this time two years ago, no less. But here I am, regardless, and I want to be here more often. I'm resolving to post twice a month to this online journal (can I still call it that? Must it be a blog?) this year. I started "The Purple of Life" back in 2002, and it brought me a lot of joy, and I so treasure my entries from those early years in Chicago... well, the ones that weren't swallowed up by Diary-X. There's no excuse to not keep doing this. So...

What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Sold a condo. Ran more than four miles without stopping. Reached the point where I really, truly wanted to become a parent. Spent lots of fun hours at the dog park and dog beach. Did a photo walk. Went to Lollapalooza. Rode a bike around downtown Amsterdam.

Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Somewhat. I did want to run more. But I didn’t focus too much on improving my photography, which is kind of inexcusable. (I think I tend toward laziness in some areas of my life.) I’m definitely making resolutions for 2010, the main one being that I want to run the Chicago half-marathon in September. I want to make time to read more books. I also want to do more photo walks and write online again, at least twice a month to start. And I want to really make the most of our new neighborhood and patronize its shops, bars, restaurants, and events.

What countries did you visit?
France and the Netherlands. Trips closer to home: Michigan, Wisconsin, and New York.

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
The ability to run 13 miles, and a dog who isn’t so afraid of things and truly enjoys her walks. Poor Stella—I’m not sure that’ll ever fully come to be.

What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory?
Probably the Friday evening in May when we sat on the Pont des Arts in Paris watching twilight fall over the river, drinking a bottle of wine surrounded by hordes of young, cool Parisians. And then the next night, a Saturday date night in Paris: wandering the narrow cobblestoned streets of the Marais, stopping at two cafes for drinks. Then an amazingly perfect dinner at Chez Janou, then gelato on the Ile Saint-Louis, overlooking the Seine… sigh. I still think about that night often.

Also the Friday afternoon in May that we spent cruising the Amsterdam canals with our Dutch friends in their little boat. A few hours in which we felt like we really lived in that dear, dear city…

And, of course, the September day that we moved into our new condo—the moment right after the movers left when John and I looked at each other and realized it was real. We really lived here!

What were your biggest achievements of the year?
Selling the condo, buying the dream place, making a firm decision about parenthood, spearheading various online-editing projects at work, and running farther and faster than I’ve run before. (I had a personal best of 26:37 in a 5k.)

What was your biggest failure?
Not taking more photos or seeking out opportunities to improve my photography skills. Not writing creatively at all, really.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
No, besides a few colds. I did pull a back/hip muscle while moving that hurt for about a week. I discovered that I get really pissed off when I can’t exercise.

What was the best thing you bought?
This is getting repetitive, but our new place. I also snagged a gorgeous pair of gray/green suede wedge booties. In Paris, I found a dishcloth with the Metro map printed on it, which makes me happy. And when we were in New York City, we bought four John Derian coasters at his shop in the East Village. I love them.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Obama, of course. I still clearly remember watching his inauguration at work last January. I really admire his wisdom, his nuance, and the time he takes to think things through.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The people who run Chicago and Cook County. Chicagoans, get out and vote this February!

Where did most of your money go?
The mortgage, savings, travel, and various real-estate buying-and-selling expenses.

What did you get really excited about?
Moving into our dream neighborhood. Having more living space, a huge deck, and myriad shops and restaurants just a few steps away. No longer seeing beer cans and other trash littering the ground while walking the dog, or having the opportunity to buy drugs at the corner.

What song will always remind you of 2009?
I can’t think of a particular song, but probably something by Rocky Votolato, Bon Iver, Heartless Bastards, or the Swell Season’s new album.

Compared to this time last year, are you:
– happier or sadder? Happier, I think.
– thinner or fatter? Thinner, a little. I definitely have more muscle.
– richer or poorer? Pretty much the same.

What do you wish you’d done more of?
Photography and writing.

What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying about the dog.

What was your favorite TV program?
Big Love

What was the best book you read?
Thanks to goodreads.com, I see that I read only 13 books this year. The New Yorker takes up a lot of my reading time! I think I liked The Inner Circle and The Abstinence Teacher best.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Heartless Bastards and Bon Iver

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Hmm… I dress fairly conservatively for work, but I like color. I love reading about fashion, and I love dressing up to go out on the weekend—slim jeans, black or gray boots, a fun top. I am a huge sucker for handbags, coats, and interesting pieces of jewelry, especially long necklaces and big cocktail rings. This year I started wearing more bracelets—gold bangles and a brown plastic cuff that I just bought. I also bought more long sweaters and embellished T’s. Isn’t this exciting to read??

What kept you sane?
Late Sunday afternoons with a glass of wine and InStyle magazine, preferably on the deck. Summertime camping. Any stretch of a few days where I didn’t touch a computer.

What political issue stirred you the most?
Health care reform, definitely. The whole thing just makes me angry… I’m sick of people treating health care like it’s an option, a luxury, a commodity to be shopped around for. Everyone deserves cancer screenings. No one should go bankrupt because they get sick.

Who did you miss?
As always, my college girlfriends, none of whom live in Chicago. But I saw them more often than in past years, and I hope to repeat that in 2010!

Probably not my most uplifting entry ever

2008-03-01T18:19:00.001-06:00

My question is, how do people on bed rest do it? I’m thinking of women confined to the prone position in the last weeks of pregnancy. Or anyone who gets doctor’s orders to stay inside, to remain inert, to rest. Because I’ve been sick with a malicious case of Influenza B (revealed by a delightful nasal swab) since Tuesday, and the depression is starting to set in.

This is what I’ve done in the past five days:
--Read two whole issues of the New Yorker.
--Slept.
--Finished the (amazing) book Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan.
--Had terrible, high-speed, gabbling dreams about Barack and Hillary and people at work and to-do lists and other nonsensical things.
--Watched The Wire, Project Runway, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Daily Show, and the movies Vanity Fair and Sherrybaby (both pretty good).
--Picked up cough-drop wrappers.
--Tried to keep up with work email, with varying success (depending on how high my fever was at the time).
--Slept.
--Talked to my mother. Three times.
--Wept in frustration.
--Lay aimlessly on the couch wrapped in a blanket, staring at the ceiling.
--Made the bed, sometimes.
--Slept.

Now, I know that very few people would find that schedule enjoyable, especially when coupled with feeling incredibly, incredibly sick. (I actually took three and a half days off work, which I’ve never done before.) But for me, it’s really been torturous. I mean, I love our home, but I am so damn sick of it I can hardly see straight. I miss going to work, seeing friends, running, having an appetite. I’m so used to daily mobility, consistently changing surroundings, having a strong and healthy body. It’s a rude awakening to realize just how fragile that all can be—and this is just the flu, not a true debilitating disease or illness. I know perspective is warranted, but what’s a journal for if not to vent occasionally in a shameless me-centric fashion? It’s Saturday! I want to sit in the coffee shop with a Chai tea and the paper, chat with neighbors, walk to the bakery to buy a cupcake, then go for a nice 3.5-mile run. Instead, I’ve read, laid on the couch, emailed some people, and emptied the dishwasher. (Well, and written this entry. So hey! That's something!)

In truth, 2008 has been a pretty bad year so far. One of the reasons I haven’t written here since January 1 is to avoid writing about Moose. And even now, I don’t think I want to do it. I can point you here and here for the story, and simply say that I miss him so incredibly much. It’s very lonely being home without him. Something reminds me of him every single day, and daily, I wish I could pet his soft, velvety, bicycle-seat head and lay my cheek on top of it.

So there was that. And there’s been extended-family stuff, a terrible falling-out between my maternal grandmother and my parents based on my grandma’s ailing mind and some pretty wicked folks in my mom’s family. Eloquently put, it sucks. And Chicago is being lashed by the worst winter we’ve had in a long time, snow- and ice-wise; spring is a shimmering green mirage that seems laughable at best. Then, this week, the Influenza B. I’m working hard to maintain that “radical optimism” touted so breezily at the top of this page, but it hasn’t been easy.

Yes, it's a meme

2008-01-01T12:29:00.000-06:00

But it got me to write, so I’m not going to knock it. I omitted the questions that seemed repetitive and/or dumb.

I also wanted to say here (and in doing so, hold myself accountable) that during a few months of this year—including January—I’m going to take at least one photo a day and post it on Flickr. So if you’re interested, head on over to view snapshots of my daily life. I’m not promising anything other than frequency.

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before? Got promoted to a managerial position, and started learning how to make big decisions by myself and manage people. Real, live, breathing people. It’s an ongoing challenge, but I’m loving it. I also ran five 5k’s—I’ve ran them before, but never five in one year. My best time was 28:44, which I feel pretty great about.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? My big resolution for this year was, boringly, to work out more, scale back on portions, and lose a few pounds. Actually, I’ve been pretty successful in this regard. I’m working out regularly five days a week, and as I type this, I’m wearing pants that I almost threw away last year because they pinched my internal organs. They feel great!

As for next year, my resolutions are focused on photography (doing more of it) and running (I’d like to run an 8k).

3. What countries did you visit? We stuck around the U.S., mostly: St. Augustine, Florida; Sonoma and San Francisco, California; and northern Michigan. We did go to the Bahamas’ Abaco Islands, which, excitingly, requires a passport.

4. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? More confidence in my new role at work. A more zen attitude about possible parenthood. A slightly thinner waist would be nice, too.

5. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Same as #1—running and working. A lesser achievement was getting out and doing more Chicago things during the summer, which was a goal of mine. I went to the Renegade Craft Fair, the Randolph Street Flea Market, a free symphony concert at Millennium Park, the Taste of Chicago, the Police concert at Wrigley Field, the Freedom Museum, several architecture tours, and the Greek Festival.

6. What was your biggest failure? Writing. I blew it off in a big way, both in this journal and in my free-time creative projects. I really want to do better this year.

7. Did you suffer illness or injury? Nope.

8. Whose behavior merited celebration? My good friend Rachael, who, along with her husband, bought a boat, sold their house, and embarked on a year-long sailing adventure. She is incredibly inspiring to me.

9. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? George W. Bush’s—nothing new there.

10. Where did most of your money go? Mortgage and savings. And to paying off my college loans—which we finally did, no small feat!

11. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Seeing Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in concert at the Vic in Chicago. Wow. That’s about all I can say about that.

12. What song will always remind you of 2007? Anything from the Once soundtrack: “Falling Slowly,” “Say It to Me Now,” “Leave,” “When Your Mind’s Made Up,” etc. Runners-up would be “I Turn My Camera On” and “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb” by Spoon and “End of the Night” by the Traveling Wilburys. And I shouldn't leave out the Weepies or Death Cab for Cutie, either.

13. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer? Just as happy, a bit thinner, and making more money.

14. What do you wish you’d done more of? Writing, taking pictures

15. What do you wish you’d done less of? Obsessing about having a baby

16. How did you spend Christmas? The usual—in Michigan, ping-ponging between our parents’ houses at an alarming rate. It’s wonderful to see everyone, but the jam-packed schedule leaves something to be desired. Still, I enjoyed helping my mom prepare the traditional Cuban Noche Buena meal. I received some excellent presents, including a 1979 edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide to the Netherlands—very cool. I drank heaps of beer with John’s family as we played raucous versions of Taboo and bingo. I ate and talked a lot.

17. Did you fall in love in 2007? Being married is a funny thing. Sometimes I cannot be in the same room with John because he’s annoying me so greatly. But then it’s Christmas night and I look across the crowded living room at his parents’ house and see him, and I feel such a surge of love I can barely suppress it.

18. What was your favorite TV program? I just started watching and enjoying Project Runway. But I’m going to have to say The Sopranos, which very sadly ended this year. Runner-up is Big Love.

19. What was the best book you read? Ooh, tough one. I think I’ll have to go with The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. The writing blew me away.

20. What was your greatest musical discovery? I know this is repetitive, but Glen Hansard.

21. What did you want and get? A few beautiful pieces of clothing from J. Crew and Anthropologie. Getting promoted enabled me to not feel guilty about buying them. I also splurged on a really expensive pair of jeans, and they were worth every penny.

22. What did you want and not get? Not sure about this one. I honestly feel like, at least materially speaking, I have everything I want. I'm trying to work on not wanting a lot (this isn't easy). I suppose a big back deck would be nice.

23. What was your favorite film of this year? Once, Paris je t’aime, Sicko. I don’t really see a lot of movies.

24. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I turned 31 last January. It was a snowy Saturday, and I spent a few hours reading magazines at my neighborhood coffee shop. John and I went out for tapas downtown, then we met up with some of his coworkers at a bar/club and I danced as if I thought I was 24. Not a bad birthday at all.

26. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? This is a weird question. I dress fairly conservatively for work, but I like color and I’m not afraid to wear it. I love dressing up to go out on the weekend—slim jeans, black or gray boots, a fun top. I am a huge sucker for handbags and interesting pieces of jewelry. This year I really got into wearing long necklaces, and I’ve always had a soft spot for big cocktail rings.

27. What kept you sane? Making time to read InStyle magazine while drinking a glass or two of wine. And, as always, Moose.

28. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? This year I discovered the sharp, smart, and talented Keith Olbermann, and he has been added to my Secret Boyfriend List. He deserves a mention in this meme, so there it is. (Don’t worry, Stephen Colbert, I still fancy you too.)

29. What political issue stirred you the most? The appalling number of Americans who don’t have health care, or don’t have enough health care to keep them from going bankrupt if they become seriously ill. It makes me embarrassed for my country.

30. Who did you miss? My college girlfriends—I don’t get to see them often, although this year was better than most in terms of getting together with them.

31. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007. I’m capable of more than I think I am.

Enough space

2007-12-12T16:39:00.001-06:00

I’m not a person who would move to a far-flung suburb in order to buy a huge house. If the choice is between having four bedrooms and being able to walk to the corner store, I’ll take the latter every time. It’s just personal preference, I know, and it isn’t a black-and-white issue: when we bought our condo, we gave up our “hot” neighborhood for a lukewarm one a mile north, simply because we could get more space for our money.

Our home is around 900 square feet. We have one bathroom, two bedrooms (one is a study with a pull-out couch), a living room, and an eat-in kitchen. We have a small deck area that fits our grill and (snugly) two chairs.

But I don’t measure our living space purely by those dimensions. Our building has a laundry room, a party room, and a terrific gym, plus a beautiful common outdoor space. Lake Michigan and sprawling Lincoln Park are a stone’s throw away, with their trees, beaches, bike paths, playgrounds, and open green space. We take advantage of that area regularly, and it feels like our backyard, in a way—one that doesn’t require any maintenance on our part, other than picking up Moose’s deposits with a plastic bag.

I love my neighborhood—the people, their dogs, the architecture, the history, the restaurants and stores. My neighborhood can be friendly and it can be menacing: it’s $450,000 condos alongside boarded-up Section 8 homes; it’s ornately planted public gardens dotted with a cheap vodka bottle or two. It’s people of every color, hailing from the Ukraine and Mexico and Pakistan and Somalia and Vietnam and Wisconsin. Sometimes I feel nervous walking around at night. Sometimes I want to throw my arms wide and embrace my entire block in a huge (albeit awkward) hug. I love city life. I am a city person, and it’s hard to imagine living anywhere else.

Of course, I could segue here into the whole Children Topic—raising kids in the city, the school question, the safety question, the “but they won’t have any place to ride their bikes” question—but I want to talk about space, space for two people and their dog. Because sometimes, yes, our home feels a little too cozy. Our single-girl neighbor talks about how she’s desperate to move to a bigger place; her condo’s the same size as ours. I visit my sister out in the Michigan countryside and find myself lusting after her basement storage room (all those built-in wooden shelves!). John wants to come in the bathroom; I want to be left alone to examine my pores. I want to listen to my Harry Connick Jr. Christmas CD; he wants to play the guitar, loudly. The idea of a dining room—a separate dining room!—makes me swoon, just a little.

It’s easy to wish for more space, especially when we could easily have it (although the current housing market may have something to say about that). But do we need it? We have dear neighbors, a successful couple who own a four-bedroom, two-floor townhouse. It’s beautiful, but do they need it? I think of maintaining and furnishing and paying to heat and cool all that space, and it starts to seem a little wasteful.

In August, two Dutch friends of ours spent a few days with us during their three-week travels around the States. Kemal and Andrea are in their late 20s. They both have master’s degrees, they’re well traveled, and they live in Amsterdam, in a tiny studio in a great part of the city. And they simply could not get over the size of our place. “It’s huge!!” they exclaimed when they walked in. “You could raise children here!” When we protested that we could do no such thing, they laughed—kindly—and made a little comment about Americans and their space.

For some reason, that exchange has stuck with me. I think about those old New York tenements with two families crammed into one apartment. I think of middle-class European couples happily sharing a studio. I walk from room to room in our home, I stop to talk with a random neighbor while strolling with Moose, I fill my eyes with the big blue expanse of Lake Michigan whenever I want. It’s enough.

Just start writing

2007-11-07T14:43:00.000-06:00

My friend Jessamyn, who is very wise about a great many things, suggested that I just start writing. “You don’t have to wait for a special event, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time editing what you write,” she said. “Just write.”

Of course, she’s right. And there have been so many times in the last eight months that I’ve thought about writing here. I don’t know why I haven’t, exactly. Only that the longer I didn’t write, the easier it was not to.

This year hasn’t brought much change to my little corner of the world. Still married to John, still living in our Chicago condo, still sharing that home with Moose, the nine-year-old greyhound who limps with arthritis every once in awhile but spent last Sunday tearing around the cold, windy beach like a puppy on speed, just to remind us that he isn’t that old.

Still on the fence about having a baby, and still overthinking it way too much. Still working the same job, but I was promoted to an editorial management position in the spring, so that’s brought a lot of change and challenge and a nifty new feeling of self-worth and accomplishment. Still Episcopalian, and still wondering sometimes, for a split second, whether Christianity might just be an immensely popular, elaborate, long-lived myth and whether agnosticism is the real way to go. (Despite that, still fairly involved in our church—helping out with meals for the homeless and editing the parish magazine.) Still loving photography and posting somewhat regularly on Flickr. Still fully committed to my moderately liberal views.

New things, besides the promotion: I ran four 5k’s this summer and achieved a personal best of 29:53, not too shabby for a 31-year-old. John and I traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, and to Sonoma and San Francisco—the latter being one of the best trips we’ve ever taken in terms of relaxation and food consumption. Speaking of food, I feel myself leaning more and more toward becoming a vegetarian, although I may be too lazy (see: eight months since I last updated this journal) to make the complete leap. I’m also trying to make small, environmentally friendly changes in my life: saying no to plastic bags, reusing sandwich baggies, cleaning with cloth rags rather than paper towels, buying organic fruits and veggies weekly from a local co-op.

I just submitted a poem for consideration in an anthology. I’ve been working on an essay.

So that’s where I am in November 2007, near the end of my 31st year. It’s a good place to be. My mind is full of work and family, politics and books, friends and neighborhood, and our upcoming trip to the Out Islands of the Bahamas, where we’ll meet up with my dear friend Rachael and her husband, Tim. They’ve sold their house and quit their jobs, and they’re spending a year living on a sailboat, traveling down the East Coast and into the Caribbean. I’m incredibly excited to try on their strange new lives for a few days, to feel what it’s like to be moving, always moving—from marina to marina, town to town, island to island, always following the dip and sway of the water. They remind me that anything is always possible.

