Summer Wanes

It’s been a glorious summer here in Chicago, and I ought to know: I haven’t left town since our mid-June family trip to my college reunion in Minnesota. Yes, we have stayed home all summer, catching up with local friends in between their trips to all corners of the earth, and serving as a stopover for families on long road trips, hugely enjoying seeing them on their way to faraway destinations. We had plans for this summer, all of which fell through; none dramatically, just in the ways that plans can fall through sometimes. And so here we were.

It was lovely, being here for long, warm summer days. In the end, it occurred to me that summer is exactly the time to stay home when you live here. Late winter is when I want to be far, far away, but summer? Flowers blooming, the neighborhood yards lush, the lake perfectly swimmable, fireflies glowing and cicadas buzzing into the evening. Why leave?

August was a quieter, calmer month for me. The kids were home more with their sitter, not requiring me to rush them to day camp every day with lunches and water bottles, swimsuits and towels. Many of my clients were on reduced schedules, allowing me to work three days in a row and take four day weekends all month. In the past, this is the month we’ve left town, in effect leaving at just the time when we could be home and relaxing. I’ve loved being home this year.

I’ve gotten some projects done around the house – cleaning out drawers and closets, setting up a budget for our family, and getting the boys on board with a set of expected household chores. But more importantly, the spaces in my days and nights have opened up my mind and creativity in new ways; I find myself with ideas that excite me about my work now and in the future. These margins in my days have also given me the energy to tackle the challenges we have had all year with our dog, and help us move in the right direction with him. We’ve made great strides with him in the past month. I’ve seen my friends often, and I found a yoga class I love, something I’ve been wanting to do for the past year. I also started swimming in the lake with a friend or two at least once a week at sunrise: now that is the best way imaginable to start a day. If yoga and sunrise swimming don’t leave you feeling zen and ready to take on the world, what will?

I can see the impact on my whole life when I have this extra time; indeed, the impact on all our lives. And I am managing to keep some blocks open in my schedule this year, something I was unable to do last year. That’s going to be time for me. Maybe I’ll swim, or go to yoga, or take a walk. I’ve arranged everything around those blocks of time: they’re non-negotiable. Because for so long, everyone else’s needs and wants have been non-negotiable, but what I needed came last time and again. Not because anyone asked me to put them last, but it was what I did.

And so the summer wanes. But this year I’m not scared of the fall routine, the full impact of demands at work that go from 0-60 in early September, because when I look at my schedule I see some days when instead of driving the carpool I will have time to run to the gym, and other days when I will be stopping home for lunch and a dog walk before seeing afternoon clients.

It’s become easier to shift the kids’ summer bedtime closer to their school bedtime this week because it’s getting dark earlier already; only last week that task seemed impossible. Their school supplies have been dropped off and we’ve seen their new classrooms. The sun comes up a bit later each day, and our sunrise swims – those that we may have left – will have to be timed just so. But I welcome the changing light and look forward to the golden trees and a new school year. And I welcome more days of this life that thankfully seems to keep spinning in sync with the amazing world we live in, year after year.

Secession

Lyle, my 6 1/2 year old, decided this afternoon that he would “secede from the family” when we got home from school, quickly adding “–after TV“.

This had something to do with hating Baxter. We discussed this as we wandered the hallowed aisles of Whole Foods, a rare treat. Lyle asked if he could choose some food to take with him when he left. I suggested that he could leave after dinner but, really, if you secede from the family, you are on your own with sustenance. As we were choosing apples, I was saying matter-of-factly, “You’re in or you’re out, kid. Either you secede from the family or you don’t. You can’t do this halfway, and besides, I’m not going to give you expensive food if you’re seceding from the family,” at which point I realized a tall bearded young man was looking on with wide-eyed amusement.

Anyway, he was definitely “out”. He was leaving. Today. Well, after TV and dinner. This was then further amended to take place after bedtime cuddling. But then he was definitely leaving.

He would be sleeping down at the beach and taking his bath in the lake. I mentioned that the lake is probably about 40 degrees still and he’d be awfully cold if he swam and then stayed out all through this chilly night, so, little rebel that he is, he announced that he’d be skipping his bath! He also explained that he’d be coming home at 7:00 in the morning, at “sun-up”. You know, for breakfast.

