Chicagoversary

Eleven years ago today, John and I moved from a town in West Michigan to Chicago. We rented a one-bedroom apartment in a prewar seven-story building in north Lakeview. The bedroom was so narrow that we got out of bed at its foot, not on the sides. The ceilings were tall, and the big windows looked out on other buildings, a gas station, a pawnshop, part of a billboard, a small slice of Wrigley Field.

My in-laws helped us move that Friday, driving our Penske truck while we drove my old Jetta, our goldfish clutched in a Tupperware between my knees. The power went out for awhile as we were carrying in boxes, the late-autumn sky darkening at 4:30 in the afternoon. We ate dinner at a Wrigleyville dive. I cut my hand unpacking the food processor. On Monday morning, we started our new jobs, and I took the Broadway bus to work, not realizing the el would’ve taken half as much time until my boss kindly explained that. We started new lives as city people.

El station in the Loop

Moving to Chicago is one of the things I’m proudest of having done in my life. When we arrived, we didn’t know anyone here except for one college acquaintance. Neither of us had ever lived in a city; John has never lived anywhere but the town where he was born. We left good jobs, and we left family and friends, and we set out on our own. We made it happen. We were 26 and 25, married just five months. I’ll always believe that the move brought us even closer together, since for awhile, we had no one but each other for company.

Spring sunset, North Side neighborhood

Obviously, a lot has happened to us in the past 11 years. We’ve become managers at our jobs; we’ve traveled around the U.S., Caribbean, and Europe; and we’ve had three dogs. I’ve earned a master’s degree and run two half-marathons. We’ve rented one apartment and bought two condos. We changed our religious denominations and joined an Episcopal church, although right now we don’t really attend. We entered our thirties. We decided to adopt a baby. And, of course, we became parents. There are now three of us, and that’s the biggest change of all.

Chicago has been part of all this. It’s not just the backdrop to my life; I feel like it’s a leading character. My life is better because I live in this city. It’s given me opportunities to grow and learn, for recreation and entertainment, to taste and see and experience so many new things. It’s gotten me in better shape. It’s helped solidify my political leanings. It’s introduced me to so many different people and different kinds of people. I’ve written about a lot of this, going back to 2003, and I love remembering that sense of discovery I had in the beginning, as I started to make the city, or my corner of it, my own. 

Election night 2008

My first home was in Pennsylvania. When I was 18 and my family moved to Michigan, that move left a gaping hole in my heart where home should be. The seven years I lived in Michigan brought many good things into my life, but the places I lived there were never home. Truthfully, I didn’t know what to consider home during that part of my life. Chicago has filled the hole. It’s part of who I am; it’s truly home, and for that, I feel fortunate indeed.

Three more weeks

Today was such a good day, despite the fact that John was working late and it was too inhumanely hot to do our usual playground visit and afternoon run. Will slept until about 8:30, woke up with a smile, and we lay in bed for awhile cuddling and “talking” (I say something; he responds with “meh?” or “mah”). After breakfast, we played with his toys, including a new-to-him toy that I brought out of storage last night, a sloping track for little plastic cars. The look on his face when he entered the den and saw it was priceless.

Some favorite toys these days

When he became bored with his toys, I let him play around with some old cords, a hairdryer, and a computer mouse (which he promptly placed on the desk next to our real computer mouse) while I made the bed and got dressed. Our house has so many random objects strewn around in weird places, but this is how I’m able to put on my makeup.

We left at 11:15 to run errands in the stroller; the heat was intense, so there was no meandering. We dropped off paperwork at his daycare and spent some time at the bookstore, where they have a chest of toys and a great selection of kids’ books. Then we went to the sandwich shop for a really delightful lunch… sat across from each other at a little table in the window and ate our turkey sandwiches with lots of grins and no fussing.

Home again to walk Stella, with Will in the back carrier. He fell asleep, and I laid him on our bed, where he proceeded to take a solid one-hour nap (!), during which I wrote a little and read the New Yorker. He woke up groggy, and we cuddled on the bed for about 20 minutes. Milk, reading books (I sit on the floor in his room and he brings them to me), practicing “How big is Will? Soooo big!,” watching some Korean Pororo cartoons on YouTube, then outside to play in the kiddie pool for an hour—lots of fun stomping in the water, pouring with the funnel, and, of course, worshipping the hose, Will’s most favorite toy.