I think I get an “A” in the compromise department

2007-02-17T15:58:00.000-06:00

These are the television shows I watch regularly:

The Daily Show
The first half of The Colbert Report (then I get tired and go to bed)
Most HBO shows, when they’re on: The Sopranos, Rome, Big Love, Entourage, Real Time with Bill Maher, Curb Your Enthusiasm

I also recently committed to 30 Rock and The Office (not as good as the original, but still pretty awesome). And I try to catch Check, Please! and Rick Steves’ Europe on Saturday afternoons. But that’s it. If John’s flipping channels and he stops at some history or nature program, I’ll usually watch—and I recently saw The Dog Whisperer and loved it—but I just don’t watch much TV (even though there are shows out there that I’d probably love: 24, Lost, Grey’s Anatomy). I don’t know; a lot of American TV makes me feel dumb, and sad about my fellow Americans. I like to read books and magazines (and yes, that includes InStyle; I'm not a total snob!). I get my news from NPR, the 'net, and the newspaper.

You may have noticed that the above photo depicts a rather large flat-screen television. It is in our living room. It belongs to us. Rather, it belongs to John. He bought it with part of his annual bonus. When we have friends over, I tell them that it’s not my TV. That it was one of John’s fondest dreams to have a 42-inch flat-screen television, and I gave in. Compromise is the secret to a good marriage, you know, I tell them sagely.

I’m getting used to our latest acquisition—concerts and movies and travel shows do look glorious on it, and being able to DVR shows for later is nifty—but it was difficult for me to allow the TV into my 900-square-foot home. I can distinctly remember standing with John in Circuit City, feeling helpless and a little desperate as he talked about warranties with the sales dude. I showed him a nice 30-inch screen (too small). I pointed out that our living room wasn’t that big (We won’t live there forever, he replied). I asserted that having a huge TV makes it look like we spend our lives glued to the tube (I do watch a lot of sports, he reminded me). I said that I thought the TV would make us look like materialistic assholes. He disagreed.

I really, really didn’t want that TV. And he really, really did. And I gave in.

I felt very conflicted about this for awhile. Should I have stood my ground? After all, it’s my house, too. Was it weak to give in? John and I have an exceptionally equal partnership, but I knew that damn TV would make him as happy as a clam. I also knew that he worked incredibly hard all year and deserved every cent of his bonus, and I wanted him to spend part of it on something he really wanted. I wanted to see him happy.

So I capitulated, I surrendered, I gave in. I made him promise that when we move, the monster will go in the rec room or den. And I declared myself the sole chooser of the new armchair we had space for after rearranging the living room. He didn’t stop thanking me for days; he was incredibly grateful and appreciative. I think he understood the situation, and that did make me feel good. Even though I still kind of hate the TV, I do love the person who wanted it.

I like imagining

2007-02-01T16:11:00.001-06:00

I could write about how cold it is here. That’s boring to read. But it’s been influencing how I go about my days, what I wear to work, how long Moose’s walks are, which errands are essential to run during lunchtime (answer: not many). The predicted highs for this weekend are less than 10 degrees.

I could write about how after three months away from this journal, my first entry starts with a weather anecdote. But if that’s what made me start typing on a blank screen, who am I to judge?

I could write about how John is definitely ready to become a parent. But I already think about it every day; frankly, the idea of writing about the weather is preferable.

So many times in the past three months, I’ve thought to myself, I should write about this in the journal. This is what the first line would be. But then I don’t do it, and I don’t know why. I suspect it’s laziness—that blend of lethargy and procrastination tinged with fear that all writers face. I know I need to sit down and write, but these plants need to be watered first. Then I need to floss.

A few weeks ago, while walking with John, Moose stepped on a piece of glass in our alley and sliced open his paw pad. Blood everywhere, a limping dog, both of us freaking out. Hydrogen peroxide, a hastily made bandage, a trip to the vet. Everything was fine, no infection or stitches, but the cut took forever to heal—he still limps if he steps in road salt or snow—and John left for a four-night work trip a few days after the incident. It is not fun changing a greyhound’s paw-bandage every day, taping a plastic bag over it to keep it dry in the snow. That was a long week.

I am trying to eat better, more healthily. I know; aren’t we all? I ate a lot of cookies during Christmastime. But I did pretty well in January—more vegetables, smaller portions. I need more protein, fewer sweets, fewer calories. I need to work out five days a week. I know my body will change with age, but I also know the risk factors for heart disease, and the amount of control I can have over my own health. I turned 31 last weekend. (I actually feel pretty darn good about that.)

A new storefront restaurant recently opened in our neighborhood, Indian-Pakistani cuisine. We went there for a Sunday-night meal with our neighbors and their two-year-old, whose nickname is Sly. It was an early meal—see mention of two-year-old—and Sly was more interested in running around the restaurant than eating. Luckily, we were the only ones there except for a large extended family celebrating a birthday. They were Indian, I think Muslim. Their group included some gradeschool-age girls, and Sly was fascinated with them. The kids played together, skipping around the room and giggling, while the adults ate samosas and lamb and naan and other amazingly tasty and cheap food. At the end of our meal, the Muslim family had the waiter give us a huge slice of their birthday cake. And all of us—Christian, Jewish, Muslim—dug in to the pink-and-white confection and smiled at the kids hopping back and forth between tables. Now, whenever I feel hopeless after reading front-page headlines, I remember that.

About a month and a half ago, right before Christmas, I received a letter in the mail from an address in Washington D.C. It was from the Spanish consulate there, and they were forwarding on a letter from the American embassy in Barcelona—returning my stolen driver’s license. There I was, 25 years old, pink scarf, eyes half-closed, none the worse for wear. Where has this card been since October 1? Who took it, and how did it get to the embassy? Did the police find it? A sympathetic Spaniard? A fellow American traveler? I’ll never know. But I like imagining.

It was Sunday night, our second day in Spain

2006-10-19T11:18:00.000-05:00

Walking home from the gym in the early evening, I note that the air in Chicago, in October, feels so different from that in Barcelona… lighter and crisper, and certainly colder. And I wonder where he is right now, what he’s doing, if he kept my picture, if he ever even looked at it. The stranger who stole my bag right out of my hand.

It was around 10:30, 11 p.m., and John and I were in Barcelona, walking back to our hotel after dinner. It was Sunday night, our second day in Spain. It should have been our third, but our flight on Thursday had been cancelled because of mechanical problems (a thousand poxes on United, by the way). So we left a day late, lost a whole day of our vacation, and spent much more time at O’Hare than I want to remember.

The one consolation had been a six-hour layover at Schiphol Airport. We took the train into Amsterdam and spent a few gentle hours wandering around the Saturday-morning city: the quiet canals, a few bikes whirring past. Tall, narrow buildings leaning on their old foundations, shopkeepers sweeping the sidewalks, a few tourists snapping photos. The sky was blue, the morning light sifting through the trees lining the canals, us cradling our coffees and just wandering, wandering, on intuition and memory, no maps in hand. We’d stayed a few days in Amsterdam in 2004 and loved it, and this was such a gift, these unexpected few hours of strolling. We took photo after photo.

Anyway. Barcelona, Sunday night, 10:30, 11 p.m. We had enjoyed a great meal of tapas, split a bottle of Rioja, and I’d successfully communicated in Spanish with our bemused waiter. Now we were tired, satiated, and strolling back to our hotel, in a pleasant residential neighborhood just east of the Placa de Catalunya. We were about a block away. I was carrying a small purse under my arm, containing our camera, my driver’s license, my credit card, my debit card, a pocket translator, powder and lipgloss, and around 80 euro. (My passport was in the hotel safe.) It was still warm out, and I took the purse from under my shoulder to carry it in my hand, holding onto the straps. A few minutes later, we heard the roar of a moped, and a guy drove onto the sidewalk and snatched it away. It happened in an instant—one second I had my purse, the next I didn’t, and the guy was gone.

I have never felt such shock. I immediately began screaming “Thief! Thief!” and John took off sprinting, his sandals flying off his feet, yelling “Hey! HEY!” But of course there was nothing we could do; the moped was gone. It took me a few seconds to register the loss of the camera, and I think that’s what made me start crying. My camera. Our pictures. I stood in the street and sobbed. John came back and put his arms around me.

The whole thing was witnessed by a guy walking his dog (a greyhound—I tearfully explained to him that we had one, too), who seemed shocked that this had happened in his neighborhood. But I’d been warned to watch out for pickpocketing in Barcelona. After four trips to Europe and five years living in a big city, I truly didn’t think it could happen to me—I was aware, I didn’t dress like a tourist, I kept my bag on my lap when we ate in restaurants. If I’d been wearing a moneybelt, my cards and cash would’ve been safe, but the biggest, most upsetting and costly loss was our camera.

The two hours that followed are a dark blur to me now. We tried to find a police station that the greyhound owner said was nearby, but we couldn’t. We went back to the hotel to retrieve the piece of paper containing my credit card numbers and the 1-800 numbers to call; luckily I’d written them down just that morning. We attempted to use a public phone on the corner. We learned that you can’t make 1-800 calls from Spain. We went to a nearby Internet café to access my cards’ websites and find the right numbers. I called and cancelled my cards. We learned, to our great relief, that John’s debit card had a different number than mine, so we still had access to our bank accounts. Finally, around 1 a.m., we collapsed in our hotel room. I felt guilty, uncomprehending, in shock. John was angry at the thief. We lay down and turned on the TV for company, watched an old Spanish-dubbed episode of Knight Rider. It was the worst night of “sleep” I’ve ever had.

*****

Thankfully, the rest of our trip was trauma-free. The next morning we went to El Corte Ingles, Spain’s major department store, and bought a new camera. The saleswoman didn’t speak English, but we were able to muddle through. With the bad dollar/euro conversion, and the fact that we had to buy new batteries and a memory card, this was a pricey excursion. But it’s a nice camera.

Then we picked up our rental car and left Barcelona for the Costa Brava, the beautiful coast a few hours north: medieval villages, laid-back beach towns, the Mediterranean. Our base for three days in the region was an 800-year-old stone house in the quiet village of Peratallada. It was a good place to start putting the experience behind us, but it did take a few days. I often had flashbacks of the moment my purse left my hand, light as a feather. The sound of mopeds made my stomach tighten. It took me awhile to fall asleep at night. I knew John was thinking about it, too.

But as we saw more beautiful places, did more interesting things—hiked in the Pyrenees, immersed ourselves in beautiful, graceful, vibrant San Sebastian—the event fell further and further behind us. And now, almost three weeks later, it’s lost its bite; it’s a vacation story to tell. The financial cost of it still stings a bit, but I wasn’t injured. He didn’t get my passport. We had only two days worth of photos in the camera—what if it had happened at the end of the trip? (But oh, that morning in Amsterdam… it hurts to lose the evidence of that.)

My credit cards have been replaced, and I went downtown for my new license yesterday. Before that, every time I opened my wallet I was jolted anew to see the empty slot where my license used to be, where my own face used to look back at me. It made me think of some of the photos in my camera, the ones I took of myself in the hotel mirror, the ones John took of me… did he look at them? If he kept the camera, is he still? If he pawned it, does someone else have them now? It’s a strange thing to contemplate, and I haven’t quite stopped contemplating it yet.

Note: I’ve begun uploading some of my Spain photos to Flickr; it’s still a work in progress.

The freshness of the wound

2006-09-27T11:59:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it wasn’t the smartest idea to watch United 93 so soon before we fly to Europe. But that didn’t cross my mind when I saw it on the Blockbuster shelf last week. I remembered that John had wanted to see it, and that the New Yorker had given it a great review. So I rented it, along with The Squid and the Whale (an excellent movie, by the way).

We watched United 93 last night, and I truly can’t remember ever being as riveted by and entwined in a film. Which is amazing, considering the story is one we all know by heart. The traffic controllers who are shocked to see one of the World Trade Center buildings on fire that morning—brace yourselves, we want to tell them, you haven’t seen anything yet. The passengers on United Flight #93, as brave and resourceful as they are, aren’t going to triumph in the end—although of course, many more people may have died if that plane didn’t go down in a Pennsylvania field. I suppose that’s a sort of triumph.

I thought the film was masterfully done—subtly terrifying, plain and stark, no one actor really standing out, the people on the screen seeming so amazingly ordinary. That was part of the terror, for me—the ordinariness of the people on that flight. They were eminently recognizable. It almost felt like a documentary. I watched it with tears in my eyes and my hand over my mouth, my stomach actually hurting at times, feeling vaguely guilty, somehow—like a voyeur.

Five years have gone by so quickly. Five years ago John and I had been married for almost three months. We sat in our one-bedroom apartment in an old Victorian house in Grand Rapids and watched CNN for three days straight, eyes glued to the television, the skies eerily empty outside our windows. We kept waiting for people to be saved from the wreckage. At work, I visited the Cantor Fitzgerald website, scrolled down the names and photos of the dead. I cried. It seemed so big, the magnitude so difficult to understand. All those people. All those people.

Strange, then, last night, to be standing in my condo in Chicago holding a DVD case, reading the description of a movie dramatizing a piece of that day. How long and how short a five-year span can seem.

I’ve written before about how naïve I can be, how “glass-half-full” I am, how I could have written Anne Frank’s words: “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” It always feels like a slap to the face when I’m reminded that this isn’t true. I found myself fascinated by the four hijackers in the film, especially the leader, a young man who looked Westernized, intelligent, soft-spoken, appealing. To sit in the waiting area, surrounded by unknown people he intended to kill. To sit on the plane, knowing what was about to happen. To threaten. To stab. All (or mostly) in the name of religion—religion, something I believe in, something I also hold dear. One of the most compelling moments in the film shows a passenger praying the Our Father, then cuts to this hijacker murmuring a prayer to Allah. Both calling on the God of Abraham, both equally sincere.

I’ve flown many times since September 2001—to New Hampshire and New York, to Philadelphia, Key West, Washington DC, the British Virgin Islands. Paris. And I will fly again, this time to Barcelona. Life has continued and will continue. I’m not sure that I really have a point to this journal entry; I just wanted to write about this. As one reviewer put it, “In the years since 9/11, much of what happened that day has become ingrained in our culture. We have absorbed it. United 93 picks the scab and brings back the freshness of the wound.”

Whatever comes next

2006-09-07T21:34:00.001-05:00

On Saturday morning I woke up before 10 a.m. I ate a bowl of Raisin Nut Bran cereal and drank a mug of coffee while reading the Letters to the Editor in the Tribune. John left to play football with some friends. I made the bed, put on a pair of cropped cargo pants and a green shirt and my flat espadrille slip-ons from H&M, the ones with the black sequins (note: they are better-looking than they sound here). I brushed my teeth and combed my hair, smeared on some tinted moisturizer, applied mascara and reddish lipstick. Grabbed a purse and the iPod (that day: Death Cab for Cutie, the Garden State soundtrack, Coldplay, Lucy Kaplansky), petted the dog, and left to catch a southbound bus. I disembarked in Lakeview, walked into a medical center, and had blood drawn that will reveal whether I’m a carrier of the cystic fibrosis gene and whether I’m immune to rubella. Because if you happen to catch rubella (are the chances of this high?) when you’re pregnant, the fetus could go deaf.

To the few people who know about my little weekend jaunt (these people do not include my mother, who recently sighed to me, “The tree in our front yard is the perfect size for a swing… I can just picture our grandchildren out there, can’t you?”), I’ve explained that John’s biological clock is ticking. And it’s true; it is. He’s ready. As he puts it, we’re not getting any younger. The silvery hairs sprouting from my right temple attest to that, although at 30 I don’t feel the least bit old, not really. But anyway, he’s ready, and on some days, or at certain times on certain days, I am, too.

The blood test was a big mental hurdle for me. My doctor wrote the requisition slip for the test last January, when I went in for my annual exam, and it’s been sitting in my desk drawer since then. Sometimes I’d idly think of going to get it done. John would ask every once in awhile—“Hey, have you had that test yet?”—and I’d assure him that he’d be the first to know when I did. One of these times, he added helpfully, “It’s not really a big deal… it’s not like going off the pill, or anything. Just a blood test.”

About a month ago, John and I had a Big Talk, and we decided to think more seriously about trying to conceive this year. I cannot possibly explain how this made me feel: scared and excited and terrified and in love and overwhelmed. Bitter, because I’m female and therefore will be more greatly affected by parenthood than my husband, whether I like it or not. Frustrated, because I wish I had a damn crystal ball that could show me what will happen to my job and my health and my marriage and my life, if we do this thing.

I think we will do this thing. After all, I placed my arm on the padded bar and let a friendly technician tie a rubber tube around my bicep. He took my blood and it hardly hurt at all. And I thought about the shoe-shopping I was going to do next, and decided to stop at Jamba Juice on the way. And I thought about how this was the first time I was making a (very small) sacrifice in the name of parenthood, and how I was offering up a (very small) part of my body for a child I can barely begin to dream of. It was a strange realization, a strange moment of clarity.

So yes, I think we will do this thing, or attempt to, anyway. But first, first, we are taking a trip, an idea we’ve been toying with for the past few months: a trip to Spain. Two of my great-grandparents are from Spain, I have a decent grip on the language, and the country’s been on both my list and John’s for awhile. We’re going to spend twelve days there, hanging out in Barcelona, then renting a car to explore the seaside villages along the Costa Brava, the mountains of the Pyrenees, and the old glamour of San Sebastian. I am planning like a fiend, amassing notes and photocopies and recommendations, caught up in the goosebumpy thrill of imagining tiny medieval villages and beautiful, unknown cities and endless cups of wine. First, the trip. Then, whatever comes next.

President Bush flies over my dinner table, and other updates

2006-07-07T13:28:00.001-05:00

Last night I had dinner with my friend Mandy at Taste of Heaven, a charming little café and bakery in our neighborhood that has fresh, cheap sandwiches, leafy outdoor seating, and giant frosted cupcakes (as well as perfectly reasonable expectations for diners with children in tow that blew up all over the national news recently). We were sitting outside, enjoying our half-sandwiches and pasta salads, when our conversation was drowned out by the harsh blop-blopping of eight helicopters that appeared over the horizon and flew over us, heading west. “It’s the president!” Mandy said. “He’s here today in Chicago. I just saw it on the news.” Dubya? Here in Chicago, my beloved liberal bastion of liberalness? He doesn’t come here that often. But he graced us with his presence yesterday, buddying up with Mayor Daley and celebrating his sixtieth birthday downtown. And interrupting my dinner.

*****

So apparently I have a master’s degree in writing. A master’s degree! I graduated in June after four long years of classes—classes that I really did enjoy (well, mostly—we won’t speak of Classical Rhetoric here), taking only one a quarter instead of two so as not to give myself a stress-induced heart attack and become estranged from my family. It seems like a long time ago that I was 26, newly arrived in this city and mulling over the possibility of grad school. I wrote a journal entry about making that decision, but it was lost when Diary-X gave up the ghost. Suffice it to say, it was a big decision and one that I doubt I’ll ever regret. Jobs aren’t plentiful in the editing/publishing field, so anything that increases my marketability is a big plus.

It’s funny—people keep asking me, “Wow, so now that you’ve graduated, what are you going to do?” I mean, co-workers have asked me this. As if I’m going to retreat to some private island in the Florida Keys and get started on my great American novel. I usually reply, “Uh… keep working here?” I like my job; I’m not looking for anything else right now. Although it’s true, there is a sense of “What next?” after finishing something so monumental. (My mother’s answer to that question, it turns out, is “procreate.”)

It turns out that the first thing I did with my degree saved us $150. After returning from a weekend in Michigan last month, John and I parked for a few minutes in our alley to unload the car (our building doesn’t have a parking lot, and there was no street parking available). After one of our arm-laden trips up to our condo, we returned to find a cop writing us a ticket for $150 for blocking the alley. No horn honking, no warning, no mercy. I immediately contested it, composing a clear, straightforward, persuasive letter—even using bullet points to enumerate all the reasons that ticket was bullshit. And what do you know, it worked! The ticket was revoked. We celebrated by taking a neighbor out for her birthday and spending $165 on dinner.