During dinner, Lyle recalled that there is a sign at the beach noting its closure at 11pm, so he switched the locale to the gated front yard of our condo building instead. At that point, Baxter felt this was an adventure he could get into, and they began to pack. Lyle showed me the contents of his backpack: “See? I have my penguin, my Nerf dart gun so I can shoot Baxter awake in the morning, some extra darts, a water bottle, and my extra hot dog from dinner with mustard.”

Clearly, he had all the bases covered, and I suddenly felt like I was in a Frances book. You know, Secession for Frances.

The boys found their sleeping bags and pillows, and Lyle put on a nice Garnet Hill sweater. “Gosh, Lyle, that’s kind of a nice sweater you’re wearing for sleeping out in the yard,” I pointed out. “Well, this is gonna be a nice camping trip,” he replied. Ah. Now I see why it’s appropriate.

While I helped him tie his shoes, he confided, “I was kinda talking to myself downstairs. I was just trying to convince myself that it was gonna be fun, so I said, ‘This is gonna be fun!’ over and over. Baxter asked me why I was talking to myself and that’s why.”

The boys used the bathroom and brushed their teeth, ready for their big night. I heard Lyle exclaim, “Books! Baxter, we need our books!” and they dashed off for some books. They read in the house for a while so that the neighbors enjoying a peaceful happy hour on our front porch could have some privacy, but finally we let them out into the dusk. Of course it’s freezing outside today so they had to gear up, thus the earmuffs and face mask.

First they lay their sleeping bags and pillows down on the sidewalk, city slickers that they are.

photo credit: Rob Taylor

I coached them through the window and once they were settled on the lawn I closed the window and we proceeded to hang out with a friend who was visiting and ordered Thai food for dinner, sneaking peeks and placing bets on how long they’d last. I felt bad that they might be disrupting the Happy Hour fun our great neighbors had going on out there, but we were assured that it was very amusing and one went so far as to suggest they should be paying us for the entertainment. They took pictures.

photo credit: Michelle Marquardt

Baxter lay in his sleeping bag reading a book until well past dark and then used a flashlight to continue, while Lyle turned this way and that, looked up at the trees and the night sky, ate his Vienna Beef hot dog with mustardy fingers, and talked incessantly to his brother, who “mmm-hmmm”ed him to death as he read. In short, it was very much like a night in their room except colder, damper, and with mustard.

In the end, they came back inside an hour and a quarter later, which was about an hour longer than any of us expected. Of note, the minute the neighbors on the front porch called it a night, the boys were right behind them, but the reason given was that Lyle was bothered by a “dripping noise”.

Lyle declared that the adventure had been “35% fun” as he gladly donned his warm pajamas and climbed into his soft bed. For his part, Baxter mainly seemed glad he had been allowed to stay up and read until almost 10pm, it didn’t really matter where he had been.

The boys smelled of damp spring earth and adventure as they snuggled in under the covers. I reminded them that we have plenty of camping ahead of us this summer, on nights that will be far warmer and certainly drier in our tent.

And so, for at least one more day, Lyle is still a member of the family. But we’ll see what tomorrow brings. I’ll make an extra hot dog with lots of mustard, just in case.

L’il Packers Fan

Translation:

Go Packers!

Boba Fett Rules!

(That’s Me.)

Packers Rule!

BOOOOOOO Steelers!

Go Lyle!

Gooooo Packers!

Steelers Suck!

 

[We had a little chat about the word "suck" right after I peeled myself off the floor where I collapsed in a heap of laughter when he went skipping out of the room. I also had something to say about the illustrations at the top of the page, which are apparently depicting something to do with the Steelers logo, missiles, and bombs. But ohmygod, the Packers fever is funny.]

Trying to Move On

When I went downstairs to turn off the boys’ light and forcefully pry their books out of their hands, seeing as how it’s nearly 9 o’clock, Baxter appeared quite tired. “Just reading about all these world records has tuckered me out!” he declared, rubbing his eyes, and handing over the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records.

