The girls and I had loaded our household belongings into cardboard boxes that would be dollied and heaved into a Bekins moving truck. I implored the drivers to please stop by my small office in the now disassembled building that stood as the former Department of Communication at University of Utah. In the chaos of moving, I had completely forgotten about my books. A beloved mentor, Mary Strine made a mad dash to help me in her sensible shoes, skirt and jacket. I had acquired a library over the past four years and would need all of it. Somehow as the Bekins guys finished hefting full cartons, Mary and I sealed the last box almost simultaneously.
I watched the long haulers drive away with nearly everything the girls and I owned, trusting we would find each other again at our final destination, 824 Forest Avenue, Evanston Illinois. It was a red brick third floor walk-up with a beautiful sunroom, bay windows, two and a half bedrooms and two baths. The girls had made the trip to Chicago with me to help pick out the apartment and see a bit of the city so that the transition would not lead them to an entirely unfamiliar place. We were less than a block away from Lincoln Elementary School, where the neighbor kids their ages would also attend.
The last evening in Salt Lake, I had been invited by my friends to participate in my one and only public go at Kareoke. Four years earlier my fellow grad students had invited me to a first night out. I surprised myself and everyone else who had just met me by hula hooping my way to a prize of unlimited, flowing champagne for my group. On the night of departure, I sang Supremes songs, complete with gestures, accompanied by my girlfriends. Unlike my entry into wild Salt Lake City night life, I didn't need much egging on because I had memorized that whole album full of lyrics at the age of thirteen. I had lived and died by "Can't Buy Me Love," "I Hear a Symphony," "Can't Hurry Love" and other great Motown records. I don't remember if it was because I had no other albums or it was the only one I liked.
We slept in our apartment that night, empty of all but ourselves, a few blankets and pillows and Sophie the bunny. I was confident about our drive because my Honda was in good shape, the girls were happy travelers, and Sophie the bunny would be contained by his cage and toys. We made our way eastward as far as Wyoming and stopped for the night, resting, eating and buying cheap audiotapes because we were sick of our music. We had heard Billy Idol's "White Wedding" one two many times, no matter how much I still love that song because it belongs to Steffie. Our choices were limited because of where we were, so we ended up with the Judds, InXS and John Cougar Mellencamp. In the next fourteen hours' drive, we would wear through those songs too, till they had no soles left.
The weather had cooperated with us through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa and most of Illinois until we were about five minutes' drive from our new address. The sky opened up with the greatest torrential downpour I had ever experienced. Fatigued, at the back end of a 14 hour drive, nearly blind from the sheets of water pummelling our windshield, and a little lost anyway, I hit a fork in the road that required a choice to go right or straight. I went right, but the police officer behind me believed I should have gone straight.
I learned that day that Chicago can be a hard-knocks town. The officer used his lights to pull me over and then kept me, my daughters and the bunny waiting in the pouring rain for approximately 45 minutes. When he approached the car, he asked me to turn over my driver's license, explaining that I would get it back when I appeared in court. I protested because I needed my identification to get the keys to my apartment, open a bank account, register the kids for school and to secure my employment contract. He then explained that I could pay him 70.00 to keep the license.
Completely naive to the special "ways" of Chicago traffic law, I did not agree to turn over my license and thought I was being bribed when he asked for money. As it turns out, a "ticketed" driver does actually turn over their license and "drives on a ticket" if identification is needed. As well, the only way to avoid driving on a ticket is to admit guilt then and there, pay the alotted fine and go on with your day. HOW WOULD I HAVE KNOWN THAT? I had Utah license plates, a bunny and two blond elementary age girls in the car, and have never been told I look like a hardened criminal. I may have looked a little haggard, but it could not have been that bad. Because I questioned his authority, I was invited to the local police precinct to work the matter out with a higher authority. I was able to keep my license and agreed to show up for a court date. When it came, the arrogant, bully officer actually showed up to argue the case. Once the judge heard what I had to say, she said, "no ticket, no fine, case dismissed". The police officer never got to say a word.
That was the day I learned that Chicago is a city that dishes out hard knocks, but also has a heart. The same person who is tailgaiting and honking their horn at you will once passing, notice you are lost and stop to help you find your way. The people on the street walk quickly, do not look you in the eye and seem detached. Actually they are being polite by staying out of your business unless you feel like engaging them. In a city with so many people, it is important to avoid causing minor annoyances and to give others space.
There is nothing that could have prepared me for living in Chicago except having grown up here. The weather is as extreme as it is changeable. The public transportation is excellent and you can get anywhere you want to go for a few dollars. Museums are free on Tuesdays. We have an aquarium, broadcast, sports, historical, science and black history museums. There is an architecture tour, a beautiful river, a lake that looks like the ocean. Every kind of public figure passes through here and many come from Chicago. President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Ann Margaret, "Ross" from "Friends", Roger Ebert, Hilary Clinton, Vince Vaughan, John and Joan Cusack, Jeremy Piven, Gary Sinise (of CSI NY). Most Saturday Night Live comedians got their start with Chicago's Second City. Music emerges out of various "scenes" and genres here--Death Cab for Cutie, Smashing Pumpkins and nearly every great Blues artist. If you want it, you can find it; go to the Green Mill for jazz, Blue Chicago for Blues, places in uptown for local or hard rock, and to Ravinia in the summertime for the wine and cheese crowd.
We have award winning athletic teams in any sport you could imagine--Da Bears, Da Bulls, Da Cubs (Da S. .)--not a fan--da Hawks, da Fire, da Sky and the historic Wrigley and Soldier Fields. We are home to ESPN, NBC, Fox, WBBM, WTTW and Harpo Studios. We have a thriving theatre district that runs every good play that passes through Broadway and then some. There is an Art Institute that has famous paintings from Monet, Manet, Picasso, Renoir, and visiting exhibits of global importance. There is more to say, but the point is that with opportunity and cosmopolitanism comes difficulty, hard-edged rules, and a lot to remember.
Between November 1st and April 1st, I have to park on the east or west side of the street on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 8 pm and 7 after a two inch snow. During spring, summer and early fall, I have to park on the west side of the street on Tuesdays and the east side on Thursdays for street cleaning--that is, between the hours of 9 am and 4 pm. I need to buy my "city sticker" in addition to my car license registration in January. If I forget any of these things and/or do not see a sign, I will be ticketed, booted or towed--and I have had all of those things happen to me. I pay for parking to work at my job; I am able to get the "pay" in pre-tax dollars, so that is my reward.
If a person does not start out "ahead" in Chicago, it is difficult to "get ahead". It is possible to live a quality life, to experience wonderful things, to enjoy summer festivals that are free to the public and happen around town every day. However, it is also necessary to bundle up, pay attention to the weather and parking situation every day, to abide by changes in rules and become flexible in driving routes. It is common here for major construction projects to close down well driven roads, city blocks, or expressway off-ramps without warning. In the mornings, to avoid traffic jams, westbound lanes of the expressway are turned into eastbound lanes with only a few bright orange pilons. If you don't know this, you will wonder why others are going the wrong way in your "westbound" lane. But it's Chicago. . .
This is a land where they dye the river green on St. Patrick's Day, at any given moment in a grocery store line, you can ask another how the Bears or Cubs played and they'll know. It is a place of energy, vibrance, colleges, univerisites, tech schools, arts academies, formally educated people, corporate executives and good hearted working people who can all come together for a Cubs game at Wrigleyville, and it is difficult to tell who's who. That's Chicago, too.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
No comments:
Post a Comment