*****

We’re heading out east for vacation soon, spending a few days in Manhattan and then a few in the Pocono Mountains. There we’ll stay with my parents, my sister, and her husband in the same cabin where my family vacationed every year until I was 18. That was the year we left Pennsylvania for Michigan, and I haven’t been back to the Poconos since.

I’m excited about this trip—the mix of city and mountains, the combination of tripping around NYC in heels and oversized sunglasses and hiking Bushkill Falls in cargo shorts and running shoes. Eating at the Shake Shack, fishing with my dad, exploring Central Park, breathing in the cool, clean mountain air… being transported back to all those late Augusts in the cabin: listening to Monkee records on my portable player and delving into a pile of Babysitter Club books; hoping, with my sister, to stumble upon a bear when we took our after-dinner walks with our parents; swimming in the cold blue lake up the road; always coming in third when the four of us played miniature golf… my heart kinda swells at the mere mention of all that. Manhattan will be fast-paced and dirty and eye-opening and glamorous; the Poconos will be a clean slice of simple pleasure with a generous side of nostalgia. I can’t wait.

Five years

2006-06-22T11:18:00.001-05:00

He did not want to move to Chicago. I know this. He would have been happy spending the rest of his days in the Michigan town where he was raised, went to college, and began his career.

It’s a nice town. But I couldn’t see myself staying there. I wanted Chicago, a publishing career, a big city where I could blend in (where it didn’t matter that I’m not a Calvinist of Dutch descent, like so many of the folks in John’s hometown). I wanted to go. And he agreed to go with me.

If I ever had doubts about what kind of person John is, they were banished in November of 2001. He left a decent job, a bunch of college friends, his family, and the town that he’d lived in for 26 years to move to another state—because I wanted to. I knew there was a chance that it wouldn’t work, that he’d be miserable, that we’d move back. But that didn’t happen. We both have great jobs, strong careers, good friends—we’re part of little communities in our building, our neighborhood, our workplaces, our church. We’ve built a good life here, something that belongs to the two of us. And because we moved a mere five months after we became husband and wife—on June 22, 2001—we’ve built a marriage at the same time.

I have been married for five years today. There is something almost nonsensical about that statement—how can it be possible that this much time has passed, that I’m 30 and he’s 31; was it really five years ago that we stood up in a small Catholic church and promised to spend the rest of our lives together? In that Michigan town, where people often married while they were still in college, I felt old and worldly to be marrying at 25. I had waited. I had lived alone for two years, supported myself, backpacked in Italy solo for two weeks. And now I was embarking on the next chapter of my life, a much longer chapter that would contain plot points I couldn’t even imagine.

I look at photos from our wedding day and I’m taken aback by how young and eager and fresh-faced we look. I think my face shows the joy I felt that day. It was the most joy-filled day of my life so far. I was so ready to bind my life to this person’s life.

John is a man who has never expected me to vacuum or mop the floor because I have ovaries. I have never felt denigrated because he makes more money than I do. The equal partnership we’ve created is incredibly precious to me.

He does, however, ask me almost every day what’s for dinner—even though we do the weekly grocery shopping together, and he does most of the cooking.

John plays the guitar. He taught himself when he was in high school. He can play Dave Matthews, Jack Johnson, REM, Bruce Springsteen, the theme song from Brokeback Mountain. When we had just started dating, I told him that I loved the song “Blackbird” by the Beatles, and he learned how to play it for me.

He was somewhat shy when we first met. He used to ask me if I would hold his hand. I always said yes.

On our third date (a swing-dancing lesson at a local bar—yes, it was 1999), he brought me a bouquet of carnations “just because it was a Tuesday.” He loves making chocolate milkshakes with malted mix. He loves Guinness and shiraz, guacamole and apples and salmon and chocolate pie. His favorite restaurants are Italian, Spanish, and Cuban.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, half-asleep, he’ll put his arm around me and kiss my shoulder.

He cried with me when Murphy died. I had never seen him cry like that before.

His favorite part of summer is camping. He loves it all—the fire, the grilling, the beer, sleeping in a tent, playing his guitar under the rustling trees in the dark night. I first told him I was falling in love with him during a camping trip. He proposed to me on a camping trip. (He is lucky I like to camp.)

He has a sensitive stomach. He gets heartburn (especially when he eats my mom’s food), and he has asthma. He hates cigarette smoke.

We have gotten drunk together in pubs in Ireland and Maine, and we’ve soaked up the sun on the shores of Cape May, Key West, Tortola, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We’ve driven up a mountain in New Hampshire, hiked up part of a mountain in Colorado, and explored the cities of Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, and Bruges. He is a good traveling companion, even though he likes to take mid-afternoon naps and I don’t.

I always know where he’s been in the condo, because he leaves the light on in that room.

He threw me a surprise party for my thirtieth birthday. I didn’t write about that here, did I? That boy organized a huge party for me at a neighbor’s house, and he invited friends and family from Michigan and Chicago, college friends and work friends and church friends and neighbors. He sent out invites, did all the shopping, agonized that I would find out, but I didn’t. The party was an incredible success, and I was nearly drowned by the realization of how much he loves me, to do something like that.

When he cooks, I do the dishes, and vice versa.

He is almost equally good at every sport he attempts to play. He loves softball and runs his work’s team.

He wholeheartedly supported my decision to go to grad school. Tuition wasn’t cheap, but he never complained about the bills. I don’t think I realized how lucky I was to have that support.

He doesn’t watch much TV besides sports, HBO, and The Daily Show. He loves the original series of The Office and taught himself to play “Freelove Freeway” on the guitar, much to my endless amusement.

He’s a CPA, but I pay our bills every month.

When he gets home and Moose comes to greet him, he says, “How’s the boy??” and rubs Moose’s head against his leg.

He enjoys playing with our neighbors’ toddler, picking her up and swinging her around to make her squeal and laugh. He is going to be a wonderful father someday.

He’s a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen. When we first started dating, I was like, “Springsteen? ‘Tunnel of Love’? Whatever.” He made me a mix tape, and then I started to get it, the supreme awe that the Boss can command. We own every Bruce Springsteen album ever recorded.

He also likes folk music, as I do, and I’m really grateful for that.

Right before we were engaged, I had to have a painful and somewhat scary biopsy done. That afternoon, he sent me an email that I can quote here verbatim, because I printed it out, folded it up, and have kept it in my wallet since that day:

Date: May 24, 2000
Subject: You’re invited
A date: this afternoon on the back deck at [123 John’s Street] with 22 oz of New Holland Zoomer Wit and malted-mix ice cream dessert (whatever’s left) at 4:00 or 4:30. Please RSVP by email.

*****

On our anniversary two years ago, I wrote this:

I’m still not sure what lies ahead for us—we’re not even 30. But I’m beginning to realize that the unknown isn’t scary, and the unknown doesn’t really matter. Because whatever happens to us, neither of us will be alone. And when death does part us, we’ll have created something beautiful and complex and strong and weatherbeaten and true—a marriage—and it will be one of my life’s greatest accomplishments.

Now we’re done with our twenties, and there’s still no way to look into our future together and know if it will be peaceful or turbulent, with illness or health. I don’t know how or when the family we’ve created will grow. But I still believe that the unknown isn’t truly all that scary, because whatever happens to us, neither of us will be alone. One of the reasons I love my life so much is because he’s in it.

(Thanks to Eliza, whose beautiful Father’s Day entry about her dad inspired the format for this journal entry.)

Only boys who save their pennies make my rainy day

2006-05-11T16:57:00.000-05:00

Lately I’ve been feeling like quite the material girl—lusting after all these things that I want to buy. I ordered this bag from Target and when it arrived I considered bringing it to bed with me that evening—I love it so. (Don’t even read that Josie person’s review; she’s sadly misguided.) I also purchased this book from Amazon and am anxiously awaiting its arrival. Last Saturday John and I went downtown to have an H&M experience, during which I found a very flattering white cotton wrap-around blouse, short-sleeved and lacy, and some gray linen pants for work. And this week I am contemplating joining the masses and outfitting myself in a pair of light-blue or green Cayman Crocs, which are ugly to the point of being darling and look supremely comfortable, especially for walking the dog and camping.

I want, I want, I want. I feel kind of guilty when I get into one of these shopping jags—it usually has something to do with the change of seasons—but they don’t last long, and it’s not like I’m slapping down the plastic at Barney’s or William Sonoma. Still. I already have so much.

—*—

Even when I’m not actually shopping, I always like to imagine what I’d choose if presented with, say, all the watches advertised in a newspaper flyer from Marshall Field’s, or all the sandals in the window of my neighborhood shoe store. If I had to pick one pair, which would it be? For some reason, this exercise in pretend decision-making is quite satisfying to me. Lately I’ve been doing it with tulips: “If I had a house and could plant three colors of tulips in the yard, what would they be?” For now I’ve settled on red, peach-orange, and dark purple, although of course that could change between now and whenever this fictional yard becomes a reality. We have enough on our plate trying to keep the pigeons from nesting on our back deck; I’m not sure we could handle much more nature right now.

—*—

Continuing in the theme of materialism: John and I have always been a bit slow when it comes to upgrading our technology. We didn’t buy a DVD player right away, and until last year we were sharing one cellphone. We still don’t have a CD burner or caller ID (the latter is because we’re cheap). And this past January, after John won his fantasy football pool, we finally bought an iPod. I had never been too interested in having one of these, since I’m not one to zone out with earphones during my daily commute; I like to be able to hear what’s going on around me. And I’ve never required music in order to go for a walk or jog. But I have to say, this little iPod nano is working valiantly to change my mind about all of the above. I don’t use it if I’m walking alone at night or anything, but how soothing is it to start your day by listening to Sufjan Stevens as the train shuttles you to work? Or to blast through a workout mix of U2, Moby, Led Zeppelin, and (yes) Young MC as you cruise along the lakefront path in the sunshine, keeping time to the beat?

It turns out that the worthy iPod can provide a soundtrack to the most mundane moments of life. It adds a sort of poetry to the scenery passing by out the train window. It makes me happy to bring Sarah Harmer to the post office with me when I have to mail a package. When I put the iPod on shuffle and it comes up with Bruce Springsteen’s “Tougher than the Rest,” I am catapulted back to 1999, the summertime, sitting in an old red Saab next to a boy named John. We’ve been dating for a few months, and we’re heading up to northern Michigan on our first camping trip. It’s hot and sunny and my tanned arm is resting outside the car window, and I’m realizing that I kind of like Bruce Springsteen, which is good since John owns almost all of his CDs. A few weeks later, John will make me a mix tape (a mix tape!) that includes some of the songs that are now on our iPod, songs by Fleetwood Mac and Dave Matthews and the Jayhawks and the Indigo Girls. And each one of them, including this one by the Boss, has the power to transport me back to a time in my life that I sometimes forget to remember. Technology can be a very good thing.

Sight and touch

2006-04-14T16:24:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday night around 9 p.m., I stood on the el platform after class (my very last class in grad school—come June I’ll have an M.A., and it only took four years!), waiting for the train. It had been a summer day in April, temperatures near 80 degrees, the undergrads schlepping around in wrinkled capri pants and rubber flip-flops (and me in my cotton grown-up workclothes, feeling old and overheated).

But now the air was incredibly, deliciously soft and warm and dark, brushing my cheeks, sliding through my hair. The city skyline was twinkling in the distance, Sears, Hancock, Aon, and the moon overhead was almost full. A beautiful night, its beauty sensed by both sight and touch…one of those small slices of loveliness that come when you least expect them.

Yesterday's weather was almost as nice, although a little cooler. I walked Moose in the park after work, my eyes unaccustomed to all the green—velvet green grass, pale green daffodil stalks, hedges covered in a light green mist. Blue sky. And for those of us who are white, pale legs and arms bared for the first time since September. The park was full of kids rollerblading and jump-roping and riding scooters. Two little Hispanic boys seemed very interested in Moose—I heard the Spanish word for dog, perro, whispered in a high-pitched voice—and so I stopped and asked if they wanted to pet him. They came over shyly, and somewhere in my mind I remembered the words: “Se nombre Moose,” his name is Moose. “Hi, Moose,” they said, stroking his head.

We kept walking, passing a young Eastern European mom and her toddler, a few homeless men, some Arab kids kicking a soccer ball, two young white joggers, the headphoned teenage boy who walks his neighbor’s ancient Bassett hound every afternoon. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall, moving, black object, and I turned to see a woman in a burka walking on another path about 20 yards away. She was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it and leading a four- or five-year-old girl by the hand. The little girls wore pastel-colored coats with their hoods up. But the woman was dressed in a voluminous swath of black.

I didn’t want to openly stare at her, but I did steal a few more glances. I see women in headscarves around my neighborhood, but never women with their faces covered. I realized that this woman wasn’t wearing an actual burka, but a long, wide black dress, a long black headscarf, and another black scarf-like cloth that covered her face from the nose down. Her eyes were visible. (Perhaps what she was wearing was a chador; I’m not sure.)

Seeing her made me remember the night before, standing on the el platform with the warm breeze in my hair and on my cheeks. And although I don’t assume that the woman wanted my pity, I did pity her, for not being able to have that experience. I wondered, if she has a balcony, can she at least step outside at night, uncovered, to feel the air on her skin? Can she open a window and lean out, close her eyes and breathe the night air? I wondered if it’s difficult for young girls to begin wearing such a garment, when the days of not wearing one are still so fresh in their memories. I thought about how I had smiled at the two Hispanic boys and how they’d smiled back. What for me is an ordinary shared moment between strangers, a daily punctuation that some of my neighbors never experience.

Springing

2006-04-07T16:53:00.000-05:00

Winged women in Grant Park, II
Originally uploaded by strass.

Spring is springing in Chicago. Now that it’s light here until 7 p.m. (oh blessed, blessed daylight savings), Moose and I are venturing back out to the lakefront parks and beaches when I get home from work. We go slowly, Moose stopping to sniff every tree trunk and bush (and, okay, beer can), me pausing to examine a miniscule bud on a tree branch, just waiting to burst open and turn the landscape green again. But the greening has begun, actually… a dusting on the grass, a pushed-up daffodil stalk, the stem of a fragile purple crocus. I hear more birds now, or maybe I’m just listening for them harder.

April is a good month. There’s more light, more color, more tastes of warm days on the horizon. April means getting out my spring coat, even if I can’t wear it every day. It means getting home from work and not having to flip on the lights in our condo. It means opening the back door and letting the breeze in, hearing our 18-month-old neighbor giggling outside as she stumbles around under her dad’s watchful gaze. It means not having to put on my mittens and Moose’s fleece coat every time we go for a walk. It’s that first smell of freshly mown grass, of dirt, of someone grilling down the block. It’s sitting in my office on a Friday afternoon and seeing the lights of Wrigley Field in the distance, knowing the Cubs are playing their home opener, knowing I have tickets to three games this year.

And of course it’s the end of tax season, so close on the horizon. Which is always a bit of an adjustment—after all, I’ve had the place to myself on weeknights since early January—but a welcome one. Now I’ll have someone to cook me a well-balanced meal, to fire up the grill and marinate some chicken or pork. (I just don't do well cooking meat products, especially for one.) We’ll eat dinner together and go for jogs. I’ll find his softball bat lying around, and I’ll smile because the weather’s warm and my husband’s not working 70 hours a week and returning Blackberry emails at 11:30 p.m.; he’s reading and brewing beer and playing a sport that he loves with friends. Sometimes it feels like a big, heavy blanket is lifted off our lives, come April.

What I've been doing lately

2006-03-28T16:56:00.003-06:00

I know, with such a scintillating entry title, you can barely tear your eyes away. But here's the list:

Looking at photos of sea otters. Sweet, fuzzy little sea otters. On Sunday I went to the Shedd Aquarium, because the day was stretching in front of me with nothing to fill it besides puttering around the condo and petting the dog. John was at the office, his second home during tax season, and suddenly I was overcome with a strong urge to see otters and penguins. So I took the el down to Roosevelt and walked the 10 minutes to the aquarium, where I was confronted with a looong line of families with squealing children, waiting for entry. Ugh—spring break! Luckily I’d brought our iPod along, so I passed the time listening to Sarah Harmer and Tom Petty and Sufjan Stevens, trying to imagine what it would be like to bring three children under the age of five on an aquarium outing. Answer: Damn hard.

After a 30-minute wait, I was finally inside and past the turnstile. I headed straight for the otter area and spent awhile watching the little guys swim, scratch their fur, and play with a plastic ball. I watched the penguins getting fed, and then I visited the stingrays, an assortment of eels, dolphins, various African fish, seahorses, poisonous frogs, and a hideous giant crab. I ended the day with another stop at the otter area. I really, really wish I could have my own otter.

Watching Big Love. Tuning in to this show is like watching a trainwreck. I simply cannot look away. After reading Under the Banner of Heaven, I’ve been fascinated by Mormons, and the fundamentalists are even more intriguing because they practice polygamy. The very idea of sharing John with another woman makes me want to throw a plate across the room. I just can’t comprehend how these women do it… to know that your spouse has an equally intimate relationship with someone else, that your spouse looks at someone else the same way he looks at you… it’s just mind-boggling, and such a radically different view of marriage. Thanks, HBO!

Hanging out with Moose. During tax season, I am Moose’s single parent, the one who feeds him dinner every night and takes him on most of his walks. Of course, this also means I have ample opportunities to meet the assorted odd people who live in, or simply pass through, our neighborhood. Some people don’t even seem to register my existence and instead speak directly to Moose. Two recent examples:

1. A shabby man leaning against a storefront and smoking a cigarette says to Moose, “Do you smoke?” Since Moose doesn’t actually know how to talk, I answer for him: “No, he’s not a smoker.” The man pauses, still looking at the dog. “Well, you do have a smoking jacket.” (He’s referring to Moose’s fleece coat—since greyhounds have next to no body fat and very short fur, they need protection in the winter.) I smile politely and move on.

2. An older woman sitting on the curb and wrapped in a sort of plaid cape asks Moose, “Do you like McDonald’s hamburgers? Because I sure do.” She is not eating a McDonald’s hamburger when she says this. I answer for Moose that yes, he likes meat very much, and she smiles at him in return.

Planning the summer. In true Chicago form, the weather is still cold, in the 40s. We’ll have spring for a month or so, and then we’ll be broiling. While I generally despise the heat and humidity, I’m looking forward to everything that goes along with summer—green trees, ice cream cones, baseball games, flip-flops, eating dinner outside. We have tickets to three Cubs games and reservations for two camping trips to Wisconsin. In July, we’re taking a trip out East to spend a few days in New York City with John’s brother and a few days in the Pocono Mountains with my family, in the big cabin where we used to vacation when I was little. It should be a good combination—just when the familial closeness of it all becomes a bit too stifling, we’ll be off to the Big Apple! I haven’t been to New York since I was 18, and that was just a daytrip to see “The Phantom of the Opera.” My brother-in-law lives in Queens, and I’m excited to explore his neighborhood, in addition to visiting Central Park and Greenwich Village and the World Trade Center site and various restaurants and bars. But the Poconos will be enjoyable, too, in its own way… hiking in the woods, clean blue mountain air, pine trees and simple homemade food… a time to sleep in and breathe deeply and reach back to remember my ten-year-old self. I very seldom get to visit the places of my childhood, so I intend to savor this.

In which I prattle on about weight and marriage

2006-03-23T16:21:00.000-06:00

I think I’ve always been afraid of becoming overweight. I’ve never had an eating disorder, but it’s safe to say that not a day goes by when I don’t think about how my body looks or mentally tick off everything I’ve eaten in the past 24 hours. Kinda sad, isn’t it? And it’s so habitual now that I don’t even notice I’m doing it.