While I found that humorous — that simply reading about “the tallest and the fastest”, as he put it, would exhaust my child — that’s kind of the way we roll over here. Sometimes I fear we are more likely to “get tuckered” from reading about other people’s adventures than from actually having them ourselves. My kids are the ones who start out running through the snowy street when I encourage a pre-breakfast, post-blizzard adventure, and then collapse from the effort or cry about the snow in their boots 2/3 of the way down the block so that we don’t actually see the snowy beach and I have to take a solo trip later to see it for myself. They’d rather go home and eat those blueberry waffles they picked out at Trader Joe’s.

This makes us the perfect candidates for a big blizzard with two feet of snow and a couple of lazy snow days without school. It has to be a “historic snow event” for Chicago to close its public schools, and it was: this was the third biggest snowstorm on city record. We listened to lots of music, I finally made the old-fashioned peanut butter cookies I’ve been dying to make with the kids, we played in the snow a lot, and they watched a great many Star Wars movies. We really did have an incredible time, and lived our small, snowbound life to its fullest. I had a blast, personally, taking in the sight of huge mountains of snow and neighbors banded together to clear alleyways that the city doesn’t plow. In fact, three days later, our own street has yet to be plowed, but I assume they’ll find their way here soon. People here have a lot of spirit and character. “Flinty toughness” indeed, President Obama. I’m totally impressed.

As is often the case for me when I turn away from work completely for a few days, I am having an incredibly hard time getting focused again. I could be using these days to catch up on paperwork that sorely needs doing, and yet it’s as if my brain itself were filled with two feet of snow. But today I was able to leave the alley behind my house in my car, and the boys went to school (Matt took them there on the El), and reality is coming around again as surely as those vehicles are being dug out of every street. Unfortunately, with Baxter’s tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy scheduled for next Wednesday, I will only be re-immersed in work for two days next week before I’m pulled back into family time all over again.

I believe that I should claw my way to the surface of reality and be a responsible clinician and business owner, at least to catch up a bit before Baxter’s surgery, but instead I edit and organize my Flickr set from the blizzard and spend too much time creating a video montage that expresses what these few days have been like for me. Then I watch it too many times, even though so much visual quality has been lost from the original photos. When I do some laundry or wash a few dishes I feel I’ve accomplished something.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be ready to move on. I wouldn’t put money on it, though.

Magical Years

I love Christmas.

Love. it.

The lights, the tree, candles in the window. I love listening to great Christmas music in the house and the cheesy stuff in the car on Lite FM radio. I couldn’t be happier to be living again in a place where winter means piles of snow and dangerously dangling icicles and seeing our breath outside. Driving through falling snow to be with family on Christmas Eve. I fully embrace the Elf on the Shelf and prolonging the belief in Santa just as long as we can, reading the Christmas books that come out just once a year along with the decorations, sitting by the fire, and hot cocoa with lots and lots of marshmallows.  I get on a baking jag and can’t stop.  One day in December I made a double batch of sugar cookies, a double batch of butternut squash soup, and my Mom’s spaghetti sauce. It made me so happy to have delicious things to pull out of the freezer at a moment’s notice.  During the first snow I took the boys to the local garden shop and bought the most fragrant wreath I could find.

Seasons mark the passage of time in a way that is important to me, and holidays punctuate it. I piece together my memories of recent years by knowing where we were for Christmas that year, or who hosted Thanksgiving. As the kids grow older, our traditions become more important to us all. Listening to music, lighting candles at dinner, decorating the tree, making a million bajillion cookies and then giving away most of them. Christmas Eve with all of the cousins, the kiddie table set for eight, and the White Elephant Bingo game they love, singing carols all together and then opening gifts from that enormous pile 20 generous family members manage to bring for each other. Receiving actual presents in the midst of this season is truly an embarrassment of riches.

Matt and I, people who tend to prefer living in a less cluttered, more spare house, happily haul in boxes of decorations from storage in early December. Christmas is everywhere in this house, from the place mats and napkins to the hand towels in the bathroom. There are special throw rugs that come out, and certain photos of siblings (some now grown) with Santa and some of old friends in Christmas frames that are only seen during this season. Every snowfall is magical to me in the month of December and I love watching the beach down the street fill with snow while I wait for the lake to freeze over.  Heavy snow on trees and a sunrise over the frozen tundra of beach make me catch my breath with wonder early in the morning when I take the dog out.

