Category: Slice ‘o Life

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My Lake Shore Drive

When you choose to live in the place where you grew up, history accrues. Kid history mixes with adult history and family history gets tossed in there, too.  Chicago is my home by birth and by choice and I don’t imagine ever leaving this place.  I am grateful for the immigrant grandparents that chose it and my parents, my Dad especially, who taught me to love it.  Living here is a privilege and yes, sometimes a challenge, but more often than not I feel immense gratitude for being able to call Chicago home.

Lake Shore Drive, for those of you not lucky enough to live here, is the mythic main artery that runs along the eastern edge of the City along Lake Michigan’s shores.  If you live anywhere near it, as I do, it is most likely your preferred means of going north or south.  I have been driving ‘The Drive’ as it’s called for all of my 45 years.

When I was a kid, Lake Shore Drive carried me to museums and the zoo and Grant Park symphonies and air shows and ChicagoFest concerts at Navy Pier.  As a teen I drove along it with my girlfriends, not yet quite understanding that the Lake is always east, so having no idea if we were traveling north or south, but just young and happy and dumb and free, as teens can be, so not really caring either.  As a young adult, Lake Shore Drive brought me to swanky parties and my preferred shopping destinations.

Life was always good when it involved Lake Shore Drive.  It meant an event of some sort, a special day, a destination that would involve fun or adventure.  Good times, always.

As an adult, like many things in adulthood, Lake Shore Drive has become more complicated.  Lake Shore Drive brought me to the apartment where my Mom was slowly dying of cancer.  Lake Shore Drive brought me to the doctor’s office where I learned of four miscarriages.  Lake Shore Drive brought me to the hospital that treated my daughter for the brain tumor that would take her life.  Lake Shore Drive brings me to the hospital where I have been visiting my Dad the past month.

Oy.

It takes me about 15 minutes to get from my back door to the northern tip of Lake Shore Drive at Hollywood.  It’s like a worn path, instinctive, comforting, an old friend in ashphalt that understands me.  Driving south with the Lake at my left and greenery and high rises on my right brings me peace, always.  Day or night, not a single trip passes that I don’t think to myself how lucky I am that I get to live in such a place.  This despite cursing Mayor Rahm Emanuel every time I drive under the North Avenue overpass that the previous Mayor Daley took the time and dollars to decorate with flowers.  Beauty is important, Rahm.  Daley knew that and I appreciated that about him.

See? I'm not the only one who thinks this. There is a whole book about it!
See? I’m not the only one who thinks this. There is a whole book about it!

I have so many comforting memories, too, that are called to mind every time I whiz by.  When my daughter worried about the winter trees being lonely and cold without their leaves, we were driving down Lake Shore Drive.  When she fed the ducks bread, it was while visiting a friend who lives at Diversy and Lake Shore.  She, too, logged a lot of miles going up and down the Drive that brought her back and forth to the hospital her life depended on.  Making that exit off Fullerton, I feel her there, still, despite my daughter and that hospital now both being gone.

And there is that sweet, sweet spot, just south of North, when you are close to the skyline and you know that that same skyline will swallow you up whole if you stay south on Michigan Avenue.  The city that you get closer and closer to as you travel south just envelops you and embraces you and you become a part of it just by staying the course of a southern path.  I’ve tried to capture this sensation in photos a hundred times, at least, and failed each and every attempt.  You just need to see it, to drive it, to feel it.

Lake Shore Drive is more than a road.  It is memory and history and tragedy and joy and strength and beauty and so, so much of my life.

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Downsizing Christmas

I make no bones about not being the most Christmasy of gals.  I like the holiday alright, but I can never escape the feeling of being oppressed by it.  It kind of sucks that I have, as long as I can remember, thought of it as something to get through, to endure.  The day itself is almost universally lovely. I spend it with family I adore and have shared with them since I was a young child and I have two of the sweetest boys a mother could ever imagine. Christmas Day is the bright shining light in the whole season.  It’s all the bells and whistles I could do without.

The shopping, the wrapping, the decorating, the gingerbread house constructing, the baking, the card sending, the holiday music listening, the crowds, the elf, the ugly sweater parties, the forced cheer — the cumulative effect of all of it never fails to get me down.  It’s a shame, really, as any one of those things independently would be lovely and enjoyable, but somehow the combination and concentration of HOLIDAY CHEER never fails to do me in fairly completely.

Every year I tell myself it will be different and every year it is the same. Sigh.

This year I have approached it with a bit more strategy and that seems to be really helping.  I wrote a post about how Theodore Roosevelt has guided me this holiday season.  Pfft.  I am now relying on long dead presidents to help me cope with the holiday blues.  Whatever helps, amirite?  You can read that post HERE.  Long story short, his quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy,” has helped me tremendously.  It was a kick in the pants to not spend so much time on the Facebook this time of year, looking at all the happy, smiling families, which was only leading me to ask, “Why am I not so happy this time of year?  How am I hurting my children by lacking the cheer that seems to easy for so many others?  Why does my life always seem so complicated when other peoples’ lives look like a piece of cake?”

Wise words from a dead president.
Wise words from a dead president.

Just stepping back, focusing on myself and my family and creating joy for the four of us has created a center instead of a diffuse ball of ‘woe is me.’ Yesterday we went and bought a tree, made some sugar cookies, decorated with a little holiday flair here and there.  The tree is about twelve inches from my writing table and I am smelling its lovely scent as I type this. The most amazing thing is that doing all of that didn’t feel a bit oppressive. Not even a teeny tiny little bit.  It was fun.  Fun.  And easy.  And a little bit uncomplicated.  I feel grateful.