As a child I had “baby fat,” as Mom termed it. In photos from that time, I look very… round. Most of the pudge was shed by the time I hit junior high, and I skipped through high school at a delightfully average size: 7 or 9 in juniors, 6 or 8 in women’s clothes. I ate cheese fries for lunch. I hated playing sports. I had the blessed metabolism of a teenager.

In college I began to pay more attention to my size. I took full advantage of the pasta bar and frozen yogurt machine in the dining hall, but I also didn’t have a car and walked a few miles a day to and from class and work. I sometimes used the weight room and the indoor running track. My clothes size remained a 6 or an 8.

Much is said about the jolt of entering the “real world” after college, but one of the biggest changes for me was my new sedentary lifestyle, driving everywhere in my leased Saturn and sitting in a cube eight hours a day. Together with my roommate, I began exercising five days a week—walking, jogging, flailing along with a kickboxing video. I gained a few pounds during this time, but I also gained a really terrific habit: ever since 1998, I’ve felt like something’s missing if a few days go by without exercise. It’s ingrained in me now that this is something I should do.

*****

This topic’s been on my mind lately because of a fascinating post (and follow-up post) that I read at another blog, Morphing into Mama. The post generated quite a bit of commentary on the Internet, and several other online writers tackled the subject as a result. I don’t usually write about these types of things, but this time I wanted to.

I’m not sure I agree with MiM’s term of “false advertising,” although I know I’d be annoyed if John stopped exercising and caring about his appearance after we were married. But more than that, what I’ve been thinking about is this determination I have to not gain weight. As if my life would be over if that happened.

I don’t know where this determination comes from, exactly. I’m sure it’s part insecurity, part “the media tells me I need to be a stick figure.” I know that part of it is for health reasons. My job involves reading a lot of health information, and one of the things that’s really struck me is the danger of heart disease. It’s the number-one killer of American women, and having a waist size over 35 inches significantly increases your risk. I don’t want heart problems. I want to feel good, have energy, be in shape.

Of course, part of my determination is also a desire to look good. I’m 30; I know I don’t look like I did in college, and I’m not attempting to. But I want to look fit. I want to wear clothes that are somewhat hip. I don’t want to look matronly or older than I am. And yup, I want my husband to like how I look, to be proud of my appearance. Some people think that husbands should like how their wives look no matter how much weight they gain. That being able to do that is part of a mature, loving relationship. But I’m not sure I agree with that. I wouldn’t expect John to be just as happy with my appearance if I gained 50 pounds; I wouldn’t be as happy with my appearance. And I don’t know if that’s caused by vanity or insecurity or shallowness or what. Maybe I’m not the “feminist” I’ve always thought myself to be.

After I read that post on Morphing into Mama, I asked John his opinion. “Would you be upset if after we got married, I ‘let myself go’ and gained 50 pounds?”

“Well… yeah!” he replied, without much thought. “I’d wonder what was wrong, and why you were letting that happen.”

His answer didn’t offend me; it would be my response if the tables were turned. I’m not sure if this “says something” about our marriage. Obviously we wouldn’t stop loving each other if one of us gained weight, although I wonder if we’d be less attracted. But I’ll still love John when he’s bald and love-handled, and I expect him to love me when my body changes after childbirth and when I have gray hair and sagging skin. Botox is not in my future, thanks.

*****

When I’m really busy, with work and school and freelancing, exercise does fall by the wayside. But I’m active. I walk the dog every day, I try to take the stairs at work, sometimes I lift weights while watching The Daily Show. I belong to a small, cheap gym that’s within walking distance of our place. I use the treadmill in our building’s basement. I’ve started jumping rope sometimes. Are my workouts two-hour marathons? No, more like 30 or 40 minutes. Do I always feel like doing this stuff? Hell no. Sometimes I have to literally force myself to lace up my New Balances.

But I know that my metabolism is slowing down. I’m still a size 8, although my body doesn’t look the same—my waist is a bit thicker, and cellulite has rippled up in unexpected places. Some of my older pants and skirts are a bit tight. On Monday, I ate three chocolate chip cookies, a handful of chocolate Easter eggs, a Rice Krispies treat, and some mint chocolate-chip ice cream. So believe me, I am not the most disciplined girl on the block.

But I’m working at it—both for me and for my spouse. I don’t think John is shallow for being glad that I haven’t gained weight. I’m not ecstatic about how I look, but I’m satisfied. I feel pretty good. Perhaps, in the end, that’s what matters?

In my spare closet

2006-03-16T22:05:00.000-06:00

I seem to have had quite a bit of free time this week. Work is slow; we’re between publishing cycles. I’ve organized all my paper files, cleaned out my email folders, caught up on invoices, and Googled interesting websites on ex-Mormons, men in black, real-life ghost sightings, houses for sale in Evanston and Skokie, and the latest spring shoe styles.

I haven’t had any freelancing work lately, either, so I’ve gone home and taken the dog for a long walk, then hit the gym, then cooked dinner and caught up on my New Yorkers. I’ve rewatched the season opener of The Sopranos (which is completely rewatchable). I’ve added more of my favorite Diary-X entries to this site. And I’ve delved into the bowels of our spare closet (its contents include summer clothes, Moose supplies, wrapping paper and ribbons, Christmas tree ornaments, extra pillows, two suitcases, and the vacuum cleaner) to retrieve my old formal dresses, with the intention of finally letting them go.

When I was growing up, my mother kept all her old prom dresses in a suitcase in our attic. Every once in awhile, I’d ask if I could try them on. We’d go upstairs to my grandma’s third-floor room, open her closet, gently push aside her clothes, and open the wooden hatch-like door that led to the attic. I was afraid to enter that musty, narrow space, but my mom would gladly retrieve the suitcase for me, and we’d spend an hour in front of the mirror, with her telling me the story of each dress… which dance she wore it to, who escorted her, what her corsage looked like. The dresses were late-sixties mod; they had empire waists, A-line skirts, wide satin sashes. They were pale yellow, dark-sage green, icy-blue white. They felt stiff and crinkly to the touch, and they smelled old, somehow… the same smell that clung to my dad’s old folk records and college yearbooks.

It seemed natural and right to me that my mother kept those dresses, tangible memories stored in a place where she could always access them, touch them, breathe them in. So I’ve done the same thing. We don’t have much storage space in our condo (I keep my voluminous wedding dress at my parents’ house), but all of my favorite prom and college formal dresses are bunched into our spare closet. I hardly ever look at them, and I won’t wear any of them again—but I like knowing they’re there, sleeping quietly in their plastic sheathes.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was browsing at an artsy store in Lincoln Park and came across a flyer for the Glass Slipper Project, which I’d vaguely heard of before but didn’t know much about. It’s an organization that provides gently used formalwear to disadvantaged teenage girls who otherwise couldn’t afford a dress for their high school prom. And this artsy store is a drop-off location. You just come in with your dresses and leave with a tax form and a good feeling. What could be easier?

So I thought about it, and I thought about it some more. And I decided that I should donate my dresses. They’re in good shape, they’re still somewhat stylish, and what good are they doing anyone, crammed into my spare closet? So, last night, I took them all out and laid them on the couch in our study. I took each one out of its bag. I tried some of them on (probably not the best idea, although I can still zip up almost all of them). I took pictures of them, even though I already have pictures from the dances where I wore them.

There’s the long red brocade dress, the one with the slit that my mother hated, that I wore to my senior prom. My boyfriend Josh wore tails and a red bow-tie. The dress had spaghetti straps and a heart-shaped neckline. I loved it.

There’s the short black sequined dress with the halter top and flowy chiffon skirt, the one I wore to my first sorority formal as a college freshman. I went to tanning booths in preparation and got drunk with Josh on Zimas on the night of the dance. So, so young and dumb.

There’s the long sleeveless brown dress with the empire waist that I wore to my junior and senior formals, both in Chicago. At one of them, I swallowed a live goldfish. Don’t ask.

Then there’s a short, kicky black sleeveless dress with a V-neckline and a print of red and white roses. I think at least five of my sorority sisters borrowed that dress. Everyone loved it—it was flattering; it made you feel sexy. I bought it at a Merry-Go-Round store for $40 and got three years of use from it. It is really hard to part with that dress. (And in fact, I haven't actually put it in the donation pile yet.)

But I probably will. I like the idea of my dresses creating even more magical nights for people. I like the idea of a girl looking at herself in the mirror, eyes round with wonder as she sees herself, for the first time, in something other than jeans and a sweater. Maybe she’ll donate it to yet another girl when she’s a little older. Or maybe she’ll keep it in a suitcase, in her attic, and pull it out when she’s feeling old or wistful or nostalgic. Either way, I’m glad to give her the opportunity.

Birthday portrait; or, playing with Flickr and Blogger

2006-03-10T13:30:00.000-06:00

Birthday portrait
Originally uploaded by strass.

I'm just experimenting with posting photos from Flickr directly to my journal. This week, I've also learned how to allow comments on this journal from anyone, not just people who have Blogger accounts. I'm becoming quite the techie!

So anyway, here's a recent photo, taken on my 30th birthday (January 27). We were getting ready to head out for dinner at my favorite Cuban restaurant, Cafe 28. A great meal, and a great night. I feel pretty good about entering a new decade. Although I did pluck seven gray hairs from the right side of my head this morning.

Dog-walking tales; or, why it’s not so bad that we don’t have a yard

2006-03-08T14:12:00.000-06:00

There’s a group of four or five little Mexican girls, maybe nine or ten years old, who live down the street from us in a small apartment complex. Sometimes they’re playing outside when I’m walking Moose, and they always run over to him and gather around excitedly: “Hi Moose! Hi Moose! Oh, I love you, Moose! Can I pet him?? Can I walk him??”

So I let them each take a small section of the leash, and then we all shuffle down the street, a slowly moving mass of girls with one skinny black greyhound in the middle. As we walk, they pet him, scratch his ears, giggle over how skinny he is: “I can feel his bones!” Every once in awhile, I tell Moose encouragingly that he’s being such a good and patient boy, and it’s funny to see him look up toward the sound of my voice, as if he’s relieved that in the midst of the hubbub, I’m still there. He really is remarkably patient. Although I’ll continue to say no when one of the girls invariably asks if she can “ride him like a pony.”

*****

One evening we passed a lanky mailman wheeling his cart down the sidewalk. He was young and African American, maybe in his mid-twenties. He skirted us widely but grinned as he did so. “I wouldn’t even try to outrun that dog,” he declared.

*****

We’re cutting through a darkened playlot around 6:45 p.m. when we come across a middle-aged white man and his black Lab/retriever mix. The dog is running loose, weaving this way and that and sniffing bushes. She bounds up to Moose to say hello. The man follows and introduces his dog as “Treevey.” Treevey is wearing a sort of square, Velcro-fastened covering on her back that labels her a “Therapy Dog.” I ask the man about it.

“We work at the home there on the corner for mentally ill people,” he says, gesturing at the square, shabby building just north of us. “And the people there just love her. We go every week. One time we couldn’t go for two weeks in a row, and one of the residents asked for a photo of Treevey so he could look at her while she was gone.”

Moose tires of Treevey’s excitement—he usually prefers humans to dogs—and approaches the man instead, tilting his long, pointy head up for a pet. His tail is flapping. The man caresses Moose’s ears. “I love greyhounds,” he says. “They have such a kind, gentle soul.”

We leave the park together. Treevey remains unleashed. When we reach the busy intersection, the man tells Treevey to stay, and she stops at the curb. He walks out into the middle of the street, looks both ways, and then turns back to her: “Cross.” She trots neatly across the street to join him. Moose looks up at me. The only English he reliably understands includes his name, “Are you hungry?” “Wanna go for a walk?” and “Do you want dinner?” I have a feeling he isn't interested in learning any new commands.

Take II

2006-03-06T15:09:00.001-06:00

So this is my second online journal.

The first one, also called The Purple of Life, lived at http://strass.diary-x.com. Diary-X crashed and burned rather spectacularly in February 2006 and has gone to the great server cemetery in the sky, where it maintains a death grip on about one-third of the entries I wrote between March 2002 and December 2005. The other two-thirds, luckily, were cached on Yahoo and preserved on the Internet Wayback Machine, for which I am profoundly grateful. You see, in almost four years of writing, I had never bothered to back up my online journal. And yes, I’ve learned my lesson. (If you’re looking for my recovered Diary-X archives, I’m planning to place them on this new site. I just need to figure out how to organize them.)

I’ve landed at Blogger for a few reasons: one, it’s easy to post entries and photos here, and two, it’s a reliable site that’s been around for awhile and only seems to be improving. I don’t know much about coding and html, and frankly, I’m not all that interested in learning. So the simplicity of the site is a plus. And actually, I don’t intend to post entries in a “blog” format—you won’t find quippy two-line entries about what I ate for lunch or my reaction to the latest episode of The Daily Show. I’m not looking to amass hundreds of comments from readers, although of course I’d love to hear from you! My plan is to keep my old format of long-ish, essay-ish, journal-ish pieces of writing. (But I do hope to write more frequently than once a month—sadly, I was pretty lazy about posting during my last few months at Diary-X.)

If you’re brand-new to The Purple of Life, you should know that purple isn’t my favorite color. The expression actually comes from an amazingly wise woman and writer who taught creative nonfiction workshops at my alma mater. I adored Nancy N. and her work. She wrote about dying silk to make her own wedding dress and about riding a train through wintertime Russia and about life-changing notes left on kitchen tables, and I sort of worshipped her, truth be told. Soon after I graduated from college, she sent me an email that ended with this guidance: “Hold on to the purple in your life.” And I knew exactly what she meant, even though I’d never heard the expression before. That purple is the richness, the shadow, the mystery, the beauty and the bruises, the deep, dark, dusky places of life. It’s a candle in an Advent wreath, a juicy summer plum, a Kool-Aid mustache above a child’s lip, a queen’s velvet robe, the color that I wished my bedroom was when I was young. It’s what I find when I remember to keep my eyes open, and it’s what I want to write about.

To be living in December of the year 2005

2005-12-28T11:50:00.000-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

I want to write something that, years later, will make me remember what it felt like to be living in December of the year 2005, one month before my thirtieth birthday, in the city of Chicago with my husband and my dog. I am reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I am watching The Daily Show and Rome and Sopranos re-runs on television. I am listening to the new Coldplay CD and Sufjan Stevens and the Harry Connick Jr. Christmas album. I am eating Lean Cuisine lunches and yogurt and apples and chicken curry and my mom’s Christmas cookies.

I want to remember what it feels like to be sitting in my office facing the windows, the room glowing with lamps while outside is all gray and thick with clouds, the skyscrapers’ points hidden in the fog. To be wearing my favorite size-8 jeans and a gray and red button-up sweater, the gorgeous silver and marcasite earrings that John gave me for Christmas. The photos on my desk are of me and John on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland; a group shot of our wedding party; Moose sitting tall and regal in the grass; my parents, me, and my sister smiling on the back deck; my college friends and I laughing on graduation day; and a close-up of John on the beach at Cane Garden Bay in Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, smiling into the sunset.

Sometimes I feel like I still have one foot planted in the sand on that beach. This makes sense when you consider that we were there just three weeks ago. I had never been really interested in the Caribbean… an island vacation seemed so cliché, somehow; I thought of people’s computer screensavers with palm trees on them, about frozen daiquiris and drunk, pasty middle-aged Americans in sun visors, and I shuddered a little. But John really wanted a warm, relaxing getaway before tax season starts, and we have a friend who goes often to Tortola. She’s very outdoorsy and adventurous and considers volunteering with orphans in Guatemala to be a fun vacation, so I respected her opinion. We decided to spend five nights in Tortola during the first week of December. And it was heaven, just heaven, and I firmly intend to return.

No high-rises, no chain stores, not too many tourists (and not all of them were Americans)… just blue-green bays and beaches and mountains and palms and sea-grape trees and sailboats and goats in the road and dogs running in the sand, and seafood roti and coconut rice, painkillers and rum punch and Carib beer, and the two of us in a little apartment on Cane Garden Bay, eating homemade breakfast on the balcony and sleeping with the windows open at night, eschewing the air conditioner for the trade winds. I’ve never taken a trip like that, one so centered on relaxation—even the days we explored the island in a Jeep were slow-paced and stress-free. A trip that made it so easy to focus on my spouse and why I love him and how much I enjoy being with him, without e-mail and computers and laundry and dishes and meetings and dog-walking and, well, life getting in the way.

So I’m still remembering that trip quite vividly during these last days of 2005. I’m marking my one-year anniversary at a job that I love, and I’m keeping up with my freelance work, and I’m starting my second-to-last class in my master’s program. I’m volunteering at church and working out at a gym. I want to see “Brokeback Mountain” and “Munich.” I recently cried while watching “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” one of my favorite books of all time finally brought to the big screen.

*****

Sometimes I scroll back in this journal to 2002, 2003, and trying to determine how I’ve changed since then. I think my voice is different, but I can’t quite put my finger on how or why. I write less often than I did then, and I wish that wasn’t the case, but I can’t seem to discipline myself to change it.

Back in 2002 I was in awe of this city and the fact that I’d gotten here. I still feel lucky to live in Chicago. I still want to put down roots here, raise my family here, grow old with John here. I’m not as wide-eyed about the city as I once was, although I still find poetry in the oddest places. Last week I found it on my regular commute home. I was waiting for my Red Line train to arrive and vaguely wondering why the platform was so crowded. There was a definite buzz in the air… a few people were wearing Santa hats and clutching cameras…and then, what should pull into the station but the CTA holiday train!

Every year, the Chicago Transit Authority decorates one of their el trains with colored lights and runs it on all the train routes according to a set schedule. The train pulls a flatcar that carries Santa, his sled, and his reindeer (Santa’s real, the reindeer are not). I’ve caught glimpses of it a few times before, running on the tracks between buildings, a blur of colored lights and Christmas music, but I’ve never seen it pull into a station. I have to admit that I was pretty excited to ride this train, so I boarded with all the other people and found a window seat.

The inside of the car was festive and glowing with white lights and silver garland, the poles wrapped up like candy canes, the usual advertisements for divorce lawyers and newspapers replaced with silly Christmas jokes and holiday pictures. Bing Crosby was crooning over the loudspeakers. “All aboard Santa’s train,” the conductor said, as we pulled out of the station. I looked around at my fellow riders: commuters with tubes of wrapping paper in their bags (that included me), parents holding the hands of young children, a few shabby, bundled-up elderly people, a group of excitedly loud African-American teenage girls, a few Hispanic gangster-looking guys (baggy pants, tough expressions), a tall blind man with a cane. It was the usual cross-section of Chicago public transit riders, but the difference was that every person on that car was smiling, looking around happily and making cheerful eye contact with other riders. This is not my usual experience on the el, where sullen expressions and middle-distance staring are the norm.

Each time we pulled into a station, the conductor announced, “This is the CTA holiday train, all aboard!” And at each station, the eyes of people waiting on the platform lit up when we arrived and a smile came to their faces, no matter who they were or what they looked like. I just could not get over those smiles, the excitement of all those jaded city people boarding the train. Bing Crosby gave way to jazz Christmas carols, and then gospel. A CTA employee dressed like an elf entered our car and moved slowly down the aisle, giving out candy canes. And I don’t know why, but suddenly I was fighting back tears at the sheer urban beauty of it all, this unexpected gift that pulled up on the track in front of me during an ordinary commute home. This motley crew of Chicagoans all smiling at each other and eagerly accepting candy canes from a transit worker wearing a ridiculous pointed green hat.

In December 2005, I was a person who could be brought to tears by the CTA holiday train. I’m glad to be that person.

