Author: Sheila Quirke

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A Conversation with My 7 Year Old

“I know what I want to be when I grow up!,” he exclaimed as we pulled away from school.  “What’s that,?” I asked.  “An architect!”  Being a fan of architects and architecture, this thrills me.  Our youngest is named after one of Chicago’s best known architects, so it’s definitely kind of a thing for me.  “Do architects design just the outside of a building, or the inside, too?,” the boy asked.

I went on to explain that it depended on the architect.  Some leave the insides to interior architects or interior designers.  Others, like Frank Lloyd Wright, designed everything down to the window screens in his creations, even choosing paint colors and lamp shades.  We drove a few moments in silence, me fantasizing about just what my boy might create, my boy, well, he was already reconsidering a life designing buildings.

“You know, if you’re interested (please be interested!), we could go tour some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s homes in Oak Park,” I offered.  “No.  I changed my mind.  I don’t want to be an architect anymore.”  “What?  Why?  What changed your mind?, ” I asked.  “Those buildings take up too much space.  I don’t want to be the one responsible for taking away the home of some animals.”

Sheesh.  Just when I start to worry that I might be raising a sociopath, he goes and says something as sweet as that.  Hashtag grateful.

The conversation went on to cover things like eco-friendly architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright’s use of only natural elements, and then, eventually, as all conversations with my seven year old seem to do these days, on to Minecraft.

I knew as soon as we pulled into our parking space to return home that I wanted to preserve this conversation with my boy.  He is changing and growing so quickly these days.  He spends so much time away from home, is deeply engaged by things like Minecraft and Club Penguin that I don’t really understand, and poof, before I know it, he will have a moustache and be out the door.

He lost both his front teeth in the past week, so there is a lisp to many of his words right now.  Listening to that lisp creates a tenderness towards him that recalls his infancy. Oh, do I love him, and ache for his childhood being gone, despite being smack dab in the thick of it.

Seven is interesting, too, because while I have a few memories of my own time as a young child — 4, 5, and 6, I feel like all the memory files started storing properly when I turned seven.  And my seven is so very different from my boy’s seven.

Portrait of the blogger at seven years old.
Portrait of the blogger at seven years old.

I remember how proud I felt when I was asked to do a reading at school mass in front of all the other kids and teachers.

I remember the smell of my grandparents’ home and the taste of my Baba’s fresh bread.  She used butter, none of that margarine we used.

I remember having to get my hair cut when my Mom went to work — she had a job where she started early and would no longer have the time to wrangle my tangles first thing.  She got me a Dorothy Hamill wedge cut, much like the one she wore herself, except I had massively curly hair. Curls and wedge cuts do not a good combo make.

I remember my best friend, Allan Murin, and all the summer evenings we spent together, talking until the sun went down and it was time to go inside.

I remember my First Holy Communion dress and all the photos from that day, my hands dutifully posed in front of me, praying for what, I don’t know.

I remember the Fonz and all the 50s themed parties we went to wearing poodle skirts and bobby sox, the little neighborhood boys trying to each look tougher than the other.  The ones with parents who smoked got to roll empty cigaratte packs into their t-shirt sleeves.

I remember still being afraid of the tall slide at the local park and the rocket ship slide at the town’s big park?  No way would I go near it.

Seven has legs for me, even as a woman in her mid-40s, so there is an awareness, an appreciation that these are the days my son will remember now.  Not an abstract sense of the time, but defined moments and details.  They will stay with him and keep him company when he parents his own kids some day.

And maybe, just maybe, some day far into the future, he will remember that time he wanted to be an architect before deciding against it, then running inside to eat a warm chocolate chip cookie his Mom made him, just because.

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The Orange Balloon: A Story About Grief and Living

Once upon a time I took my daughter to the grocery store.  She was in the midst of cancer treatment, but it was that brief time of the month in between her chemo sessions that she was able to walk and breathe freely amongst others in the world.  We got pretty efficient at packing 30 days of living into six or seven.  And a grocery store doesn’t seem like much, but, hey, it was Trader Joe’s and she was a young toddler, so trust me when I say a trip to the grocery store was cause for celebration.