Inside for our afternoon snack of yogurt and crackers (he knows what “eat” means now, which is so helpful), then off to walk Stella, more playing with toy cars, and 20 minutes of Baby Einstein while I cooked dinner. He sat in the little rocking chair that was mine as a toddler, clutching a wooden spoon and swaying to “The Wheels on the Bus.” We ate in the dining room, more grins and excited head-bopping for the sweet potato and zucchini and cheese. He was in a mischievous mood, pretending to put food in his ears, which he knows is wrong, then putting it in his mouth and reveling in my praise.

The mischievousness continued after dinner, when I emptied his diaper pail, told him to stay away from it, then found him fiddling with its door; when I reprimanded him, he erupted in crazed giggles. Bathtime! I sang Pororo songs and he kept trying to stand up and dance in the tub. So much smiling today, so many hugs and arms lifted to be held, so much dancing and laughter.

As John settled down in the rocking chair to put him to bed, Will closed his bedroom door; I was standing in the hallway. I knocked on the door and asked for a goodnight hug. He opened it, smiled, and gave me one. Then I blew him a kiss, which he doesn’t yet know how to reciprocate, I thought. He blew me two back and closed the door. I sat at the table and cried because I’m so just so happy I get to be his mom.

*****

Unbelievably, I go back to work in three weeks. I still vividly remember my first few days home alone with Will, after John returned to work in late April. I could not fathom how we’d fill the next few months, how I’d get through the 10 hours of each day. Taking care of a mobile toddler on my own, all day, seemed like the hardest thing I’d ever attempted to do.

I’m not going to say that I now find it easy. But definitely easier, and with really, really huge rewards. We’ve had some bad days, but more of them have been like today. It’s just me and him, together, getting to know each other and becoming mother and son. We’ve gone to playgrounds and the beach, on runs and playdates, on the el, to parks and the bookstore, out for lunch and for ice cream, to a local museum. We’ve read books, kicked balls, drawn with sidewalk chalk, walked around the neighborhood, run errands, met dogs, watched Pororo cartoons, played in the kiddie pool, listened to music. We’ve cuddled. There have been tantrums and crying and confusion and worry and naughtiness and boredom and frustration. But there have also been many spontaneous hugs from Will, an inordinate amount of laughs and smiles, bonding, babbling, singing, and dancing.

Sometimes, going back to work feels like the wrong choice. The thought of leaving him—after we’ve been so joined at the hip since April 12—makes me feel incredibly sad (even though it’ll be made easier by the fact that John starts a five-week paternity leave when I go back). Then again, there have been several days when I dearly, fervently wished I was sitting in my office. When Monday morning rolls around, I don’t feel a sense of pure pleasure at the prospect of caring for Will alone for five days. I know that parts of those days will be beautiful, and I do truly love spending time with my son, but I feel a small sense of dread at the upcoming tedium and isolation combined with very limited parental down-time (Will isn’t much of a napper; some days it’s only 15 minutes).

I definitely don’t want to not work. But I realize that I’m wishing I didn’t have to work 40 hours a week. Even working just four days a week, instead of five, would help alleviate the guilt that’s already starting to creep into my mind and heart, settle heavily on my shoulders. I enjoy my job and colleagues, and it’s a family-friendly workplace, and I’ve worked hard to achieve the position I have there. But John and I don’t need my salary to survive. So the wheedling voice of guilt tells me that I’m going back to work only because I want to… because I don’t want to take care of Will full-time… and that’s a selfish choice that isn’t best for a toddler. No one has actually said this to me, and John doesn’t agree with it, but the voice is there.