Last week in church

2005-11-11T15:45:00.000-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

Last Sunday we didn’t go to church in the building with the red door and the steeple. Instead, we slept in an extra half-hour, and then I suggested bagels. Ah, bagels. I am a simple woman who considers a freshly baked pumpernickel bagel with a smear of plain cream cheese and a strong black coffee to be an immense treat. Luckily I married a man who agrees, so we decided to walk the 15 minutes to our local bagel shop. “Let’s bring the dog,” John suggested. The mild autumn weather was still warm enough to allow breakfasting outside, so we explained to Moose that we were all “going for a walk! Going outside! You wanna go outside? Huh? Do you?” He considered our proposal and agreed that it was a good one.

The three of us rarely go for walks together. I know that sounds kind of strange and sad, considering the amount of walks a city dog gets every day, but dog-walking often feels like a chore (especially those early-morning strolls, which John and I take turns doing). So when Moose realizes that both of us are accompanying him on one of his constitutionals, his liquid-brown eyes light up, his bony butt waggles furiously, and he races down the stairs ahead of us, spinning in excited circles on each landing. (This is particularly funny given that 90% of the time he behaves much more like this.) A threesome walk usually means a trip to the dog beach or a ride in the car, which are both Extremely Big Events in our dog’s life.

But on this sunny Sunday morning, the destination involved breakfast. We set off around 10 a.m., stopping to admire our neighbor’s baby and to let Moose exchange sniffs with the beagle that just moved in next door. The leaves were beginning to turn color in full force, and as we walked down the sidewalk we passed beneath a row of brilliant yellow trees. The ground beneath our feet was crunchy and bright, and I stopped to pick up a particularly fine yellow leaf. I planned to carry it along for awhile and admire it. John turned around to see where I was, and he smiled. “I knew you’d be doing that,” he said, glancing at the leaf in my hand, and I smiled back. This is what it means to be married, I thought, to have a person who knows you that well. For a second I felt such overwhelming blessedness and good fortune that I could hardly bear it.

We walked under the el tracks, past the dry cleaners and the record shop and the flower store owned by one of our neighbors. We gaped at the stately old mansions and petted passing dogs. We turned on our neighborhood’s main shopping street, pausing to look in the windows of the expensive shoe store, choosing which ones we’d buy—black leather ankle-height boots for John, maroon and pink suede Pumas for me. And finally, we reached the bagel shop. John waited outside with Moose while I went in to order, remembering to pick up a “doggie bagel” from the jar by the register. Then, with our bagels and coffee and dog, we sat down on a nearby bench and proceeded to eat. Moose stood by patiently, waiting for bits of food after scarfing down his own snack. The sun was warm, and John was wearing his sunglasses, and I had on a red hooded zip-up sweater. People stopped to smile at Moose and ask questions about him. My coffee was rich and hot, and the leaves on the trees were russet and gold, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than right there, on that bench, with my family. There are a lot of hard things in life, things that make me worry, things that hurt. But there are also moments when it’s ridiculously easy to forget they exist.

Faith

2005-09-28T14:26:00.000-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X on September 28, 2005

Lately I’ve been struck by the thought that at age 29, the choices I make actually matter in the grand scheme of my life. The biggest choices I made when I was, say, 19 had to do with what classes to take next semester and whether to hook up with someone at a party. I mean, of course there was the potential to make life-altering decisions back then—choosing a major, choosing to not to make a dumb mistake with that “someone.” But instead of majoring in history, I could’ve chosen English or philosophy and taken the exact same career path that I’ve followed. (And luckily, none of my drunken hookups ever went too far.)

Now when I make a decision, it’s like throwing a stone in a smooth, flat lake and watching the ripples grow, curving outward, affecting a future that I can’t really see. I (and John) have chosen to let four years of marriage go by without ever seriously considering having a baby. Only now, as I live the last months of my twenties, have we had a few of these tentative conversations: “Well, maybe we should start thinking about it next summer…”

I am realizing that this choice to wait will impact my life in many ways. How old will I be when I become a mother? How will that affect how many more children I have? How old will we be when we’re “empty nesters” again? Then there’s my job. At 16 I chose to work part-time in a video store; it could’ve been a supermarket or a dress shop and it wouldn’t have made any difference. Obviously it’s not like that now; the job decisions I make will affect where and how I get my next job, how my salary grows, how far I advance up the “ladder,” etc.

I’m not saying I have any regrets, oh no. It’s just sort of surprising to realize that I’m an adult living a real life, with a husband and a career and a mortgage and birth control pills and the capability to make Big Decisions—and no one to catch me or fix it if I make the wrong ones. It reminds me of when I graduated from college and moved into an apartment with Rachael. There was no campus community anymore, no sorority or class schedule or school rules. We were just two women paying rent and working. I remember driving to the grocery store back then and realizing that I could eat mac and cheese or Frosted Flakes for dinner every night; there was no dining hall, no meal plan, no parents insisting on a well-balanced plate. (Even in college, my parents had been somewhat in charge of my life; they once threatened to cut me off financially if I went to New Orleans for spring break.) The freedom I felt upon graduating was intoxicating.

I suppose growing up and living life means losing your safety net, in a way. Maybe we’re all wearing blindfolds, feeling and listening our way forward, doing the best we can to make the right decisions so we don’t walk off the side of a cliff. None of us can really know what’s around the next corner.

Eleven years

2005-07-28T14:46:00.000-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

The woman who answered the door did not look thrilled to see me. “Can I help you?” she asked in a detached, semi-suspicious tone.

“Hi, yes, my name is Amy _______, and you bought this house from my parents in 1994,” I said, with my best, brightest, not-a-stalker-or-Mormon-missionary smile.

Her face changed; she smiled, looked at me and John and opened the door a little wider. “I remember you! You’re the older daughter, right? With the pink bedroom?”

“Yup, that’s me.” I explained that this was the first time I’d returned home to Pennsylvania since my parents moved to Michigan, and would she mind if my husband and I walked around in the backyard a little?

“Of course not! And why don’t you come in? You can look around inside, too.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I might be able to go inside, to walk around the house where I lived the first eighteen years of my life. Now, a month later, those few moments I spent looking at the living room, walking up the stairs, standing in the middle of my old bedroom—they seem like a blur. My heart was beating faster than usual, and my voice sounded husky and wrong, and tears were gathering behind my eyes during those five, maybe six minutes. The woman got her toddler son up from his nap—his room is my sister’s old room, their grade-school daughter has mine—and carried him on her hip as she walked around with us.

They’d pulled up the carpets and refinished the wood floors beneath—very nice. The wallpaper border with the marching white geese still encircled the little kitchen. My mom had loved those geese, bought a goose-shaped spoon-rest and napkins to match. The furniture in their living room looked old. There were baby toys strewn around. My room was painted a cheerful yellow. I stood in that room, looked out the window at the view of the ranch house across the street, the lawn where we’d sledded and built snow forts, the cul-de-sac where I’d watch for Josh’s car. The view that I’d looked at every day for eighteen years. Even after eleven years, it had not changed.

“You know, we didn’t have the heart to paint over the message you left in your closet,” the woman told me. John looked over at me with a Huh? expression on his face.

“Oh my gosh, I’d forgotten about that,” I said, breathless, so overloaded and overwhelmed I could barely process it all.

“Take a look, it’s still there,” she continued, sliding open her daughter’s closet, that same white wooden door that I’d plastered with ads torn out of Sixteen and Teen Beat—Corey Haim, Kate Moss, Eternity perfume. And I got down on my knees and peered under the wooden shelf where I’d kept my shoes, and there it was… my eighteen-year-old penciled handwriting, declaring my love for this house, my sorrow at leaving behind the only life I’d ever known, the pain of moving twelve hours away from my “first true love,” Josh. It was dated July 5, 1994. I remembered lying on my back on the pink-carpeted floor, halfway in the closet, writing it. I remembered how it felt to leave this house.

A few minutes later, after I thanked the woman profusely, John and I walked through the backyard. I showed him the hedges that my father had planted, now sadly overgrown. Where he’d hung the homemade swing that my sister and I would spin each other in. The huge forsythia bush that we made our “shrub club”—no boys allowed! Where our dog Bessy was buried. My favorite hiding spots, the outdoor nooks and crannies that seemed so wild and magical to an eight-year-old. Where my parents always posed us for Easter Sunday photos. Under the apple tree, where I sat on a bee when I was four. The fish pond that my dad had built, with a waterfall and real lily pads and beautiful big stones—still there. I saw the goldfish circling lazily around and around in the brackish water. It was all still there.

On Memorial Day

2005-06-03T20:52:00.001-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

On Memorial Day, John and I decided it was time for the annual beautification of our miniscule back deck. We drove over to our neighborhood garden store and ambled among the outdoor shelves in the sunlight, choosing the perfect white and lavender impatiens for our railing trough and a few bright-red geraniums for our hanging pot. The place was crowded, and we waited in line with two gay men holding a huge stone fountain, sunglassed yuppies with slats of gerbera daisies and pansies, and older couples grasping carts of ornamental trees and ivy. Everyone seemed very happy, and how could they not be? Sunshine, dogs and kids and puddles from the hoses, mild air, flowers everywhere.

Back home, we crouched on our deck, with its view of apartment buildings and the top tips of the Golden Arches and a blue smidge of Lake Michigan, digging our hands in the new dirt and planting our flowers. John scrubbed all the pigeon crap off the wooden floor. We set up the trough on the railing and hung the geranium pot. Now we just need to bring up our deck chairs from storage, and voila—our tiny patch of urban summer living is ready to go.

It was a good weekend. John and I kicked it off with our first babysitting stint—we watched our neighbors’ seven-month-old baby girl, who is nicknamed Sly. Her parents were dying for a dinner out, and we were happy to lend an (inexperienced) hand. Observations:

--It is hard to refrain from using my “talking to dogs” voice with babies. (“Do you like your dinner? Do you? Do you? Oh, such a good girl!”)
--Babies in sleep sacks are insanely adorable. It’s a baby in a bag. So. Cute.
--A seven-month-old can have a surprisingly firm grip when she wants to feed herself that spinach-and-oatmeal dinner combo.
--Good God, but it takes forever to feed a baby. With every spoonful that goes in, about half comes back out, and then must be wiped from the chin and cheeks and spooned back in… rinse, repeat.
--Diapers nowadays do not have band-aid–like adhesive strips like the diapers I put on my Cabbage Patch Kids in 1984. Instead they have some sort of magic velcro that doesn’t actually look like velcro. Imagine how long it took a 29-year-old and a 30-year-old to figure this out. No, longer than that.
--A baby head pressed against your cheek is a really nice feeling.

Anyway, Sly went to sleep around 7:15, at which point we gorged on homemade ravioli and watched The Office Special while watching our friends’ cat play in a box. Good times.

On Saturday, one of my dearest college friends and her husband came for a visit, having successfully deposited their 19-month-old at his parents’ house in the suburbs. We started drinking at 3:30 and headed downtown for dinner at 7:00, returning in a few hours to pick up with the drinking again. Many bottles of merlot and shiraz (“It tastes… musty… at the back of my throat. Sort of like dust.” “I’d say you’re a Malbec-spert!”) were consumed, new words for the Oxford English Dictionary were invented, the merits of soft porn were discussed in detail. I love my friends.

Sunday was a wine hangover and breakfast out and the new Star Wars movie. Monday was flower shopping and freelancing and then, biking ten miles round-trip down to Navy Pier, where I’ve never been before because it is a-swarm with tourists. So many tourists! But it was a fun, holiday-ish place to wander around, and the views of the skyline from there are awe-inspiring. We soaked up the sun and breathed in the wafting scent of elephant ears and stopped for burgers and beers at a tavern, which did slow the bike ride home a bit, but nevertheless was the perfectly right choice.

Musings on unrelated topics that conclude on a rather sad note

2005-05-06T20:42:00.001-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

Comments made by passersby during recent walks with Moose:

Dodgy guy loitering at street corner: Looks like you abuse your dog.
Me: ...uh...

Teenage couple walking toward us.
Girl to boy: Eww, look at that nasty dog! It looks like a big black horse! Nasty.
Me, silently: Bitch.

Little boy chasing a soccer ball into our path: Hey, what kind of dog is that?
Me: He’s a greyhound. He used to be a racing dog.
Boy: How old is he?
Me: He’s seven.
Boy, with look of pure wonder on his face: Wow! I’m seven, too! Wow.

*****

Tomorrow John and I are going to a Cubs game, which I’m pretty excited about. I’m no die-hard sportsfan, but there’s something about Wrigley Field that captivates even an unathletic bookworm such as myself… the organ music, the ivy, the lack of glowing billboards and stupid mascot antics and electronic advertisements. It just feels simple and American and authentic. Also, there’s cold Old Style and warm soft pretzels.

During our first summer in Chicago, John and I went to four or five Cubs games. (Tickets were easier to get then, before the Cubbies almost made it to the World Series.) I’ll never forget what I wore to my first game: shorts, flip-flops, and a short-sleeved shirt. I was utterly shocked at how many of the twenty-something women of Chicago’s North Side dress to attend a baseball game: skimpy sundresses, heeled shoes, outfits I’d wear out on a Saturday night. Amusing, actually. Maybe it’s my marital status talking here, but tomorrow I’ll be decked out in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of Roos, and a hooded sweatshirt in case it’s chilly. Ladies. It’s a baseball game. Must we strive to look sexy all of the damn time?

*****

A few nights ago, while hamstering along on the treadmill, I watched a disturbing documentary on the liberation of concentration camps after WWII, called “Memory of the Camps.” (And no, the irony did not escape me—running in place in a quest for fitness and slimness while watching horrifyingly emaciated people try to digest a bowl of soup.) I ended up working out an extra 20 minutes in order to watch the end of the documentary, which is basically just footage shot by the liberators along with a sparse script written in 1945. I highly recommend watching this program. I’ve seen a lot of films and read a lot about the Holocaust, but I’ve never seen footage like this. It is, simply, unbelievable.

When I was studying in Vienna at the end of college, our group took a field trip (if you can call it that; the term seems too cheerful, somehow) to Mauthausen, one of the smaller concentration camps located in Austria. The prisoners were worked to death hauling stone out of a quarry, or they were starved, shot, gassed, or frozen to death. Jews, Russians, Gypsies, Catholic priests, and gay men were exterminated there, among others.

It was a life-jolting experience to visit this place. I remember being utterly silent during the entire three hours we spent there, and not taking photos of the gas chambers because it somehow felt disrespectful. The weather was mild and sunny, and the Austrian countryside spread out green and placid around us. There were actually some houses and farms overlooking the camp complex. I can’t imagine living so close to such a tangible reminder of human depravity.

En route to the camp, our busload of college students stopped to eat at a little Austrian restaurant, and some people bitched and complained that they couldn’t understand the menu, that none of the food appealed to them, etc. A few hours later, standing at the bottom of that rock quarry where so many men met their death in the freezing Austrian winters, I was struck hard with shame. (Soon after I returned from Vienna, I wrote about this experience for an essay contest. I won $50.)

Home is where

2005-04-18T15:54:00.001-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

Last week, walking up the stairs to the el platform on a mild spring night, I smelled something—I think it was the tar on the wood, something pitchy and salty and warm—and I was immediately assaulted by a memory, sharp and clear, of walking on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, at night with my parents, in the early 1980s, surrounded by colored lights and carnival barkers and the tinny music of the Ferris wheel and the smells of French fries and cotton candy and saltwater, with the sky big and dark overhead and the Atlantic big and dark to the east. I was 5, 7, 10 years old, and summer vacations at the Jersey shore were the closest I’d come to pure magic. Even now, the idea of the boardwalk at night just thrills me—it’s a place of wonder, where anything can happen. My family vacationed at the shore almost every year until I was 18, when we relocated to Michigan, and it was one of many pieces of my life that I had to leave behind.

Eleven years later, I’m finally returning to the part of Pennsylvania—Bucks County—where I grew up. John and I will spend six days out East in June, lounging around the beaches on the island of Cape May (with an excursion or two to Wildwood), staying at a B&B in historic New Hope, and visiting with my grandmother. Obviously, I’ll be visiting my past, too. A lot has happened to me in 11 years, between the ages of 18 and 29, and I’m curious to see how I fit now in the places where I grew up… how it feels to see my old house, with the tree my dad planted for me outside my bedroom window. To drive by the video store where I worked for two years, by the Catholic grade school where I dreaded gym class and had my first kiss. To see the expensive additions that have changed the face of my 1920s high school (of which my mother is also an alum). To walk the colonial streets of Doylestown, to stop for a drink in one of its wood-paneled pubs, to stroll around New Hope, the site of so many dates when I was a teenager. I can’t begin to imagine what it’ll feel like to experience all this as a woman with a college degree and a husband and a career, with a completely different life.

*****

Moving to Michigan was the hardest thing I’ve experienced in my life so far. It seems silly—how traumatic is a move, for pete’s sake?—but no one in my family wanted to go, and our hearts broke in the leaving. My dad had been laid off, and the only real job offer he received was in western Michigan, so we left. I will never forget the total and complete sadness I felt when we closed the door of our empty house and drove away. That house was a member of our family, it seemed, and for months strange people had been tramping through it, asking about the furnace and the hardwood floors, and now it wasn’t ours anymore and we had to become Midwesterners. God, I get a lump in my throat just remembering it.

I still don’t really consider myself a Midwesterner, but in time the wound healed. And after four years in my Michigan college town, and three years in Grand Rapids, and now three years in Chicago, I haven’t gotten attached to any physical location the way I did to my hometown. Since 1994, I’m not sure where “home” has been for me. I suppose it’s where my parents are, in Grand Rapids, although I’ve never actually lived in their house. John grew up in Grand Rapids and his parents still live there, so to him it will always be home.

*****

Now my parents are moving. My father was laid off once again, and in another utterly cruel twist of fate, he hasn’t been able to find a comparable job in Michigan, where the unemployment rate is the worst in the country (he’s an executive, and he’s 58—you do the math). After months of sending out 140 resumes and living off part of their 401(k) and going on interviews that lead to nowhere, my parents decided to accept a job offer from an old friend in Virginia Beach, who wants my dad to run his company. He’s a stand-up guy, and the company is solid, and my parents like that part of the country. So even though they’re devastated to leave my sister and me in the Midwest, their house is on the market. My parents are preparing to move back East.

So yeah, big changes in my family. Holidays will be different. True, visiting my parents will be like a mini-vacation, what with Virginia’s colonial history and the Outer Banks and the Chesapeake Bay. This June’s trip will be the first of many back East, and I have to say that the prospect makes me happy.

But home. Where will I consider home? The only thing that made Grand Rapids home was the fact that my parents had an address there for 11 years. Virginia Beach will never be home for me. After all these years, Bucks County is more hometown than home. So, of course, it’s Chicago. It’s Chicago, and it’s wherever I am with John. But it’s strange—for the first time, I won’t be saying “I’m going home for Christmas.” I suppose I’m old enough to create my own home now.

Words cannot

2005-03-03T21:03:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

You may have heard about it, the execution-style murders of Judge Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother, which took place here in Chicago on Monday, February 28. How the judge arrived home from work around 6 p.m. and found a pool of blood seeping from the basement door. How she ran screaming into the street for help.

Someone broke into their home on Lakewood, smashed a back window and shot Michael Lefkow and his mother-in-law multiple times. He was 64. She was 89. Both were frail—he recovering from surgery on his Achilles tendon, she needing two canes in order to walk. Her canes and his crutch were found upstairs. They were killed in the basement.

The Lefkows live five blocks away from us. I often walk Moose by their house after work. John and I pass their block whenever we walk to neighborhood bars and restaurants and shops. It’s a block that we know.

The Lefkows are strong, committed Episcopalians who are active in the Chicago diocese and have many ties to my church. I found out about the murders from an email that our pastor sent to all parishioners. My assistant pastor visited Mr. Lefkow at home last week as he recovered from his surgery.