Christmas changes over time, like everything else in life, and I believe we are in an especially magical period. I have no scars from Christmas past that open up each year; it is not a mixed experience for me like I know it is for many others.  We’re surrounded by kind, generous family on both sides, people who genuinely like one another and enjoy spending time together. A couple years ago, I thought we had THE magical Christmas and there could be no other like it. This year I realize I am feeling that way for the third year in a row.

The kids are old enough to anticipate it without being completely bonkers (most of the time). They can be up until midnight having fun with the family on Christmas Eve and sleep until almost 9 on Christmas morning, unlike their younger days when they’d be up at 6am NO MATTER WHAT. Even though Baxter and I had a frank conversation about Santa last summer, he clearly suspended reality for the season, choosing to believe (and therefore not questioning us about it or threatening to “trap” Santa) for a while longer. Both of them were on their best behavior, just in case that Elf they looked for every morning was real.

I don’t have a clue what Christmas with teenagers will be like someday, but I have no doubt it will be wonderful in its own completely unexpected way, just as every stage with these boys has been. However, I am fairly certain that when the kids are all grown up and I wax nostalgic about Christmases with the kids, it’ll be this stretch of their middle childhood that my mind will return to.  I can’t believe my great good fortune and need to preserve these memories by writing them down because I fear that someday I will laugh a self-deprecating laugh, accusing myself of sugar-coating these years with the false glow of nostalgia.

But, no: they really are beautiful.

That Which Doesn’t Kill Us: Life on the Alley

I may have mentioned (a few thousand times) that we live in a condo building on an alley. Yes, a long alley that connects a whole heck of a lot of streets runs right alongside our home. It’s urban. There are Dumpsters outside our windows, and when garbage trucks roll by the drivers are at eye level out my window if I’m sitting on my bed. The alley runs parallel to the major thoroughfare at the end of our street and is often chosen by people in the neighborhood to bike, walk, or drive on rather than the loud, busy street. Lots of people take the alley to the beach. Our dinner conversations are often punctuated by men cycling over the steep speed bump outside our dining room and yelping in pain, causing all four of us to grimace and then roar laughing. It is also the “road” of choice for those who might want to act ridiculous at night and not be caught. (For a little history on the Chicago alley, check this out. Turns out we have the most alleys of any city: 1,900 miles of them.)

Did I mention it’s a college neighborhood, too? So, yeah, the college kids run up and down our alley at all hours of the night, especially around 4 o’clock in the morning when the bar around the corner closes and they’re headed back to campus or their apartments.

Basically, what I want you to understand is that it’s as busy as some city streets, busier than any suburban street at any hour of the day, and its denizens are probably ten feet from us when we’re in bed. The noise Matt and I have learned to sleep through after three years of acclimation now causes the dog to wake with a start and bark his head off. Right next to our bed. We use the air conditioning more often now, just so we can close our windows at night.

But we and our neighbors have some awesome alley stories; it’s one of our favorite past-times, sharing these memories. They’re like our war stories and part of the charm (believe it or not) of city living.  There’s the guy who asked another shiftless passerby to help him get a double sink out of our Dumpster and when the dude did, leaning way in there, the first guy stole the other guy’s cigarettes and ran, prompting quite an argument; the drunk college girls hollering loud “Little Mermaid” songs and realizing with embarrassment that they couldn’t make it another step without peeing out there in the middle of the night; or the time we saw the young guys who pulled an enormous brassiere from a Dumpster and tried it on, strutting up and down the road.

Last night, round about midnight, I heard a crazy guy under the influence of something coming from a mile away. He was yelling at some unidentified woman who probably lived about ten miles back (or, even more likely, in another city altogether), at the top of his lungs. It was so loud as he passed by that Matt angrily slammed our window shut, causing us and the dog to nearly suffocate to death in here for the next six hours.