We had finished our errand and my little bald headed Donna was gifted a balloon by the cashier after we checked out.  It was a bright orange balloon, on a white ribbon.  I remember it like it was yesterday, despite the calendar telling me it was almost eight years ago.  Stupid calendar.

As we drove home I remember feeling anxious that Donna was holding and playing with a latex balloon.  Can you even imagine a child with cancer dying after ingesting a balloon?  In those days, my worries ran high and I kept peeking glances in the rear view mirror, reminding my girl not to put the balloon anywhere near her mouth.  She laughed and giggled and wiggled her fingers along the orange balloon, making funny squeaking noises that brought us so much joy.

We got home and pulled into our parking space.  It was a bright, chilly afternoon, but one that held the promise of warmth and spring not too far away.  I ran the groceries up first, then came back down to carry in my girl.  As I opened the door, in the flash of a moment that will stay with me forever, Donna’s bright orange balloon flew past me, weaving through my arms, ascending higher and higher.  It was gone with the wind.  Literally.

Tears ensued.  Wails.  My beautiful girl was so, so sad.  I was so, so mad at myself.  Why hadn’t I thought to open the door more carefully?  Why hadn’t my arms and fingers reached higher or more deftly?  Why hadn’t the girl been holding on to her precious balloon more carefully?

None of those questions mattered.  The balloon was gone.  Long gone.

I tried to make lemonade out of the lemons of that lost balloon, telling Donna, as we watched it fly higher and higher into the sky, moving further and further away, that perhaps it might reach her Baba, my mother, Donna’s namesake who died before she was born.  We never talked about heaven much or what it meant to be dead or where you went, but in that moment, grasping as I was, the idea comforted both of us.

Today's orange balloon, which looks so much like that other orange balloon. The bright blue skies are the same, too. It is for Donna, and her brother, a small connection.
Today’s orange balloon, which looks so much like that other orange balloon. The bright blue skies are the same, too. It is for Donna, and her brother, a small connection.

Hours and days and weeks and even months later, Donna would remember her orange balloon and tell me how sad she remained about it.  It became part of our lore, our little family of three.  We all knew the significance of that orange balloon and the sadness it brought to our girl.  But just as she remembered her sadness, she, too, felt comforted with the idea of her grandmother, a fine lady she had never even met, keeping it for her, holding it safe, being cheered by the orange balloon herself, up high in the sky.

Not an orange balloon crosses my path that I don’t think of my girl and that beautiful day and her profound sadness at losing something she treasured, if only for a short while.

Today I was at a different store, paying a different cashier, when I spied a bouquet of balloons at the next register, clearly waiting for a young child to claim them, one by one.  They were pink and yellow and orange, of course.  I was child free this morning, but when I grabbed my change I asked the cashier if I might take one for my little guy at home.  “Of course,” she smiled, “that is what they are there for.”

I lied to that cashier.  I told her it was for my little guy, but that was a fib.  That orange balloon was for Donna.  Every orange balloon is for Donna, today and every day.  Of course, when my boy wakes from his nap, there will be an orange balloon waiting for him to play with, but you know, and I know, that his afternoon joy comes courtesy of the sister he never met.

That orange balloon will always and forever be for Donna, the little girl I treasured, if only for a short while.

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On Saturday, March 19, 2016, the 5th annual Donna’s Good Things shave for St. Baldrick’s will be held in Chicago.  Please consider joining us as a shavee or donating to our event.  CLICK HERE.  Just like that orange balloon, raising money for pediatric cancer research is part of Donna’s legacy.

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Married with Kids

“Married with kids” is both a description of who I am, but also what I do.  I am married with kids, yes, but I also think of marriage and kids as verbs.  Marriage is work, a process, a state of being.  Having kids, raising kids properly, is certainly work.  Perhaps more of a vocation, really.

I come from a long line of “married with kids,” too, as my parents did not divorce.  I am the youngest of four.  My husband descends from the “married with kids” lineage as well.    And, yep, all our grandparents do, too.

As we wrap up the closing of my Dad’s home, the last connection to my parents as anything other than memories, I feel reflective.  So, please, if you will, indulge me.   I think it is the photos that are doing it to me.

Portrait of the blogger as a young girl. Can you tell I really liked Little House on the Prairie?
Portrait of the blogger as a young girl. Can you tell I really liked Little House on the Prairie?