It struck me that what works for my family (I happen to be married to a man who believes Ebenezer Scrooge is the most misunderstood and misinterpreted and wrongfully maligned figure in literature — oy vey) is the idea of downsizing Christmas.  For the past few years I have whittled away at our holiday decorations, donating those things I haven’t used in years or anything that doesn’t work with young children.  We are down to three boxes.  This pleases my husband immensely.  Me, too, as I pulled them off the storage shelves yesterday.  Better yet, I am using maybe half of the decorations we have hung on to.  The rest are too precious to give away and too fragile for curious little fingers.  We can enjoy those again in a few years.

The result is a home that whispers Christmas rather than shouts it.  There is a small, fat tree in the living room, adorned with a cozy collection of wood and felt ornaments that each have some special meaning.  The star that rests atop is a Donna original made from cardboard, aluminum foil, and a toilet paper roll.  A simple tree that looks homemade.  It suits us.  Not flashy, but charming and lovely.  There are two stockings that hang on our bookshelves and I will never stop thinking there should be three.

We made a batch of sugar cookies and I’ll do some chocolate chip bars today.  The rest will be outsourced to accommodate all the sweet tooths in my family.  There is no shame in that.  The weather has cooperated this year, so we’ve actually been able to get outside and do some holiday visits to the Botanic Gardens train show and this week, dodging the weekend crowds, we’ll hit Zoo Lights some evening.  We haven’t visited Santa yet and neither boy really has a special holiday outfit.  We haven’t seen any of the display windows at the Chicago stores on State Street.  We may or may not get there this year.

And all of that is okay.  I’ve long thought that one of the greatest strengths a person can have is knowing their limitations.  One of my limitations (and hoo-wee do I have a lot of those to choose from!) is this holiday stuff.  Fits and spurts, people, is what I can handle.  Picking and choosing what we do and letting go of the guilt and comparisons is what seems to be helping this year.  Next year might be completely different.  Who knows?  Another thing I’ve learned is to worry about right now right now and worry about later later.

This season I will keep taking it one day at a time.  I will work to eek out all the holiday joy we can based on how mood and health and weather cooperates.  I vow to try not to compare our holiday joy to the holiday joy of others.  I will keep my head down, keep sniffing that tree, keep it simple and special, working within our own family’s means and limitations.

Whew.  Wish me luck.  And best of luck to you, too.  We got this.

Santa on Tree

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Be Careful What You Wish For, Mom Edition

It was exactly a week ago — come to think of it, right about this time of day, too, late afternoon — when I thought to myself, “I’m tired.  I’m worn out. I want a break.  I deserve a break, dammit.”  And then I kept thinking.  I wished I had stopped thinking and left it at that, but I didn’t.  I kept thinking, “I wish I got sick and could have a couple days in bed guilt free.”

Pffft.

Sunday night I went to bed with a tiny bit of a sore throat.  Monday morning I woke up with a raw and angry sore throat and deep fatigue.  I told my husband, really just kind of clutched my throat, because I had no voice, and he very kindly took the lead on getting Mary Tyler Son up and ready for school.  I stayed in bed until the baby woke at 9:30.  The baby never sleeps until 9:30, whose baby sleeps until 9:30, but that morning the baby slept until 9:30.  Bless you, baby.

For the next four hours I did the best I could with a crawling, demanding baby and a rising fever and worsening aches and pains.  I put the baby down for his afternoon nap and the fever topped 101 at that point.  I texted my husband who, valiantly again, picked up the boy from school and cleared his afternoon schedule.  Bless you, husband.

This looks a lot like our old school mercury ther-MOM-eter, which I started using when the sensor one kept telling me I was topping out at 97.1 despite feeling hotter than 1976 Farah Fawcett. Mary Tyler Son told me I looked like a narwhal when I used it.
This looks a lot like our old school mercury ther-MOM-eter, which I started using when the sensor one kept telling me I was topping out at 97.1 despite feeling hotter than 1976 Farah Fawcett. Mary Tyler Son told me I looked like a narwhal when I used it.

I didn’t leave the bed except to use the bathroom for the next two days.

I got exactly what I wished for, didn’t I?

The next time I set a wish, I need to think a bit more clearly.  When I wish for a sickness bad enough to constrain me to bed for two days, I need to include that no one else in the house gets whatever plague I wish up.  Silly woman.

Like clock work, just as I was able to be a bit more vertical without support, Mary Tyler Dad came down with it.  For a couple of days we kept the boy home from school because he, too, had a stuffy head and we both were worried he was coming down with it, too.  Seems his cold just firmly remained in the “sniffles” category, but the baby was not so lucky.

Friday night the wee little one went to bed with a slight fever.  About five hours later, he started barking like a seal, crying, screaming, gasping for air.  Poor honey.  Saturday morning I brought him to the pediatrician first thing and he was diagnosed with croup.  Five days of steroids, but most likely would remain croupy for 3-5 days.

And that’s where we’re at.  Our little family of four is scratching and clawing our way through fevers and coughs and poor appetites and aches and pains and sniffles and sleeplessness and tea and soup and juices galore.

Lord, I cannot wait for this to pass.

Despite all of it, I am grateful it is just respiratory infections and not GI horseplay.  That’s a whole other layer of ick I am happy to have missed. I am grateful for docs that squeeze you in despite having an overfull roster.  I am grateful for steroids that help a little baby’s airway constrict.  I am grateful for drive through pharmacies and donut shops.  I am grateful for our caring baby sitter who was able to help us two full days this week.  I am grateful for school mates who agree to have Mary Tyler Son on a playdate so the three sickest people in the family can convalesce without a bored and bouncing five year old nearby.

Sigh.

Even writing that made me tired.

Next time I will be much more careful about what I wish for.  Oh, and I will get a flu shot, too.