But when morning came and we acknowledged how little we’d slept, we actually had a lot of laughs about this episode. (I know; this is what makes us People Capable of Urban Living. It’s a choice between crying and laughing.) Matt created the “Labor Day Alley Quiz” over breakfast, which he dashed off via email to all of our neighbor-friends who were likely to have heard the guy:

1. According to the man who visited the alley at 12:17am today, a woman who lives nearby is a terrible:

A. Wife

B. Mother

C. Person

D. All of the above, I guess?

2. Has she ever been there for him?

A. Not ever

B. Never, ever

C. Not for a damn minute

D. All of the above

Answer key: 1:D, 2:D

Now, this, in and of itself, made my day. Suddenly, this dude’s screaming about his woman being a terrible mother who has never, ever been there for him, not for a damn minute, was hilarious. The friends who responded to the quiz – and our collective ensuing banter – had me laughing all day. Yes, this is what the adults were doing while the kids were sweating their way through their first day of school. First, there was Becky, a great college friend who lives behind us (up on the 3rd floor of their building: I tell you, the guy was LOUD):

I fessed up to Aaron at about 12:18 that yes, the man was correct.  I have never been there for him.  Never.  Not once.  Not for a damn minute.  Of course I don’t know who he is, but whatever.  He’s still right.

And then her husband Aaron (also an old college friend) chimed in with this:

You’re thinking about this all wrong.

I think it was a good communication strategy. The guy used clear and precise language and stayed on point the whole time.  And in a world where there are so many distractions (sleep, sirens, late night TV) he clearly got attention.

Plus, anyone trolling alleys within a few blocks now knows he’s single and probably up for a rebound. If you think about it, the whole “there for me” could have been a reference to Seinfeld’s “here for me.”. Maybe tonight we’ll be treated to a woman saying “I’m HERE for you loud depressed angry guy who swears too much and probably hurt his voice.”

And so suddenly, thanks to being surrounded by fun people with excellent senses of humor, my fatigue at being disrupted by Mr. Loud Ass was secondary to the fact that we got to laugh about it all day.

That which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.  And maybe a little punchy. Wish us luck tonight.

Dreams

When Matt came to bed last night I woke up just enough to ask, “Where’s Mom?”

“What?” he asked, laughing.

“Where’s Mom?” I repeated, getting annoyed. “It’s 11 o’clock and she’s not home yet!”

Thankfully, he oriented me pretty quickly. “She lives in California and you’re in Chicago…”

He could’ve really messed with my head. I’m not sure I’d have been so kind.

*********

I don’t know if the major dream I remember began with that confusing, sleepy conversation, but it seems likely.

I had a long, involved dream in which some kind of new opportunity came up for Matt in San Francisco, where we lived for almost 10 years before moving here in 2006.

In the dream we ultimately realized that there were more opportunities for us there (something we do joke about once in a while, as many interesting things for each of us have surfaced in the Bay Area since we left) and that we needed to move back.

I remember being in tears in my dream, overwhelmed with the idea of leaving my beloved Chicago, but making all sorts of practical decisions (such as deciding we’d go back to renting rather than trying to buy a home) at the same time. It seemed at the time that it was something we had to do and I was resigned to it.

When I woke up, I was shocked to find it was a dream and that I was more than a little sad about that.

Winding Down

It’s mid-August — or maybe even late August, I guess. The cicadas are buzzing so loudly at night it’s almost deafening, but the temperature has moved out of the 90s. I’m sure it’ll be back, but the humidity has dropped this week.  One night leaving work last week I could have been wearing a light jacket. I think I may have forgotten cool weather – breezes – still existed these past couple of steamy months.

I’ve learned to “do” back-to-school gradually by now. About three weeks before school starts I started bringing more conversations around to the topic of school, their teachers, their school friends. We took care of the boys’ school shopping early and there are four bags filled with supplies in a corner of the dining room. I spent hours on a Saturday going through the kids’ fall clothes and making them try things on.  (All I can say about that is that their clothes must’ve been hanging off of them last year because they’ve both grown a lot and yet neither of them needs one single item of clothing for fall. I’m sure by Christmas they’ll both need completely new wardrobes, but at the moment I’m grateful.)

On Friday I took them for haircuts and referred to them as “back-to-school” haircuts. Today we took a ride over to the boys’ school and played on the playground again. Lyle wanted to practice the monkey bars before school started. Since it is still summer, we stopped at Scooter’s for some amazing ice cream cones while we were in the neighborhood. We’re also gradually adjusting their bedtimes back down to school year standards. Transitions are hard and this is a big one; anything I can do in advance to get the kids into the right mindset is going to help. I hope.