The Lefkows have four daughters that they raised in that house. One is engaged to be married this summer. Michael Lefkow was a lawyer, and his office downtown had a view of the federal building where his wife worked. They commuted every day together and often shared lunch. They’d been married a long, long time.

The front page of the Chicago Tribune this morning was dedicated to the murders. John took one look at the photo of Michael Lefkow and said, “I recognize him. I’ve seen him in church.” I talked to John around 7:30 p.m. tonight—I often call him at work in the evenings during tax season, just to say hi—and he said that he can’t stop thinking about it, the fact that he recognizes the man from church.

Tonight I walked Moose past Lakewood. I was surprised to see a cluster of news vans still pulled up around the street—at least seven of them. Bright lights, police cars, cameras, police tape. The block cordoned off. It was cold, and some of the news cameramen gathered around Moose, commenting on his coat and asking about his racing history, petting his head and rubbing his ears and smiling. Their job can’t be enjoyable at times like these.

The neighborhood was dark and quiet, not many people out, and as I peered into the lit houses and glanced down the red-brick alleyways, I felt an indescribable sadness, and my whole being was consumed by a prayer for that family, the judge and her four daughters. And then I came across a friend walking home from yoga class, and we talked about work and summer and her sorrow over recently losing her cat to cancer. And then Moose and I arrived home, and I put in a Sam Phillips CD and made a dinner of grilled chicken and green beans with almonds and red wine, and I sat down with a travel magazine. I am not a judge who has sentenced white supremacists and mobsters. My husband is not a lawyer who’s made enemies in his work. I do not have to fear retribution for anything. But nevertheless, I can’t stop thinking about what happened on Monday five blocks from my home. Words cannot describe.

“Lost in wonder, love, and praise”

2004-06-22T13:35:00.002-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

Three years ago today, I stood in front of friends, family members, one priest, and two photographers and agreed to bind my life to John’s. “I will love you and honor you all the days of my life,” I told him, and he promised the same. I was so incredibly happy that I was actually bouncing up and down a little in my big white dress. I remember that John was very tan, and his grin—one of the first things I’d noticed about him two years earlier—was very wide.

Later, he told me that during most of the ceremony he was afraid he was going to throw up. He gets nervous like that sometimes.

It’s kind of cliché to say that your wedding was the happiest day of your life, but honestly, June 22, 2001, was the most joy-filled day I’ve yet spent on this earth. In almost every picture taken that day, I’m wearing a face-splitting smile. Our guests sang the opening hymn, "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," so lustily that our priest complimented them. His homily was perfect, although sadly I can’t remember much of it today. While we took pictures at the altar after the ceremony, the skies opened up and it poured dark rain. But half-hour later, when we stepped into Uncle Chuck’s old blue Mercedes to head to the reception, the sun was breaking golden through the clouds. Our reception, held under a white tent on the lawn of a Victorian mansion-turned-restaurnat, looked exactly as I’d hoped it would: candles glowing on the tables, white lights hanging everywhere, all set against a backdrop of green grass, green trees, and an old mansion. The DJ played only the songs we’d requested (there was no Hokey Pokey, no Chicken Dance, no bouquet toss, no garter shenanigans). People danced. Friends and fathers gave hilarious and emotional toasts. I wanted that night to never end.

We left for our honeymoon the next morning, setting out on a 16-hour drive to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where we rented a beach house in the village of Duck. I still remember balancing my journal on my lap somewhere in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, frantically scribbling down every memory I could summon from the night before. I wasn’t sure what lay ahead for us, but I didn’t want to lose one moment of what had just passed.

Put plainly, our first three years of marriage have been good ones. We annoy the hell out of each other sometimes, but yet we can travel in foreign countries together with success. We make each other laugh and we make each other think. Sometimes we become frustrated with each other’s faults, real and imagined. I have been known to raise my voice. But when we argue, we have lines we don’t cross, and I’m proud that we stick to those. I think of our union as one of best friends, partners, lifetime roommates with “benefits.” It’s a model that works really well for us. Sometimes I look at him, and I know, in my mind and in my gut, that I’ve sealed myself to a person who will always be with me and honor the vows we made. And sometimes, when I’m kneeling in the pew after communion on Sundays, I pray for the humility and grace and strength to be worthy of that love, to not take that love for granted. It’s so easy to take love for granted.

I’m still not sure what lies ahead for us—we’re not even 30. But I’m beginning to realize that the unknown isn’t scary, and the unknown doesn’t really matter. Because whatever happens to us, neither of us will be alone. And when death does part us, we’ll have created something beautiful and complex and strong and weatherbeaten and true—a marriage—and it will be one of my life’s greatest accomplishments.

Tax Day, and catching up

2004-04-15T21:06:00.001-05:00

Originally posted on Diary-X

From now until January 2005, my husband will get home from work before six o’clock, not after nine o’clock. He will sleep in with me on Saturdays, and we’ll make scrambled eggs and coffee and read the paper together. O happy, blessed Tax Day! This time of year, the end of tax season, always feels like the start of my summer. Later sunsets, warmer weather, and someone to grill me a chicken breast. Life is good.

So last week was Holy Week, and…

…John, who suffers from pretty bad heartburn, had an endoscopy, which went fine (or as well as things can go when you’re sedated and have multiple tubes snaking down your throat). John has no ulcers to speak of, so the doctor’s just going to up his heartburn medicine. He also commended us for placing cement blocks under the head of our bed—apparently this is a great way to combat heartburn. I’m getting used to slowly sliding down the bed as I sleep, waking up with my feet dangling off the bottom. Oh, the sacrifices one must make in a marriage…

…I started my spring class, a poetry writing workshop. And I don’t think I’m the worst poet in the room. (This is the kind of thing I worry about, tiresome perfectionist that I am.) I’ve taken many a fiction writing workshop, but never poetry, so I jumped at the chance to learn the craft. For my first poem, I wrote about Moose. I know, I know: isn’t that something a crazy dog lady would do? But I didn’t want to share deep dark family secrets or embarrassing emotional stuff right off the bat—I hardly know these people. I was actually proud of my work (it’s not a sappy, I’m-a-freak-about-my-dog kind of thing). I’m debating whether or not to post it here. Not sure yet…

…I went to my first neighborhood block club meeting. It was held in an old Jewish synagogue. There were about twenty people in attendance—a few white yuppies, an Indian guy, a Vietnamese guy, a black guy, an older white woman, an older gay man, a grizzled guy with a long ponytail who took copious notes, and a blue-haired dogwalker wearing biker half-gloves on his hands. It was a good feeling to be there; it gave me a sense of community. And I also enjoyed being inside the synagogue, looking at the Hebrew carvings, reading the announcements for Passover events. I just finished the book Girl Meets God, so I felt like I had some understanding of what takes place in a Jewish house of worship. (I recommend that book, by the way. It’s so refreshing to read intelligent spiritual writing that’s not all touchy-feely, syrupy evangelistic stuff—and that doesn’t have an axe to grind. The author is very real, very human, and not sanctimonious at all.)…

…I went to our church’s Good Friday service alone and knelt in the darkened sanctuary, listening to the story of the Passion and, as I do every year, trying to understand the magnitude of what I profess to believe. Then, less than 48 hours later, we celebrated Easter, incense and fancy hats and smiles and alleluias and an embarrassing moment in which I actually teared up during the hymn “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” and had to stop singing and bite the inside of my cheek in an effort to compose myself. I have no idea why that happened…

…the pigeons had babies. The three of them are mashed together in the nest, ungainly and matted with scrawny necks and big black eyes. Their mother keeps a careful eye on them from the rooftop next door. I’m tempted to walk up to the nest for a close look, but then I picture Momma Pigeon swooping in and clawing at my eyes, so I keep my distance. (She's somewhat evil looking—charcoal gray, with those glittery red pigeon eyes.) A few weeks ago I wished the pigeons were perched over our door instead of our neighbor’s, but now that I see the tributaries of bird poop running down her screen door, I’ve changed my mind…

…while I was walking Moose one afternoon, we passed a scruffy-looking man on the sidewalk who paused to ask this question: “Have you ever eaten dog meat?” When I replied that I hadn’t, half-amused and half-horrified, he kept on walking. These are the times when I’m grateful Moose doesn’t understand much English beyond "dinner" and his own name.

Images of mid-March

2004-03-25T21:38:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

There is a pigeon nesting in the alcove above our neighbor’s back door. When I bring out the recycling, I always pause to greet her. She built that rounded tangle of twigs so that her plump gray body would fit perfectly inside it. Her tail feathers push up against the brick wall behind her, and she stares at me, head tilted. Moose doesn’t seem to notice her, as he follows me out onto the deck and gazes longingly down the winding wooden stairs that terrify him so much. (Not even a “Pupperoni” strip, the kind that smell so good I want to put them on my pizza, will lure him down that treacherous staircase.)

Last night, when I stepped outside to feel the warm night breeze and recycle the Tribune, I found half of a smashed eggshell at my feet. The pigeon was in her nest, silent and staring. I wondered if she knew.

***

In the morning, I’ve taken to sitting in one of the two seats on the bus that face backward. I watch the downtown buildings receding in front of my eyes, shrinking smaller and smaller, and my head whirls slightly at the strangeness, the newness of the view. (I think of riding in the back of our old wood-paneled station wagon, making faces at strangers in the car behind us.)

So after more than two years of the same commute, rumbling past the same buildings on the same streets every day, I discovered something. There’s an old, rusty water tower in the South Loop, just west of the Pacific Garden Mission, and on it someone has spray-painted, graffiti-like, the words MAKE A WISH. I noticed it out the back window of the bus, and I watched it—a public, yet somehow secret, message silently offered to thousands of people in this huge city—until the words became too small to read and the bus turned the corner.

***

My downstairs neighbor is loved. It said so, right there on a scrap of looseleaf taped to his front door: “I love you,” scrawled in red ink. On the welcome mat were a pair of men’s running shoes and a pair of black high heels, jumbled on top of each other.

***

Our friends R. and J. came to visit us last weekend. They brought their eighteen-month-old daughter, Annika, with them. They bring her everywhere, even to Malawi, Africa, where they spent the last two months. This was their second trip to Africa; R. is a doctor and has done two medical residencies in African hospitals, while J., a nurse, volunteers at an orphanage.

Annika walks and explores, moving from room to room with surprisingly quick steps, blowing on unlit candle wicks and pressing the buttons on the TV. She learned Moose’s name in about three seconds: “Mmmmmoosh!” She gets up at 6 a.m. every single morning. She doesn’t like highchairs. She does like her momma, and her face lights up whenever J. walks into the room. She is long and thin, with light caramel-colored skin and an unexpected pot belly. She makes your arms itch to hold her, but she does not like to be held.

After Annika was in bed, the grownups sat in the living room with March Madness and two bottles of good red wine from Napa, and R. pulled out his laptop to show us photos from their trip. We saw elephants, and the wide, clean shoreline of Lake Malawi, and Annika playing in the dirt in a green sundress, surrounded by small African children with impossibly gleaming white teeth.

The last photo was actually a short video that R. took with their digital camera, a video of nursery school children singing a native welcome song when R., J., and Annika visited. (They knew the person who’d started the school—a rare establishment in such an impoverished village, where grandparents raise scores of children whose parents have died of AIDS.) The children’s loud, high, exuberant voices, their hands clapping in rhythm, filled our living room. The camera panned around on their beautiful wide-eyed faces, the cracked plaster schoolroom walls, the sunlight shining through the open windows. When it ended, I asked R. to play it again. I don’t know why I had tears in my eyes.

Sometimes it's past midnight

2004-03-17T16:30:00.001-06:00

Originally posted on Diary-X

I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with vegetarian potstickers in a nice wasabi sauce (thanks, Trader Joe’s!) and the scratchy Anthology recordings of the Beatles’ White Album. A far cry from 2002, but it’s all I could manage this year, what with dog-walking duties right after work and a severe disdain for drunken hordes of twenty-somethings wearing green plastic beads and shamrock stickers on their cheeks. I’d love to be sitting in a small, dark pub right now, sipping my first stateside Smithwick’s and tapping my toes as traditional Irish musicians do their thing, but alas. This year ’tis not to be.

It’s probably best that I’m going beer-free this evening. Lately, I’ve had a nagging suspicion that I’ve gained a pound or two. We don’t have a scale; I’ve always judged my body by how it looks, not how much it weighs. I honestly don’t care about the numbers—if my jeans zip, I’m happy. And they still zip; they just feel a little…tight. I will admit that I’ve been making some poor food choices lately, and my workouts have been subpar. Hence, the scare of the week: After work today I popped into Old Navy to procure a pair of shorts for the summer. (Yes, it snowed all morning, but still. I will continue to focus on shorts-wearing weather.) I grabbed a few different styles in size 6, 8, and 10—I’m usually an 8, but one never knows with these cheap retailers. When I got into the dressing room, I grabbed a 10 and slipped them on, expecting bagginess. But no—the cute blue shorts fit perfectly. Like a glove, only, you know, over my hips. I began mentally hyperventilating. Size 10 shorts are not! supposed! to fit me! like a glove! I whipped them off, checked the label, and breathed an audible sigh of relief upon discovering that I’d actually grabbed the size 8 pair. I guess I do care about the numbers.

I’m not sure how to creatively segue into my next subject, so I’ll just dispense with creativity and say that yesterday was election day in Illinois. The good Democrats of this state gave John Kerry the final delegates he needed to gain the nomination. (You’re welcome, John Kerry!) Since we just moved a few months ago, I wasn’t quite sure where to vote, so I had to do a bit of trekking around our neighborhood after work. It was cold, and I was wearing my cheap uncomfortable boots from Payless, and I began to silently whine as I waited at a busy intersection: It’s windy, and that freak guy across the street is staring at me, and I just want to go home and eat a pound of walnut-gorgonzola tortellini (see poor eating choices, above), and when will these stupid SUVs stop blowing their stupid horns at each other? Suddenly I realized what I was doing, and I shut myself up, aghast. I know it sounds cliché, but I thought of all the women in the Middle East who want to vote and can’t, and who would gladly walk six blocks on a paved surface to get to the polls, faces free to feel the air, and I was mortified at my behavior.

Sometimes I suspect that perhaps I am not the world’s most selfless person. Sometimes it’s past midnight, and I can’t sleep, and I lie in bed listening to the husband sighing in his sleep and the dog kicking his back legs against the dresser as he races around the track in his dreams, and I think, I wish I was a better person. I wonder why I don’t want a baby—is it pure selfishness? would a better person want a baby?—and I wonder if I’m really a good spouse or if I just haven’t been tested yet in our blessed, peaceful marriage. I think about how cynical I can be, the sharp sarcasm of my tongue when I’m commenting about politicians or the news. I worry that I am a faker Christian, a Sunday-morning-only Christian. Why aren’t I volunteering at our parish’s weekly lunch for the homeless? Why aren’t I praying regularly every day, reading my Book of Common Prayer that sits, covered in a fine layer of dust, on my nighttable?

This is the hole I dug myself into last Friday night. It’s a lonely feeling, lying awake in the dark while your spouse sleeps, wondering if, perhaps, you are a shallow person. Eventually I fell asleep, and in the morning, I decided to try on a new coat of patience and humility and kind speech. And I’ve already failed a few times since then, but you know, I’ve also succeeded a few times. Maybe the fact that it’s Lent helps. I don’t know. But I suppose it’s a lifelong project, trying to be better, moving toward light, and the important thing is to not forget to try. (Note: It would be a lot easier to succeed at the kind speech part if there wasn't a general election in seven months.)

Two tables

2004-02-17T21:44:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

We were sitting at the kitchen table in the apartment that we shared, Rachael and I. We had graduated from college two months earlier and were living on the first floor of an old Victorian house near downtown Grand Rapids. We had real jobs in the real world—she worked in public relations for a think tank (I never did understand what its employees were supposed to be thinking about); I was a glorified admin assistant in a corporate communications department, scrounging around for opportunities to write and edit in between filing and answering the phones. It was late July.

We had made a chicken Caesar salad for dinner. In the middle of our meal, Rachael put down her fork, turned to me and asked: “Is this all there is?”

I knew that she was not talking about the food. (In our apartment, there was always a box of Rice Krispies and a bag of marshmallows for post-meal sweet cravings. The girl was a Rice Krispie treat-making machine, and I happily kept her in business.) No, she was talking about how the weather was warm and green and sunny, and we were spending our days pent-up in gray upholstered cubes, like we would be in the fall, and winter, and spring. I suspected that sitting in a desk chair for eight hours a day was having an adverse effect on my weight, and I felt old and tired by ten o’clock at night. Gone was the off-campus house full of girls, the spontaneous late-night chats in someone’s bedroom, the communal meals in front of Simpsons re-runs, the cigarette shared on the front porch, the flurry of someone always leaving or getting home at all hours of the day or night. Now there was routine. Mind-numbing routine. We were done with school, we were living adult lives in the adult world, and, well, it kinda sucked. Was this how it would be from now on? Was this life?

“I hope not,” I answered. Her expression mirrored my feelings: a little sad, a little worried, a little disillusioned.

I remembered that conversation this past weekend, on Valentine’s Day, sitting across from my husband at a little table at Vivo, an Italian restaurant in the West Loop. It was around nine-thirty, and we were waiting for our entrees to arrive. There was a half-finished bottle of Chianti and a tall, half-melted red candle between us. The movie Roman Holiday was being projected on sheets of white gauze hanging from the ceiling, so whenever I looked over John’s shoulder I was treated to mopeds and Audrey Hepburn and the Spanish Steps. We were surrounded by several of the Beautiful People, and we’d attempted to disguise ourselves as two of them. We were having fun.

And suddenly, that kitchen-table conversation from almost six years ago flashed through my mind. And I thought, if this is all there is, I am happy with that. Life is good. I have this man, this man across the table from me in the black v-neck sweater, and he loves me and I love him and he will always be with me. I have a good job where I don’t file or answer phones, and I fill my spare time with challenging freelance work and classes that I’m taking toward a master’s degree. I belong to a spiritually and intellectually stimulating church. I own a home that I love. I live in an exciting city and I see new and different things every day. We have enough money to go out and celebrate our relationship with a damn good meal.

If this is all there is, I’m satisfied.

Version 28.0

2004-01-28T16:23:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

Just a few days ago, I was a 27-year-old Roman Catholic. Now I’m a 28-year-old Episcopalian. Funny how life works.

John and I officially joined the ranks of the Episcopal Church on Sunday, in a very moving ceremony officiated by the bishop and attended by my in-laws. My parents didn’t come. I don’t think this was out of snobbery or disappointment or a desire to boycott the occasion; they’re just not big travelers, and they have an old poodle that deteriorates rapidly when kenneled, and there was a lot of snow. And anyway, I was simply being “received” into the church (that’s how Catholics and Orthodox who are already confirmed—I was at age 13—make the switch to Anglicanism). John was being confirmed—renewing his commitment to our faith and making the adult pledge to live a Christian life—and that’s a much bigger deal.

The bishop, a somewhat flaky yet reassuringly warm, twinkly-eyed man born in Panama, laid his hands on John’s head, while his parents and I placed our hands on his shoulders and the congregation looked on. The bishop said, “Defend, O Lord, your servant John with your heavenly grace, that he may continue yours forever, and daily increase in your Holy Spirit more and more, until he comes to your everlasting kingdom.”

“Amen,” we all replied.

When John turned away, I think there were tears in his eyes. I know there were tears in mine, and his parents were bright-eyed.

When my turn came, the bishop clasped my right hand in both of his and said, “Amy, we recognize you as a member of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, and we receive you into the fellowship of this Communion. God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless, preserve, and keep you.”

