leaving Chicago

I am going to make this a reflective day. This means that first of all, things are going well and secondly, I have a little time on my hands. Leading me to think that I am so ready to lay down my gardening shears! My mom keeps telling me -- what a shame this isn't California where you could have your garden year round. Oh horror! This much work, every day, year round? Wisconsin, how I love you for giving us winter! Yep, you heard it here on August 11th, even as I am sitting at an outside table in a cafe in Chicago, loving every second of that breeze, the green plantings to the edge, the feeling of freedom that indoor dining still does not offer. But at the end of the game, I like that the growing season winds down and we have the quiet of winter.

I have a final morning here, at my younger daughter's home, but it's a quick one because kids have school and parents have jobs. Still, a quick one has lovely moments. Plenty of them!

(standing is best!)

(dancing is even better!)

I walk with the threesome to the two kid schools...

(Let's see who is inside that stroller! Hi, Juniper!)

And then the parents go off to do their jobs and I take a stroll in the neighborhood (stopping at Olivia's because that's the only place on the planet where I can get a box of tiny chocolate covered caramels -- excellent bribing material for a kid who needs to hurry up and get into the car, as well as an evening sweet bite when you just need a bitty piece of something).

From there, I go to Floriole's. I love this bakery so much! Just looking at their few pastries makes me happy!

I buy the usual buckwheat cake -- it makes for a wonderful breakfast outside.

This is where I pause to reflect. I'd received a couple of letters from Poland again, at least some of them triggered by the publication of Like a Swallow (you haven't bought it/read it yet? You should!). This book has generated so much good feeling among so many that honestly, I am moved to tears by it. And you know, the reaction has been to write and tell me about it, which is just so generous! We shared a history. We're talking about it now, fifty years later. 

(And to my friend from Australia -- that postcard you sent about LAS? Incredibly beautiful and loved.) 

I was going to drive home immediately after breakfast, but my daughter asked if I was willing to come up to her work and scoot out to lunch with her. Oh, am I ever!

She works at Northwestern U, which is in Evanston, just north of Chicago. I used to come up here for classes when I was a grad student at U of Chicago. I drove my ancient wreck of a car all the way from south of the city to the north, several times a week, because I loved the work of a professor who taught at Northwestern. As I repeated the northern lakeshore route today, it struck me that professionally, the right decision would have been to switch to this university, to write a dissertation under my hero prof  in sociology, and be forever after a sociology person who did participant observation research. But, I fell for a guy and moved with him to Madison and gave up on the whole sociology gig in favor of something practical. Law. For all that went well in my life afterwards, it was the right decision. 

(the lake is ferocious today)

(...this does not stop families from coming to its shore)

I push aside idle rewrites of my life and focus on the wonderful reality of having my girl work here. I love pausing for this brief period, so I could feel this neighborhood once again, now in this very different context.

We go to pick up a lunch at Hewn -- an Evanston bakery, because she knows that's my preferred lunch venue. 

(so many pretty pastries!)

And we have these precious minutes to catch up.

(with a selfie!)

And too soon, it's time for her to return to work and for me to turn on my music for the drive home.

This time, I switch away from my usual playlist and I put on the Beatles. Some time ago, when it was made available on Apple Music, I purchased ALL the Beatles songs. $99 for the whole bunch. And I never listened to them. Oh, maybe I'd turn on one or two favorites, but otherwise I did not go back to it.

Today, however, I am reflective. (Remember? I warned you!) The Beatles is like playing my childhood and teen years right there, through my head and soul, bringing my life from those years to here, to this ride from one young family's home to the other's, to Ed at the farmette. What prompted this? Well, I'm getting ready for a September reunion, or should I say Reenactment (more on that later, in September -- stay tuned, it will be worth it!) and the Beatles are an assist in that direction.

Remarkable how well I remember all the lyrics of all the songs, running from 1962 until 1971 when I returned to the U.S. and suddenly the Beatles didn't matter anymore. But all those Beatle years! My loves, my angst, my numbing adolescent angst that taught me never ever to indulge those feelings of failure and hopelessness again. Years of guitar strumming on the bed before I learned to stop. I got up off that bed and (play: Across the Universe) moved on, leaving Poland, leaving it all to look ahead to something more complicated and therefore better.

This was my drive. I sang along good and loud. A few happy tears were shed. 

I remembered to get off the correct highway exit. 

I pulled over before stepping into farmette territory and wrote this. Then I filled the car with gas and came home to Ed.

From Ed -- gorgeous, ready to go to the market? 

I am. We go. 

I am home, with my heart evenly split between three homes -- two here, one down there, where today the breezes blow, the baked goods glow, the grandgirls smile their radiant happy childhood smiles.

The Sturgeon Supermoon shines brightly over us all tonight.

With so much love...