We still have two more weeks before school starts. Tomorrow we’ll get more summer books from the library and go swimming in a nearby outdoor pool. We have Lyle’s birthday coming up at the end of this week, so he’s flying high with excitement. We probably need ice cream at least once more. But amidst these last summer hurrahs I know I’ll see the first leaves turning yellow, signaling that fall is almost here. As much as I love all that summer brings, I look forward to the start of my favorite season and a new school year.

City Living

Raising kids in a big city can be challenging.  The difficulties that typically send parents running for the hills aren’t necessarily the things that have been difficult for me; I revel in the busy-ness, the racial and economic diversity, and even the loud Loyola students and occasional singing drunkard in the alley outside our bedroom late at night.  Those things give the neighborhood a lot of character, and I love that there’s a coffee shop, bank, movie theatre, used bookstore, Chinese take-out, dry cleaners, and music store all within half a block of my front door. I don’t mind that we lack a backyard for the kids and dog to run free and the privacy of a single family home: I like our daily forays into the big park along the lake or the small play lots nestled between houses where we run into friends and neighbors and meet new people.  And we’re lucky enough to like our condo neighbors and have a great situation where kids can get together and play in their pajamas if they so choose (and they do).

But other things are challenging about raising kids in a city as big as Chicago. Getting them into a good public school takes time, energy, and the resources to know how to navigate a complicated and often frustrating system. Happily, there are quite a few families close by whose kids attend our kids’ magnet school (which is 20-25 minutes away), so the boys do have friends very nearby and we have a great carpool community, but it’s still not the same as walking to school with friends every day. (There are no school buses here for public school kids unless your child has transportation written into an IEP. By the middle school years – and certainly high school – my kids will be on public transportation to and from school.)

Although they have many benefits, by and large, city schools don’t have the resources many other schools have.  One reason we chose our kids’ school was because of the strong level of parent support and commitment we saw there. Parents raise tens of thousands of dollars each year for the music program, among other things, and we make an automatic donation to the school’s fund-raising organization every month.  The school is amazing and well worth the extra funds and commute – I always say if this were a private school I’d gladly pay the tuition – but once in a while I dream of being at a neighborhood school where the daily logistics would be easier and my kids’ friends wouldn’t live all over the north side.

Despite the day-to-day challenges, there are near-constant reminders of why I love raising my kids in this urban environment. Over the past few days my kids have had a string of really amazing opportunities that remind me of the advantages of our city life.  And if you’d like to consider the following to be three-posts-I’ve-been-meaning-to-write all crammed into one, I would support that.

First, on Saturday morning, I took the boys to a family drop-in class at the fabulous Lill Street Art Center.  I love Lill Street, and not just because I am obsessed with both First Slice Cafe (where a portion of the proceeds go to the homeless) and the gallery shop inside. My new office is only two blocks from there so they may fear I have actually moved in.  I’ve been encouraging the boys to consider taking an art class or camp session but they’ve been reticent, so when I noticed this family drop-in hour for only $10 per person, I signed us up so they’d get more familiar with the place.  We all loved it. For an hour, we sat together and let our creative juices flow. The boys made dogs, each in their own way (Lyle’s has a miniature bowl of food and Baxter’s has a huge bone and stands on a rug) and I learned to make a bowl. We used various tools, chatted with another family, and had fun painting on the glaze. We’re looking forward to picking up our work in two weeks.  The boys were so enthusiastic about the class that we decided to go back frequently and make Christmas gifts for relatives there this year.  They are disappointed that I suggested we go once a month; they’d like to go more often. And I’ll add that it was wonderful to see my two boys engaged in a fine motor task that was so motivating for them.  I wanted to take a photo or two here but since my hands were covered with clay it just didn’t seem like a good idea.