Boxes and boxes of my parent’s photos sit downstairs in my home, waiting for the day that all four of my siblings can sort and organize them together.  I am curious to look through them myself, but it seems a bit unfair, somehow, me having access that my brother and sisters do not.  So, sit they will.  I snapped a few photos of photos as we did a cursory sort over the holidays and I keep coming back to them, swiping my thumb back and forth, watching the history of my parent’s marriage unfold.

When I was a child and imagined myself as an adult, I was always alone, living in a high rise, doing amazing things (magazine editor!  flight attendant!  psychologist!)  and, always in my imagination, wearing knee high boots.  My adult reality looks nothing like that.  I am married, the mother of three, live in a condo, and earn a little money writing, but for the most part am a stay-at-home-mom.  Married with kids.

My own marriage looks, I think, quite a bit different than my parent’s marriage.  We have more money than I did as a child.  There is more grief, for sure.  Our roles, while on the outside appear very traditional, from the inside are quite egalitarian.  We don’t fight the way my parent’s fought.  Our two boys are having quite a different childhood than I had myself.

Today’s “married with kids” is, I think, a lot more kid focused.  A child’s needs and wishes are front and center in many modern marriages.  Is that a reaction to our own childhood where kids were present and appreciated, of course, but not the focus of the family?  Methinks so, yes.

Both sets of my grandparents were immigrants.  My Father’s parents were born in Ireland and my Mother’s parents came over the great ocean from Croatia. They had childhoods and lives that looked absolutely nothing like my own.

My Irish grandmother came over hoping to find a better life than the one she had in a small cottage in western Ireland.  She worked as a domestic for wealthy families on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive.  My Irish grandfather first spent time in Massachusetts before claiming Chicago as home.  He owned his own wholesale candy distribution business before he lost everything in the Depression.  He raised his family in a series of apartments in Chicago’s now infamous Englewood neighborhood.

My Croatian grandmother came to America as a very young child, originally settling in St. Louis.  She, too, found more promise in Chicago and worked as a seamstress for the Pullman Rail Company.  It was her history with them that allowed me to become a Pullman Scholar in college and qualify for some much needed scholarship money.  My Croatian grandfather grew up in the mountains of Croatia, outside Split.  His family were farmers.  He fought in WWI, but for the other side. Like many Croatian immigrants, he found work in Chicago’s steel mills and earned enough to buy a modest sided bungalow that was almost lost in the Depression, but for the kindness of a single banker.

All of my grandparents were gone by the time I was a young, single woman, when marriage and kids were but a twinkle in someone else’s eye.  I never got the opportunity to ask them about raising children or being in a long term marriage.  I would hazard a guess that having the luxury of musing or writing about marriage and child rearing would be outside of any of their experiences.  Perhaps they would have little to add.  Their lives, at least some of their adult lives, were all about survival, not if their oldest was being challenged enough creatively in his gifted elementary school.

My, parents, too, I think would also have a hard time relating to being “married with kids” in the way my husband and I are.  I had been married only three years before my Mom was diagnosed with cancer.  She truly adored my husband and was proud of my career, I think, but it was her being sick and needing care that helped me realize I myself was ready to be a mother.  Before her illness, I was looking for excuses to put off the family my husband wanted to start.

1976 portrait of my family from the Parish Directory -- the only family portraits we would ever sit for.
1976 portrait of my family from the Parish Directory — the only family portraits we would ever sit for.

This period of reflection I am wading through this past year has me thinking a lot about being “married with kids.”  Looking at photos and imagining my parents’ and grandparents’ own experiences with something so common and yet so profound as being “married with kids” is sparking a much welcome connection to them.

We each approach our lives coming from a specific generation and our own unique experiences.  My grandparents or parents never lost a child to cancer.  My husband and I never lost our livelihood due to global economic duress, or had to move from small apartment to small apartment.  We have never had to assimilate into a country of people different than ourselves.   We never have had to rely on food stamps or the generosity of strangers to put food on our table.  We’ve never left friends or family across an ocean, searching for better or more.

So many struggles across so many generations and through them all, marriage and children.  I am grateful for the connection.