“Amen,” we all replied.

And when we returned to our pew, I reflected on the year-and-a-half-long journey that led us to this day. It wasn’t easy for me to decide to leave my family’s denomination, and I imagine John felt a twinge or two as well. It's been a kind of uprooting. But I know that my faith has grown exponentially since we discovered this little Episcopal parish, and I’m proud that we did this together, for each other; that we’re adopting this as our family faith. (I don’t think you need children to be considered a family.) It’s something that we can both share in equally. It’s a place where we can both feel at home. Sunday was a happy day for us.

And then yesterday, I did the whole turning-28 thing. Unlike last year’s birthday depression, my day was actually quite pleasant, largely because I had the foresight to take it off. (I did have class at night, so it wasn’t a full holiday, but I slept until 10 a.m. and if that’s not a holiday, I don’t know what is.) I drank my coffee leisurely, without having to clutch it between my knees on the train, and I read the Travel and Perspective sections of Sunday’s paper. I talked to my mom and my grandmom. I played with the digital camera. I bonded with Moose. I watched the (heaps and heaps of) snow fall. I read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, which I love for making me literally laugh out loud. (Thanks, Al Franken, you national treasure, you!) I climbed around on the Stairmaster for awhile. I ate a chocolate doughnut. I listened to Alison Krauss. When I got home from class, I discovered that someone had placed a delicious chocolate pie, courtesy of Mrs. Smith (venerable lady of the freezer aisle), in the fridge. It was a good day.

My parents sent me a nice little birthday check, which I used to purchase a $160 coat that was 60% off. (Lord how I love January sales.) It is an exceptionally cute ski jacket, perfect for the girl who does not ski yet wants to keep warm and, of course, look cute. It is pale lime-green with a thick white stripe and dark-blue fleece lining. It has a fold-away hood and a myriad of zippered compartments. And while I’m walking Moose or grocery shopping or heading out for coffee, it protects me from the death grip of cold that has been cruelly squeezing Chicago in its fist for a few weeks now.

You know, I feel good about being 28. Is it any scarier than 27? No, not really. As my friend Jess put it, “I think it’s a good age. I feel pretty mature and as if I’m even more settled in to WHO I AM.” That’s not something I could say when I was 22 or 23, and even though back then I was partying, cheap mixed drink(s) in hand, until 2 a.m. on Saturday nights, I would trade those hedonistic days for the wisdom I have now in an instant. It’s a shame that our society doesn't view getting older as a beautiful, rich and rewarding thing. After all, in the end, aren’t we the sum of all the years we’ve lived? The more years you’ve got, the more interesting you’re going to be. And a good gin and tonic is a good gin and tonic at any age.

Big pretty bow

2004-01-15T16:18:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X... and since many of these entries are now gone, I'm glad this one was cached.

Even when I was young lass, keeping my handwritten journal in a spiral-bound notebook (my keyboard fingers cringe at the thought of all that pen-holding), come January I would always write a “year in review” entry. I don’t know if it gave me a sense of accomplishment or completion or if I’m just a sucker for tying things up with a big pretty bow, but whatever my reasons were, I’m not one to let traditions die. (Okay, I sort of let the tradition die last year with a very vague wrap-up entry, but this year I’m resuscitating it.)

Last January, I thought 2003 was going to be sort of a jogging-around-the-track kind of year… no major changes, just bobbing along, doing my thing. A year later, to that I say: ha.The year 2003 started off, truth be plainly told, kind of shitty. John disappeared into the black hole of tax season, and I was left holding the leash of a very troubled dog. I discovered that it was quite difficult being Murphy’s single parent five days a week. There were some days when I dreaded coming home from work…dreaded facing the barking and the inappropriate object-stealing and the growling and the threats of biting. I turned 27 last January, and even my birthday was somewhat depressing. Let’s move on.

In February, we saw David Gray and Richard Shindell in concert, which I now realize were the only two concerts we saw all year. John gave me beautiful pink roses for Valentine’s Day. We spent Sunday mornings at dog obedience classes, ending up with an exceptionally well-trained (although still mentally disturbed) dog. At the end of the series, Murphy could sit, stay, leave it, lay down, shake, come, roll over, and circle. However, he never quite mastered “stop being so freaking aggressive and just chill the hell out.”

In March we took Murphy to a $400 behaviorist who essentially told us that once a dog bites, there’s no guarantee he won’t bite again. We attended a wedding (the only one of the year) in which I had to deal with the Blonde Posse, and the U.S. attacked Iraq, which freaked me out more than I expected it would. Many Chicagoans were caught up in peace protests, even going so far as to close down Lake Shore Drive, one of the city’s main arteries.

In April, tax season ended and spring came to the city. Wintry pale people began emerging from their apartments, squinting in the sun. (This is my favorite time of year.) I saw the Joffrey Ballet perform at the Auditorium Theatre downtown. John and I participated in inquirers’ classes at our church and decided to officially join the Episcopal Church.I spent a long weekend in early May visiting Rachael in Washington, DC. We dutifully looked at war memorials, visited some free museums, and ate a hell of a lot of food. I am blessed to have friends who live in interesting cities and know how to make killer caramel fudge brownies.

In the spring and summer of 2003, we started thinking about housing. As in, when did we plan to enter the ranks of adulthood and buy one? Our talks about the future were spurred on by our landlady’s announcement that she was considering selling her condo, our apartment. In June, we snooped around in the suburb of Oak Park, and came to the conclusion that we just weren’t ready to leave the city yet. We started spending more time on our rooftop deck, just in case this was the last summer we’d have one.

July was not a good month. We went on an ill-fated Fourth of July camping trip in Michigan (sadly, the only camping we did last summer), during which Murphy morphed into a really scary, snarling, Cujo-like dog. We finally, painfully realized that we couldn’t keep him. One thing led to another, and euthanasia became our only option, as we and our vet saw it. We mourned. We struggled to adjust to life without our dog. It was a help to leave on our vacation, a trip out west to Colorado for some hiking and relaxation. God’s country out there—I’ll return. Even now, when I’m feeling sort of wide-eyed and frenzied, I think of our little whitewashed cabin in Twin Lakes and instantly feel better. Just knowing it’s out there, nestled among the aspens in all its peaceful, mismatched-furniture beauty, is a good thing.

August. The Great Home Search ensued when we discovered that our apartment was being sold. In the span of three weeks, we looked at Chicago houses that we could afford, realized we didn’t want to live in the ghetto or in a tiny brick ranch 45 minutes from the lake, decided to buy a condo instead, toured about fifteen of them, made a bunch of spreadsheets, stared at said spreadsheets for hours, and finally made an offer on a two-bedroom condo in Uptown, which was accepted. I didn’t sleep much during August.

September. The Move. I was stretched thin and stressed. We considered adopting a retired racing greyhound. We said goodbye to our old neighborhood. The Cubs went to the playoffs.Two of my best friends had babies in October, prompting me to realize, once again, that I’m not interested in spawning any time soon. I explored our new neighborhood and liked what I found. The leaves were changing. We visited the greyhound kennels and met Moose. With the aid of my delicately honed nagging skills, I persuaded John that cream-colored walls were definitely not the right look for The Home, and we painted. The Cubs did not go to the World Series, and the North Side wept.

Moose came to live with us on November 15, and we promptly fell head-over-heels in love with him. We got back into the rhythm of dog walks and met many of our neighbors as a result. November 30 marked our two-year anniversary living in the Windy City.

And December was the flu, and lots of freelancing, and Christmas shopping, and some general suckage. But my sister and her husband came to visit, and our relationship was really strengthened by that. And Moose started to become family to us. And we saw lots of family and friends and babies in Michigan over the holiday.

I don’t know how to sum up this year. Buying our first home, going to Colorado, getting to know Moose—those were all really good things. Losing Murphy was a really, really bad thing. I guess all I can say is that 2003 contained more surprises than I expected, if one can ever expect surprises. But the important things in my life—John, my family and friends, my job, my health, our church—all of that stuff remains unchanged, which is a lot more than many people can say. For that I’m grateful.

Dispatch from Antarctica

2004-01-06T16:12:00.002-06:00

Originally posted on Diary-X

Cold. Very, very cold. Finger-aching, sweater-and-coat–penetrating, nose-hair–freezing fucking cold. Today’s high will be 16 degrees. Very smart idea, breaking up with the college boyfriend who eventually moved to Alaska. It hurt at the time, but did it hurt as much as my face did this morning, after 15 minutes spent waiting for the damn train on that unprotected wind-magnet of a station platform? I think not.

*****

Of course, once I boarded the train, I was rewarded for my suffering with the sight of a shabby older man, sitting with his briefcase in his lap, carefully applying a nice shade of coral-red lipstick to his cracked lips. He followed that up with a few coats of mascara, then attached a gaudy, dangling clip-on earring to his right earlobe. It all matched perfectly with his rumpled men’s clothing and week-old beard.

*****

I witnessed an attempted mugging a few days ago. Nothing says “2004 is gonna be a great year!” more than seeing a crime committed at 6 p.m. on the sidewalk two blocks from your home. I was walking home from the el station after work, and I wasn’t the only one around—the neighborhood was fairly busy with pedestrians and cars. Suddenly, less than a block ahead of me, I saw three people bundled in winter coats jostling each other. One person fell into the street, and the others—they looked like teenagers—took off sprinting toward a nearby alley, into which they disappeared. The person lying in the street was crying “My God! Why, God? Why?” I jogged over to find a middle-aged woman—maybe 60 years old—clutching her large purse to her chest and struggling to get to her feet. She was unhurt, and they didn’t get her purse, but she was very shaken and upset. I put my arm around her and helped her up. I told her to call the police and report it. What else could I do? She spoke in a foreign accent—something Eastern European—and kept saying “My papers! They could have gotten my papers!” The whole incident left me pretty disturbed; I never thought this sort of thing would happen during rush hour so close to my quiet neighborhood el station. I’m gripping my bag a little tighter these days.

*****

John and I made two Big Purchases last weekend (thanks, freelance work!): a digital camera and a loveseat. Post-Christmas is when the monster sales take place, so we timed our shopping accordingly. Our shiny new digicam (I keep seeing the words “digital camera” abbreviated in this manner, but I can’t say I like it) is a Canon Powershot A70, 3.2 megapixels. It’s a little bit point-and-shoot, a little bit SLR, and we love it. It provides me with a deep, abiding sense of glee, being able to take pictures of anything, at any time, then immediately view (and delete) them. I’m looking at everything differently now—as soon as we read the instructions and install the big memory chip that we bought, I’m bringing the camera to work, to capture all the sights that have illustrated my commute for the last two years.

The loveseat will finally solve the seating problem we have in our living room. As in, when we have two or more people over, there isn’t enough of it. The loveseat is made of dark-brown leather, and it was on sale, and it is luscious. It’s very modern, with clean, spare lines, and it’s a dream come true for John, who’s been pining away for a leather armchair since God knows when. (He would always point out the chairs in the Restoration Hardware catalog, which were priced around, oh, $1,300, and I would laugh and laugh. $1,300! For a chair! One person can fit in a chair. I’m sorry, I would say, but the comfort of your snobby ass is not worth $1,300.)

*****

Simon, Garfunkel, and I took down the Christmas tree on Sunday. I placed their greatest hits in the CD player (how I love the song “America,” and of course “Bookends”—Time it was and what a time it was it was/A time of innocence, a time of confidences. Long ago it must be, I have a photograph/Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you) and slowly took down all the tree ornaments, boxing them up for next year. Snow was falling outside, big blowsy white flakes. Once the tree was devoid of all decorations, John picked it up and took it outside to the alley, the tree shedding its path of needly tears through our apartment. I took down our stockings, the red and green candles, the wooden nativity set. I always feel a bit hollow when the Christmas season ends—I remember feeling that way even as a girl. The living room seems so empty without that lit-up little spruce. Now begins the long, slow march of winter, and of tax season, and of no holidays until Memorial Day. It’d be easy for a girl to get depressed if she didn’t have a girls' reunion and her birthday (the big 28!) to anticipate in the coming weeks.

Freak Train

2003-11-25T10:49:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X on Nov. 25, 2003

Sometimes, a car sounds really good to me. A nice old beater from the mid-90s, preferably black, that shuttles me from home to work and back again. Nothing fancy—just a plain old car, with a cup holder for my coffee and a decent radio. A car that contains me and only me.

I had one of Those Days with the Chicago Transit Authority last week. I had to ride the el four times in one day—I worked in the morning, came home to bond with Moose and finish my final paper for class, then went to class at night. This is what happened during my commutes:

Going to work: Young mother sitting behind me with two small children, one of which would.not.stop.screaming. To make matters worse, the mother kept yanking at her child's arm and hissing at her, “Shut the hell up! Just shut the hell UP!” It distresses me to hear parents tell their children to shut up, even without the cursing. And the child did not heed her mother whatsoever. This was taking place in the seat behind me. In front of me, directly in my line of vision, stood a young man holding a clear plastic baggie filled with… wriggling bugs, of some kind. Maybe crickets? They were most likely food for some horrifying snake or tarantula that he kept as a pet. I hope. I could close my eyes to avoid looking at the bugs, but I could not close my ears to the sounds of the apoplectic kid and the evil cursing mother.

Coming home from work: Very weird smell in the train car. Also, very, very weird man sitting in the seat in front of me. At first, he didn’t seem strange—he was dressed in typical business-casual clothing, with a book on his lap and a small briefcase on the seat next to him. As the car began to fill up and empty seats dwindled, a young guy tried to sit in the seat with the bag, and the man—who had a thick African accent—wouldn’t let him. When the guy protested that there weren’t any other seats on the car, the African guy just went OFF on him, informing him that he looked like--of all things--a mongrel: “What are you, Polynesian and Native American? What are you? You are a mongrel! I am a proud African man! When I look in the mirror, I see a proud African man! What do YOU see when you look in the mirror? You are a mongrel!” The guy was appalled. And the African man repeated his insults. Again. And again. He would not stop saying the same things, over and over. The “mongrel” guy protested every once in awhile: “But it doesn’t matter what I am!” Then, “If you’re such a proud African, why don’t you go back there?” A girl sitting nearby admonished him, “Dude, choose to de-escalate the situation.” All the while the African guy kept repeating himself indignantly.

When the “mongrel” guy finally got off the train, Proud African Man started talking about his love life, in the same indignant tone. “They are bringing me a wife from Nigeria,” he said to no one in particular. “I will not have a relationship with an American woman. I am a proud African man. They are bringing me a wife from my tribe.” And again. And again. He just kept on saying it, quite loudly I might add. Every once in awhile, someone would get on the train and try to take the seat beside him, but he would shake his head sternly and gesture toward the rest of the car.

Just before I reached my stop, I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the book in his lap. It was called “The Introvert’s Advantage: How to Survive in an Extrovert’s World.”

Going to class: The train was somewhat empty because it was traveling in the opposite direction of most commuters. The two girls sitting across from me spent their ride boisterously discussing how they’d pulled knives on this one chick at a party. One of the girls was planning a party for the upcoming weekend, and she swore that if people didn’t stick around afterward and help her clean up, she would kill one of them as an example. That sounds like a joke, right? I’m not so sure. These were not small girls.

Coming home from class: The train car was blessedly quiet and my seatmate, a teenage boy with wire-rimmed glasses, was studiously reading the New Testament. He will never know how he restored my faith in the CTA. Thank you, bespectacled young Christian boy.

-----

In an abrupt subject change: Moose! I never knew I could fall head-over-heels in love with a dog so quickly. We adore our Moose—he’s sweet, mellow, and laid-back, and he loves people, other dogs, and going for walks. Granted, it will take awhile for his personality to fully emerge, and I suspect he may have a mischievous streak in him. Right now he’s still overwhelmed—the dog had never even been in a house until a few weeks ago! But he’s adjusting remarkably well: he hasn’t had any accidents inside (knock on wood), he doesn’t seem to suffer from separation anxiety, and he sleeps through the night beautifully. He has an excellent understanding of what takes place in the room called the “kitchen” (food! food! food!). Moose has this sweet, hang-dog, “please love me” look which prompts John to call him “poor baby,” an expression I have never heard him use before. So right now we’re just lavishing gobs of love and attention on our dog—he’s probably received more pets and kisses in the past week than he has in his entire life!

I suspect Moose was one fast hound at the racetrack (although it’s hard to tell, what with the 18 hours of snooze time he clocks each day). Many greyhounds don’t race past their second or third birthday, and Moose raced right up until he turned five. A quick Google of his racing name revealed the names of his grandparents, parents, and littermates and his racing results for the past three years. He won or placed second quite a few times, which means he was probably a favorite with his trainers. The track where he raced is known for humane treatment and exceptionally clean kennels, so we don’t worry that he was abused. And anyway, most racing greyhounds aren’t abused—they just aren’t treated as pets. Well, Moose is certainly a pet now. The plush bed, stuffed animals, Nylabones, stacks of dog treats in our kitchen cabinets, and my cheerfulness when walking him at the godforsaken hour of 7 a.m. all attest to that.

Social wallflower

2003-10-31T10:55:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X on Oct. 31, 2003

It’s Halloween, and at my place of employment, that means it’s Chili Fest Day.

For the past few years, my company has hosted an incredibly impressive potluck chili luncheon on All Hallow’s Eve, during which 200-plus of us congregate to eat—you guessed it—chili. Someone from each department brings in a huge crockpot of homemade meat-beany goodness (or vegetable-beany goodness), and other volunteers bring oyster crackers, tortilla chips, salsa, guacamole, sour cream, pounds of grated cheese, brown bread, and corn muffins. And then there’s dessert—a table laden with chocolate brownies, apple crisp, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, doughnuts, and candy (and this year, one lone glass dish of pale-green Jello mold).

Yes, it is quite the feast we have here. And, as always, my benevolent employer provides icy tubs of bottled beer: Corona, German lager, Guinness. I am continually amazed that we’re offered beer at midday functions such as Chili Fest and retirement picnics. I never drink any—there’s no way I could edit after that. (An aside: our December holiday party is always held on a Friday at 4 p.m., and I do indeed take advantage of the open bar at that gathering. Last year, desiring a reddish-colored drink to match my red turtleneck, I ordered a vodka cranberry and actually had to return to the bartender to ask him to water it down. The thing was all vodka. At work!)

Anyway, so I’ve eaten a lot today. I’m a huge fan of chili—it’s just so warm and comforting, and my mom always served it on white rice, another of my favorite foods. John and I have three chili variations in our cooking repertoire: ground turkey with tomato sauce and black beans, chicken with stewed tomatoes, black beans, and cheddar cheese, and this white-lighting chicken dish that we’re still perfecting. Today I sampled a veggie chili and a white chicken chili, along with generous portions of chips and guac, cornbread, and chocolate brownies.

The reason for having Chili Fest, besides the food, is to bring people from all areas of the company together. Ostensibly, we’ll meet colleagues from different departments and floors and just somehow start talking to them, and we’ll form all these nice cross-departmental relationships that will make this a Better Place to Work. But of course, everyone hangs out with the people they already know and like, and we all stand around talking in little knots, and the only contact we have with strangers is “excuse me” and “can you grab me the bottle opener?” I assume it’s like this at most workplace gatherings.

And actually, that’s just fine with me. Because sometimes I feel like secretly, I just cannot stand socializing with people. If you know me in real life, this is probably surprising, because I’m a pretty outgoing, social, talkative and friendly person. I keep the conversation going at parties and dinners. I ask people open-ended questions about themselves. In fact, very soon after I started working here, my boss called me into his office and asked me to head up a “social committee” to plan departmental events and activities, with the goal of fostering “community” within our team. (Many of my teammates are somewhat introverted.) Once people see you as a Social Person—I think I came across this way in my interview—the image sticks, and there’s just no way to shake it.