On Saturday afternoon we drove Baxter up to Northwestern University, where he is participating in the 4-week L.A.B.S. program (Laboratory Adventures in the Biological Sciences).  This is an incredible opportunity for kids interested in science – they wear real lab coats and work in small groups with students in an actual university science lab for two hours a week. The department has a grant to run this program, making it very affordable.  I can’t express how much Baxter loves it!  I am also pleased with the emphasis on health in their experiments.  One week they studied the effects of SPF-30 on cells and last week he ran an experiment on the effects of nicotine on human cells, and he’s been struck by the very obvious results. Yesterday he sat with me and showed me all the work and information in his binder and I was impressed with how much he knows and how much of it I didn’t learn until high school.  He goes into the lab with his widest grin. The older he gets, the more I see his strengths in math and science. The dude impresses me.

And finally, today: Baxter’s school band performed at Meritfest, playing three challenging pieces of music on the main stage at Chicago’s Symphony Center with other bands from the city.  As my mother-in-law wrote after looking at the photos tonight, “Can’t believe our Baxter is sitting just feet away from podium used by CSO greats like Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Muti.” My boy asked to iron his own clothes (and quite nearly ironed his entire hand before I jumped in, which proves that mothers are helpful!), strutted into the kitchen proudly this morning, and was incredibly excited to be on that stage in front of a big audience playing his flute.  The acoustics were – naturally – beautiful.  It was a special day and I was reminded of why we work so hard to raise money for our music program (run by Merit School of Music).

So, yes, there are challenges to raising our kids in an urban environment.  But we also live in a world-class city with all kinds of unique opportunities right outside our door. Every time we are involved in one those things I am reminded that our efforts are worth it.  Tenfold.

One Lucky Mama

It was almost time for Lyle to change into his pajamas this evening when I offered to take him on a short dog walk with me.  We decided to walk just down to the beach and back to get a little fresh air.  As Lyle ran ahead, screeching to a halt as if his shoes had some sort of braking system at each driveway and alleyway, I took in how still the night was.  It had been a chilly and windy day here, necessitating my winter down coat for our earlier walks; I didn’t need it anymore tonight.

The beach lured us in, sunlight glowing on the rising waves.  The air was still and we watched a dozen seagulls coasting over the water, waiting to see one diving for a fish. We talked about different types of shells we found and I showed him that there were huge shadows over the lake because the sun was setting behind us, behind the buildings at the end of our street. But where the sun was bright, the light on the water, the sand, and my boy was beautiful.

The scene reminded me of one of my favorite Mother’s Days, when we lived in San Francisco, a few months before Lyle was born.  I woke up in our apartment that day to breakfast in bed brought in by Matt and Baxter (probably from Arizmendi Bakery), and we looked out our bedroom window at a clear, sunny spring day.  On a fogless day like that we could see the ocean about 30 blocks away from our bed, and suddenly being there was all I wanted.  And so the three of us headed out to play at Ocean Beach after breakfast and it was a glorious morning. My sense memory of the clear California sunlight and that blue, blue water is very strong. I felt lucky to be in it.

3-year old Baxter patting unborn Lyle on Mother’s Day 2004

As I thought about that long ago morning, I was overwhelmed with the realization that I was standing on a beach in Chicago this time, talking to that once unborn child, six years later on the eve of Mother’s Day, when suddenly it started to rain. Hard, and from out of nowhere.  ”Lyle!” I said, delighted, “the sun is shining and it’s raining! We should look for a –” I turned as I said it and there in front of us was suddenly forming the most incredible rainbow I’ve seen in my life.  It extended over Lake Michigan in a perfect arc, both ends resting atop the water right in front of us and appearing to be close enough that we could reach out, grab it and take it home in our pockets to admire later.  As the colors became brighter and stronger, there emerged a slightly lighter second rainbow – a double rainbow! – above it.  I looked around but we were the only ones on the beach to witness this wonder so close up. If I’d had my camera with me you would have thought I’d photoshopped it in, it was that unbelievable.  I searched for an image similar to it and it was somewhat like this one without the landforms behind it and a little brighter and closer.

We stood there in amazement. I told my boy that seeing a rainbow like this will bring us great luck and we talked about how special it was to have seen it together. We stood back on the sidewalk before it faded and carefully made our own visual memories of it so we’d never forget it.  I know we never will.

I now have another amazing Mother’s Day memory from another beach in a different city with my second child to add to my cache. I felt like the luckiest person in the whole world.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Lyle’s rendering: to help him remember