I know there are other reasons to keep my job. I honestly believe I’ll be a happier, more balanced person and, therefore, a better parent if I’m working. If John lost his job and I was unemployed, we’d be in bad shape. If John wants to change jobs for one that’s less stressful with a lower salary, he’ll have much more latitude to do that if I’m working. Editorial jobs are difficult to come by, and it would likely be extremely tough for me to find another well-paying, fulfilling position if I take three or four years off… let alone at a company that’s as sane and pleasant as the one that employs me now. I could try to build a freelance editing business, but I’m not sure how to schedule weekly childcare for unpredictable work, and I don’t think I can mentally handle parenting all day and editing all night. Then there’s the fact that we’re pretty confident Will will adore daycare and thrive with the activities and other kids.

Still. The guilt, tinged with a little sadness. It’s there, and I’m not quite sure what will become of it. In the meantime, my focus right now is on enjoying these last few weeks of just the two of us. I’m trying to be as present as I can. I’m taking lots of photos. Every night, I write down all the little discoveries and accomplishments and feelings and funny things that happened that day for both of us, knowing that once I’m back in my office—managing, editing, hair done and lipstick on and no need to worry about what the toddler’s getting into or how to entertain him—I will, without a doubt, miss him and these precious, precious days.

 

Day in the life

I just want to write it down, so I can remember these days.

He usually wakes up in our bed. He’s still not sleeping through the night—at six weeks home, we don’t really expect him to—and if he wakes up and is inconsolable, bringing him from his crib to our bed does the trick. And he loves his sleep! Some mornings he snoozes until close to 9, although usually it’s more like 8. By then, of course, John’s left for work, so it’s just me and him. He often wakes up with a grin on his face, and we cuddle together until he hears Stella’s tags jingling from her bed on the floor, then he scootches over immediately so he can see her.

Right now, I think one of the tougher things about taking care of a toddler is occupying him while I’m trying to go to the bathroom, put on the barest essentials of makeup, or get dressed. I’m constantly trying to think of distractions to keep him occupied and in the same room while I do these things: a flashlight, a small box filled with ribbons and other odds and ends, an old makeup bag with empty containers in it, a toothbrush (he loves brushing his teeth). I have gotten very fast at things like washing my face.

Next up, a diaper change (sometimes there is screaming involved), then breakfast. He loves fruit, so I usually give him strawberries or pineapple along with a frozen pancake, waffle, or dry cereal. If the dog’s in the room, he’ll throw pieces on the floor and giggle wildly as she eats them, so I usually babygate her in the hallway. I eat my cereal or toast and coffee, sneaking peeks at the newspaper as we babble and make faces at each other. If I hand him a whisk, sometimes he’ll play with that in his highchair while I clean up the kitchen. Other times, no—there’s cry-whining until I lift him out.

Playtime! We head over to the den, where we keep most of his toys, to play for about an hour. Right now he’s loving his Pororo keyboard, wooden stacking toys (amazing to watch him learn to stack them), a plastic giraffe that has balls that go through a hole in its mouth, toy cars (great for pushing along the dining-table bench), and books. It makes me so happy to see his interest in books—we started reading to him right away every night, and how he’ll bring me books to read him during the day, too. Current faves are The Hungry Little Caterpillar, Five Little Puppies Jumping on the Bed, Doggies, and Mr. Brown Can Moo. His attempts at making barking and rooster-crowing noises are adorable.

My goal is to get out of the house at least twice a day, so around midmorning, we start our preparations to leave, most often to visit one of four playgrounds nearby but sometimes to run errands, too. It’s a slow process—I give him his morning bottle of formula (he was drinking this way in Korea, and we don’t want to introduce too many changes at once) and get him dressed, then we head to the master bedroom so I can make the bed and get myself dressed. Sometimes the application of suntan lotion is involved, which good God he hates.

Once I sit him on the mudroom bench and get out his shoes, he knows for sure we’re heading outside, and his excitement is obvious! Another thrill is getting to push the button to set the house alarm; that never fails to elicit a grin. I strap him into the blessed BOB stroller—best baby gear we own—and off we go. The farthest playground is about 1.2 miles away and the closest is less than a half-mile, but overall we usually spend about an hour and a half on our outing. I love watching him toddle and stumble around the equipment, watching the bigger kids with wide eyes. Every once in awhile, he’ll turn to me with outstretched arms to be picked up, but usually he’s independent enough to do his own thing. He likes the toddler swings and recently started trying to climb steps, and he’s now going down short slides by himself. He definitely tries to copy what he sees other kids doing.