But you know, sometimes I want to shake it. Sometimes being the one who carries the conversation at dinner makes me tired. I want to be the shy one, the reticent one, the one who pipes up here and there but isn’t really expected to do anything major. I think of this when we have guests spending the weekend with us (unless they’re old friends of mine), when we break into small groups for discussion in class, when we go out to dinner with John’s friends. But I’ve never been attracted to voluble men; I’ve always played the talkative role in my relationships. The one guy I dated who talked more than I did—the puppy dog—lasted just a few months. He wearied me (and also, I began to suspect he was gay).

I’ve always enjoyed my alone time. Sometimes I don’t want anyone to talk to me. I don’t want to call old friends, I don’t want to go out to lunch at work; I just want to be left alone so I can think or read or surf the web. I secretly want to go into hermit mode. And I honestly don’t know why. I don’t think I’m faking when I’m outgoing and friendly, but still, the hermit part of me is there.

So today I’ve covered the merits of chili and my secret desire to sometimes be a social wallflower. I suppose I could tie it in with a Halloween theme—I’m dressing up as an introvert this year!—but that would be cheesy, so I won’t do it.

Free bird!

2003-09-09T16:10:00.001-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

I am not a very good driver.

I didn’t get my driver’s license until I was 18, for reasons I can’t really recall nine years later. (The delay may have been partially caused by an accident I had at age 10—I rode my cousin’s three-wheeler up onto a deck because I panicked and confused the accelerator with the brake, which led to many years of bad nightmares—as well as by my dad’s, shall we say, patience-impaired method of teaching me to drive). Then, once I had my license, I hardly ever used it, because I was car-less in college. So basically, I started driving when I was 22. When we moved to Chicago two years ago, we sold one of our cars, and I started riding the bus and train everywhere. So I pretty much have the driving experience of a 20-year-old. (That’s my excuse, anyway.)

I liked driving when I lived in Michigan. I didn’t think twice about driving two hours away, after work, to have dinner with a friend or go to a concert, returning home that same night. I cherished my daily commuting time: the soothing tones of NPR, the comforting travel mug of coffee. Local traffic was never that bad, and my 25-minute commute gave me time to wake up and ease into the day. I missed that when I moved to Chicago, but the extra reading time that public transportation provides made up for it. Plus, with city traffic being so insanely harrowing and all, I was happy to let someone else sit in the driver’s seat. I don’t drive offensively, and that’s a prerequisite around here.

As we settled into city life and the months passed, the idea of driving became quite foreign to me. I began to depend on John, who’d grown into a seasoned horn-honking road warrior, to get behind the wheel when we set off for locations not easily accessible by public transportation. As I watched him navigate around dog-walking jaywalkers and deranged cabbies and double-parked cars, I felt a twinge of fear mixed with a twinge of relief—at least I didn’t have to deal with all this. Because I wasn't sure if I could.

I think I had lost a little bit of my independence.

I suppose people become a bit more dependent just by getting married. I lived alone for two years before tying the knot, and those were two good years. I wasn't one to worry about strange sounds at night. I shopped alone, paid my bills alone, went to coffee houses alone, went to museums alone. Hell, I went to Italy alone. I did what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. And it was fine.

My life isn’t exactly like that anymore. Of course, I still do things alone, but many times I’d rather do them with John. I think this is partially because we moved to a strange city together, without knowing anyone, and we were both slightly overwhelmed and lonely. We had to rely on each other, which probably made us closer—but it was a big change. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to go back to being my old independent self, exactly, because that self wasn’t married to John.

So anyway, this past weekend I noticed exactly how much my independence had waned. On Saturday, I had to drive to Kalamazoo, Michigan, for a friend’s baby shower. There was no reason for John to come—he doesn’t have any friends in Kzoo—and so I decided to go it alone. I won’t lie—I was kinda scared to do this. It’s not easy driving into and out of Chicago. There are six lanes of traffic. Lots of cars. Angry people. Hard-to-execute lane changes. In other words, Grownup Driving.

I had driven this route before. Four years ago, when my friend Jessica was living in Chicago, I drove to see her, by myself, two times. (Once was through a raging blizzardy snowstorm in which I actually prayed the Our Father out loud, in the car, because I honestly thought I might drive off the road and die). I hadn’t thought twice about making the trek then. How could I be thinking twice about it now? How had I gotten to this point? Frankly, I was embarrassed for myself.

So I did it. I got behind the wheel and drove my independent 27-year-old self the 180 miles between Kalamazoo and Chicago. Traffic wasn’t that bad, and the sky was blue and clear, and on the way home, the sun was setting, deep and golden. And I got off on the right exits, and no one honked at me, and I made my lane changes and listened to Alison Krauss and Coldplay and Richard Shindell and Sting and Norah Jones. As the sun dropped into the horizon, I was coming into the city, and the lake was bleached a pale, cool blue and the lights were glittering on in the skyscrapers. And I was there in the midst of it all, driving my old black Jetta down Lakeshore Drive as if I do it every damn day.

Chips ahoy!

2003-08-21T16:16:00.001-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

Yesterday morning, as I made my way to the el station, I passed a scruffy man crouching on the sidewalk against a storefront. “White milk! Chips ahoy!” he cried, staring at me. “White milk! Chips AHOY!!” How does one respond to such statements? I gave him a half-smile and kept on going.

Bedspread Lady [ed. note: I've lost the post that introduced B.L., a homeless woman who apparently lived outside the gas station across the street from our first apartment in Chicago] may have moved on—a clothing donation bin now resides on the patch of concrete where she used to sit—but our neighborhood still has its share of fringy characters. Besides the cookie monster, there is the one-legged man, who has parked his wheelchair in front of our building for the past three or four weeks. I have no idea where he came from, or why he chose our strip of sidewalk as his new home. But he’s there every day: when I leave for work, when I come home, when I head out for my jog/walk thing. He has a flimsy plaid bag stuffed with belongings propped up next to his wheelchair. Sometimes he talks to the air and gestures. Other times he’s quiet and won’t acknowledge my hello. I don’t know if he sleeps there, in his chair.

Believe me, I’m sure our new neighborhood will have its share of street characters, but I’m going to miss the ones we know now. Like the tiny old woman who sells Streetwise at the Walgreen’s a few blocks away. Whether it’s 92 degrees (like today—oh, don’t get me started) or 22 degrees, she’s out there, singing her raspy little song: “Streeeeetwiiiiise…. Helpingthehomeless! Every day every day every day. Streeeeetwiiiiise…” She used to stop and pet Murphy when we’d walk by.

We live near a small theater company, and a few nights ago, as I was putting our Colorado pictures in a scrapbook, I heard some guys talking loudly, laughing and cursing. The sound was coming from our open back window. Curious, I peered outside, only to find a few actors rehearsing their lines on a nearby rooftop. I crouched by the window and watched them for awhile, an audience of one enjoying a private performance. (I’m not sure what the play was about—I think there was some type of bar fight involved.)

After almost two years, our little wedge of Chicago feels like home. But part of me is really excited to resettle in a new neighborhood… to take advantage of this opportunity to explore a new place, get to know even more of the city. Last night, we made an offer on a terrific condo about a mile north of where we live now. (John later told me that he almost blacked out as we signed all the paperwork. This is scary stuff.) The seller is in Europe, so it may take a day or two to hear from her. So now, we wait. And pay extra attention to all the little details of our neighborhood, because it won’t be ours much longer.

Hot enough for ya?

2003-06-25T13:31:00.001-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X

I knew summer was going to sneak around the corner and smack us upside the head, I just knew it. We’d been having this lovely, suspiciously cool spring (highs in the mid-60s, maybe reaching 70 degrees). Last week I was wearing a light coat. Ha! Ha! A coat! Today it is 94. (Although it feels like 100, the weatherman informs us from his nicely air-conditioned TV studio. He’s wearing a suit, and not sweating.)

Gee, is it obvious how I feel about hot weather? It’s not my favorite thing. I can handle the mid-80s, but when it gets to turkey-broiling temperatures, I’m not pleased. This morning I started to perspire while brushing my hair. Yesterday, on the bus ride home from work, rivulets of sweat were running down the backs of my knees. Does that sound downright unpleasant, or what? I was not a happy camper. If it wasn’t for J.K. Rowling, I probably would’ve thrown myself out the bus window.

The pup doesn’t like the heat much, either (some African dog he is). He lies on the hardwood floor in our living room, tongue lolling, breathing short little panty breaths. When the spot he’s on gets too warm, he heaves himself up, paces around a bit, and flops down with a “thunk” on a new, cooler patch of floor. I admit, I really like the “I’m too hot to wreak much havoc in the apartment” side of Murphy. Perhaps we should leave the air conditioner off.

We have a window unit that came with the apartment. It’s in the living room. Our place is just small enough that this one air conditioner can cool it off to acceptable levels. However, using it even moderately ends up tripling our electric bill. Honestly, I don’t mind lying around the apartment in a tank top and boxers, feeling hot. It’s feeling hot when I’m out and about, going to work, etc., that bugs the crap out of me.

Last night John played in a softball game with some friends, so I planned a peaceful evening at home alone. I made turkey chili (I know, I know, probably not the most appropriate dish for a heatwave) and ate it while reading the newspaper. I ambled around the apartment picking things up. I petted Murphy; his only response was to roll his eyes up at me. Too hot to even lift a paw. I finally settled down on the couch with my Harry Potter book (which is quite a bitch to lug around, at almost 900 hardbacked pages). I’d been reading the book slowly, wanting to savor it, but I’m beginning to fear bumping into a spoiler somewhere, so I’m picking up the pace.

I read Harry for about an hour, and then at 9:00, the lights went out. Poof! One minute the lamps and CD player are on (may I recommend the vocal stylings of Lucinda Williams?); the next I’m sitting in half-darkness, the room illuminated only by the streetlights outside. Murphy raised his head, then flopped it down again.

Well, it was a good excuse to go for a jog. It wasn’t any cooler outside, but at least there was a breeze. People were trickling out of their dark apartment buildings to walk their dogs, talk on cellphones, and gather in knots, chatting. I said hi to a few people and went on my way, thinking the power’d be back when I returned half-hour later. Sirens streamed around the neighborhood—“Bet there’s a lot of people stuck in elevators,” one of my neighbors remarked cheerfully.

Our block was still black when I got back, drenched in sweat. I felt my way up the staircase and joined John, who’d gotten back from his game, and Murphy up on the roof, where the breeze was stronger and the lights from Wrigley provided quite a bit of light. A few of our neighbors were up there, too, wine and beer in hand, and we passed an amiable half-hour or so getting to know them better. I liked that part.

Luckily, the power was restored at midnight, so our fridge food is largely unspoiled and we didn’t have to spend the entire night fanless. This evening, I believe the air conditioner will be rumbling to life. If you’re anything like John, you probably don’t want to hear me bitch about the heat for the next two months.

Brush with suburbia

2003-06-11T11:02:00.001-05:00

Originally posted to Diary-X on June 11, 2003

We were supposed to go camping last weekend—we had reservations at a park in Wisconsin. But the weather forecast was iffy, and, well, waiting out a rainstorm in a tent with a wet dog is not my idea of a good time. So we stayed home instead. And the sun shone all day on Saturday.

We slept in, and made a breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and fruit smoothies, and drank multiple cups of coffee, and read the good sections of the Tribune. We took the dog for a jog by the lake, and I sat at Starbucks for a few hours doing homework while John watched the Cubs/Yankees game on TV.

Later in the afternoon, we pondered the all-important question: where should we go for dinner? I suggested something radical, something totally new: “Let’s go to a suburb!”

Now, Oak Park isn’t really a suburb. I think of it as “urban suburbia”—it’s right on the western border of Chicago, and two different el lines have stations there. It’s one of the areas where we’ll search for a house, whenever that time comes. Actually, that time could come sooner than we’ve planned. The woman who owns our condo recently told us that she may sell it next winter, and we don’t want to buy it—it’s too small for anything long-term. The thought of enduring the nightmare of moving again, simply to bide our time in another apartment for a year, is loathsome… so if she does put our place on the market, we’ll probably try to buy something. (We’ve considered buying a two-bedroom condo in the city, but something about that just doesn’t feel right to me. There’s only so long you can live in a two-bedroom condo. Condo buildings usually don’t have fenced-in yards for dogs, which is something I want if I’m paying six figures for a home. And who wants to pony up those $200+ assessment fees every month?)

So. We’ve heard great things about Oak Park, but we’d never been there, so we decided to make the trek west last Saturday. We left around 6 p.m., driving down Lakeshore Drive, admiring the deep blue of the lake and Lincoln Park spreading out on our right. We chugged through downtown, momentarily slowed by crowds from Gospel Fest and the Printers’ Row Book Fair. We got onto 294, also known as the Eisenhower. And then we crawled. And crawled some more. My husband is not always the most patient of guys, and traffic brings out the worst in him. He was not happy that it took us about an hour to get to Oak Park. While I’m usually a glass-half-full kind of girl, my excitement was quashed a bit, too. We felt so… far away.

Oak Park is a really, really pretty town. There are canopies of tall green trees everywhere, and cute old houses lining up behind cracked sidewalks, and corner stores and elementary schools and venerable stone churches. The downtown is picturesque and walkable—lots of cool-looking restaurants and stores, little art galleries, an old movie theater, an opera house. Big, beautiful green parks are everywhere. North of downtown, there are some truly magnificent (and $800,000+) homes, many designed in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s a cultural town, a historical town, and it has excellent access to the city (by train, it probably takes about 20-25 minutes to get downtown).

We drove by a house that we’d seen on a realtor’s website. It was built in the 1930s, a two-story bungalow, and it had a front porch with a bench swing. It was on one of those leafy sidewalked streets. The neighbors had “No War” signs in their front yards. As we drove by, we saw that it had a back porch, too. And a little fenced-in lawn.

Two porches. Two. I immediately saw us sitting on the back porch after dinner, drinking beers, John playing guitar, Murphy chasing squirrels in the yard.

We went out to dinner at a casual alehouse that got a positive review in the Tribune. We sat outside on the deck and ate mediocre meals. Something felt a bit strange to me… I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Then, suddenly, I figured it out. We were surrounded by people who were either in their 40s and 50s or in their teens. There were only two other couples on that crowded deck that were our age. And I realized that in our neighborhood, everyone’s in their 20s and 30s. We hardly ever see children or teenagers or people our parents’ age. I’m not sure I’d ever noticed that before.

After dinner, we drove around town a little longer, then headed back to the city, a shorter drive this time. We felt tired and decided to go home and relax on our rooftop deck with some drinks. We hauled out our camping chairs and set ourselves up in the dark, looking out over the Chicago skyline, the buildings rising up dark and bejeweled in the night sky. To the west, less than a mile away, the lights were still glowing at Wrigley. (On the following night, we’d hear the immense roar of the crowd coming through our living room windows as the Cubs walloped the Yanks.) We could hear faint sirens and car horns, and the “brrr” of a low-flying helicopter scuttling past on its way to the hospital. We could also hear the wind. The skyscrapers twinkled. The sky above us was huge and black.

“I like it here,” I said.

“Me too,” John answered.

“I don’t think I’m ready to buy a house,” I said. “I mean, having a porch would be nice, and a yard. But I’m just not ready to leave this.”

“Me neither.”

“Anyway, we have a porch now,” I said, sipping my beer and looking out at my city. “And a view.”

When the war started last Wednesday night

2003-03-24T10:20:00.001-06:00

Originally posted to Diary-X on March 24, 2003

When the war started last Wednesday night, I was checking my email and drinking a glass of merlot, a rerun of Law & Order droning on in the next room. I’d just gotten home after taking the final exam for my winter class. I felt a bit drained from the sense of dread that was pervading the country and the massive amount of studying I’d been doing to prepare for my test.

Around 8:30 or so, Law & Order was suddenly interrupted by Tom Brokaw. Breaking news: we were attacking. It was happening. No one had expected it to begin that night, and it wasn’t the “shock and awe” campaign we’d been promised. (Is anyone as sick as I am of hearing those three words? So many buzzwords and catchphrases are flying around…they make my brain tired.) I moved immediately to the living room and stood in front of the TV. I feel like I’ve spent a good portion of my time since then in the presence of news sources—CNN, NBC, the Chicago Tribune, msbnc.com, NPR.

The pictures on the screen that night weren’t particularly harrowing—a flash of light here and there, then the calm Baghdad skyline, the outline of mosques spiking up in the distance. The sun beginning to rise. Quiet streets. Journalists filling the silence with speculations. But I kept watching, because at any minute, something could happen, and I didn’t want to miss it. News blurbs crawled along the bottom of the screen, every so often a word misspelled. I thought of the days following September 11, 2001.

Suddenly, something flashed white outside my windows. Lightning, then thunder. I heard sirens. What were the chances of a thunderstorm here within minutes of our first strike in Iraq? That a Midwestern city of edgy people would be subjected to those loud cracks and booms, those wailing sirens? Murphy was skittish because of the noise, and John was still at work, and the pictures on the TV were real.

It was not one of my calmest moments, although the merlot helped.

On my way home from work the next day, I spontaneously decided to head over to the peace rally being held downtown at the Federal Plaza. I’d never been to a rally and wanted to see it, absorb the feeling of it. I could hear the chanting several blocks away, and as I reached the intersection of Adams and Dearborn, I was shocked at the size of the crowd—so, so many people crammed together, waving signs and placards and flags in the air, chanting and cheering as someone bellowed anti-war statements from a microphone. Police were everywhere—on horseback, in helmeted riot gear. All around me the city was alive and moving: people in suits heading home, high school students from the suburbs wearing peace pins, nuns and priests gathered together quietly in knots, homeless people shaking their cans of coins. It had rained earlier in the day, and the red and blue light from neon signs shone on the wet pavement. Cars honked, the train rumbled by on its elevated tracks, the crowd roared. I stood on the street corner, not within the mass of protesters, but not completely detached from them, either.

While I watched, I jotted down some of the slogans on the protesters’ signs:
“Who would Jesus bomb?”
“I am in shock, not in awe”
“Bush: c’mon man, you’re killing me” (accompanied by picture of a soldier in camo)
“Support our troops—bring them home”
“Babies for Peace” (attached to a stroller)
“Sacrifice our SUVs, not our children”
“Supersize my French fries”
“Money for jobs, not for war”
“Faux News”
“If someone bombed us for every act of terrorism we've committed, there'd be no America left”
”God Forgive America”

I left after about 20 minutes, feeling a bit calmer than I had the night before, but also slightly in awe of what I’d witnessed. We’re living through an event that will be written about in history books, that our children will study. About half-hour after I left the rally, thousands of people—some say almost 10,000—marched eastward through the city to Lake Shore Drive, one of Chicago’s main arteries, and flowed into rush-hour traffic as an act of civil disobedience. Commuters were backed up for miles—the news helicopter footage was quite impressive. A colleague of mine was part of the crowd, and the next day he commented on how shocked he was by the support of the drivers. Hardly anyone yelled or otherwise showed anger toward the protesters.

So now, what else can I say? There are so many voices babbling on about Operation Iraqi Freedom (I still can't believe they're calling it that); I’m not sure mine needs to be added to the cacophony. My opinions shift and slide daily. I feel cynical and suspicious and scared and sad and doubtful. I support our troops (another catchphrase), and I don’t support our president. I felt a strong wave of horror when I heard about the American POWs. Sometimes I think, Wait a minute—why is it that we’re over there?, and the whole concept seems completely ludicrous to me. But it’s happening, and all I can do is watch and pray, and go about the business of my little life. I have to believe that someone’s in control of all this, somehow.