We take a short break on a shaded bench to eat Cheerios together—a time that I love—and we leave so that we’re home by around 12:15, lunchtime. I put something together for us as quickly as I can while occupying him in his highchair with more Cheerios or a kitchen utensil, or directing him to his unlocked cabinet that’s full of Tupperware. It’s kind of funny to me that I usually eat the same frozen meals I ate at work—fast is best! Will’s lunch might be PB&J, leftover butternut squash or sweet potato, cheese, grapes, turkey lunchmeat, pasta, applesauce. It’s easy to see what his favorites are by noticing which food’s on the floor when we’re done.

Getting Will to nap has tended to be a challenge, but right now we seem to be settling on one afternoon snooze at around 1:15 or 1:30. Sometimes it lasts more than an hour; other times it’s 40 minutes. And right now, the only way to get him to sleep, unless he’s already super-drowsy, is to put him on my back in the Ergo carrier. He’ll sometimes fight and shriek about getting in (which does not make the process easy), but he’s fine once I stand up. I strap him in, we take Stella for her short midday walk, and then I pace the floors a bit, and he’s asleep. I pick up the kitchen and read a book or magazine or spend some time online. No, it’s not terribly comfortable doing this with a 25-pound child on your back, but I’ve figured out how to make it work. I sincerely hope that someday Will will be able to nap in his crib. Right now it’s more important to us that he naps, period.

Lately he’s been in a terrific mood when he wakes up! Super smiley, uncomplaining during diaper changes, etc. We play with his toys, read books, drink another bottle, maybe watch a few Pororo cartoons on YouTube (if I ask him if he wants to watch, he runs to the computer). Then we gear up for our afternoon stroller run. I’ve been trying to leave the house around 3:30 or 4, when the sun’s not as strong… and since I can’t shower when I’m home alone with him (the pack-and-play isn’t really tolerated yet), waiting until the end of the day to get sweaty is best. We usually do a three- or four-miler with a break halfway to play in the grass at a park or the lakefront. Not only does this take up a nice portion of the afternoon, I get my workout and he gets to explore. I swear, Will spends just as much time in open outdoor spaces as any suburban kid.

After we return home, it’s snacktime—Greek yogurt with cereal sprinkled in it. I love this little ritual of ours. We both love yogurt, so he’s always in a good mood. It’s something I used to do in the late afternoon at work, too, but it wasn’t nearly as much fun (or messy—just once it would be nice if my dining companion didn’t end up with yogurt on his wrists and eyebrows, which he loudly protests being wiped off).

After that, it’s usually not too long before John gets home, around 6. I won’t lie, I look forward to this—it’s so good to have a break after a 10-hour day of toddler wrangling. John takes Will onto the back deck to play while I start dinner, sneaking in a newspaper article between stirs and chops. Then it’s mealtime and watering the outdoor plants and bathtime and bottle and stories and “Twinkle Twinkle,” and he’s asleep by 8:30 or so. The next three hours are mine—to wash dishes and pick up toys, but also to read or email or work on my Seoul photo album or watch TV. The decadence!

People have asked me if I miss work. When I’m sitting in the sunshine in a green park, watching my son pull up grass or stare at a bug in wonder, no, no I do not. There’s absolutely nowhere else I’d rather be. When I’m scrambling to prepare some kind of lunch while he screams, or trying desperately to put on makeup or sunscreen while he flushes the toilet for the eighth time, being at work sounds pretty damn nice. Sometimes I look forward to going back and other times I dread it. But truly, I haven’t thought about my job much in these past six weeks… I just don’t have the headspace for it right now. My mind is completely engrossed in parenting. And I suppose that’s how it should be. That’s the purpose of this beautiful, idyllic, maddening, challenging, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime time. 

How to have a successful staycation

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.

New in the neighborhood

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.

Enough space

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.

Eleven years

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.

Home is where

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.

Images of mid-March

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.

Hot enough for ya?

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

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.”