Life in Chicago

Her and Me and Him

On Tuesday night Greg and I left V at home with the nanny and went out to dinner. I defied winter by wearing high heels and a top that was in no way winter-practical. We drank cocktails and ate copious amounts of finely crafted sushi. I don't even eat meat anymore but I still partook in a ridiculously good appetizer involving very thinly sliced sirloin and a rock that has literally been heated to 600 degrees.

Greg and I laughed and spilled a little wine and we leaned into each other and we talked and talked.

I had forgotten how good it felt to be us, just me and Greg out in the world, on a date.

As I felt myself do so I realized I have forgotten how to relax.

Being a parent is confusing. It's the ultimate identity crisis.

I can hardly remember what it was like to come home from work with an entire unplanned evening stretching out before me, to not think about what time I would go to bed or how much sleep I might get. I can hardly remember what it was like to decide to go to the movies on a Saturday afternoon on a moment's notice.

I don't remember what it was like to eat a meal languidly, to not feel as though I have to finish it as fast I can because I need to be prepared for whatever is coming next. I can't remember what it was like to drink too many glasses of wine, to stumble to bed tipsy, not worrying about anyone or anything. 

I don't remember what it was like to carry a tiny purse, just lip gloss, a cell phone and a credit card. I don't remember what it was like to think about the future as a flat, irresponsible thing, a span of time all mine. 

But I also don't remember a time when I loved anyone as much as I love my daughter. I don't remember ever wanting to be with someone the way I want to be with her. I don't recall anyone ever smiling at me the way she does, first thing in the morning, her eyes closing as a soft, little smile spreads across her face.

There are little moments, the way he leans into me as we walk through a fancy cocktail lounge together, that make me remember my old life, the one before her. But then there is her and her warm hand on my cheek as she sleeps, hot breath on my neck.

All the things I don't remember are practically irrelevant. They are no longer. There is only now and this and her and me and him. There are hours and days and time that moves so, so fast.

Sleep Training FAIL

Greg and I forayed into the dark, dark world of sleep training last night. It was miserable. Veronica wailed. I cried. Greg was mean.

Admittedly, we tried a not-very-thought-out version of the famous CRY IT OUT method. Over the last six weeks we've had our fair share of rough nights and it just felt like it was time to do something. Anything.

Here are our sleep problems. I know all of you out there without kids are on the edge of your seats.

Scenario number one is some nights it's just hard to get her to go down. This means that she'll fall asleep nursing as we watch a dvd after dinner and then I let her snooze in my lap for a while, making sure she's really asleep. Then I tiptoe back to the nursery with her and oh-so gently place her in the crib, at which point she sits straight up and starts crying. Awesome.

The Best Gift Ever

Greg and I had our little Christmas this evening and he surprised me with this sign for the kitchen. It's just like the one my mom had in her kitchen. Poor Greg, all I got him was some ski pants (well, that and half of our trip to New Orleans in February.)

The Christmas Blahs

I'm feeling a little blah about the holidays this year.

Now, before you get all preachy with me and berate me for feeling blah when I'm healthy and employed and have a wonderful husband and a beautiful baby girl who will celebrate her first Christmas, let me just say I KNOW. And I already feel bad for feeling bad.

There's no real reason for my holiday blahs. I just don't feel very sparkly about it all.

It's a combination of a few things, I think. Mostly, I'm really missing my family this year, and I don't just mean my parents. This will be the third holiday season I've spent with the Boose family and while I'm very grateful for this and do enjoy going to Ohio (for any Booses reading this, please don't take it personally), I just miss feeling connected to my roots and my past during the holidays.

Six Months Already?! And the Return of She Wrote, He Wrote!

She Wrote, He Wrote is back! And just in time for Veronica's six month birthday!

 

*If you're not familiar with She Wrote, He Wrote, it's a blog that Greg and I created in 2008. Organized into a he said, she said format, we both write about the same experience, usually from very different perspectives. We took a hiatus from it for a while, but have decided to start it up again. I'll announce new posts here as they go up.

Enjoy!

And happy birthday Veronica!

Updates

A couple of things.

First of all, you can now reach this blog using www.lifeinchicagoblog.com. Look at that. A real url. The typepad one still works but the new one is a bit more professional, or something. It's funny, I feel like I've come a long way. When I first started blogging 6 years ago the url for the original Life in LA was blogs.salon.com/0002608. That blog is still up, in case you're curious.

Second of all, The Nervous Breakdown has launched a beautiful new redesign of their site. Greg is one of the new nonfiction editors, which is exciting. In case you didn't know, this is the website Greg and I both met through two and a half years ago. We were both writing for TNB...and then we started writing to each other.

Here's a video of me reading one of my favorite pieces at a TNB reading in Chicago a couple of months ago. You can see one of Greg here.

Autumn

Friday Morning Worries

Dear Bug,

If something were ever to happen to me, this is the letter I would most want you to read.

I think a lot about what it would be like for you to grow up without me, your mother. I suppose it has a lot to do with my having lost my own mother and the fact that I constantly fret about my own mortality. Well, actually I go back and forth between incredibly serene moments of understanding about the ebbs and flows of life and death and then extreme anxiety about having to leave this world before I'm ready. And your presence my dear, makes me feel like I'm not ready.

There are so many things I want you to know, so many things I could say. I could write you a letter every day for the rest of my life and probably not say it all. Nonetheless, there are a few choice things I would definitely want you to know if I weren't around.

I think a lot about how, if I were to die now, you wouldn't remember me. You would have no memories of our sweet, little relationship. I think about how that's true for the next three or four years. That in order for you to remember your mother I have to stay alive for several more years. I do know that even if you didn't remember me I know that I would have still had an effect on the person you are. I take comfort in the fact that all the love I've given you, all the care I've provided will always make you that much more of a secure person.

But enough of all that. Here's what I want you to know.

I love you like I've never loved anyone. I love you in a way I didn't realize was possible. I love you in this profoundly transcendent way. This way that, even if I weren't here, you would still be surrounded by my love. It's a love so big that it's never going away. Not when you're 20, not when you're 47, not when you're in your seventies and a grandmother.

I want you to know that I'm always going to proud of you. Even if I were to die today, you can be certain that when you're making your first science fair project or running your first track meet or graduating high school or college or losing a tooth or skinny a knee or taking your first step or going to your first dance or getting engaged or having a baby, that I'm proud of you. Even if it seems like I couldn't possibly be proud of you because I'm not there, I just will be and you have to accept that.

Death is such a strange thing, little bug. It happens to all of us. And it can be so sad and so scary and so unwanted. But the truth of it is that because of death, life is important. Think about it for a moment. It's true. Death gives us meaning. It gives us goals and aspirations and makes us think about just how much we love one another.

I don't know why I think about it all the time. I guess because both of my parents died so early. And because I work in hospice (really need to get a new job next year). But I do. I think about how long I have to live this life. How long I have to love you. To love your father. To be a mother, a wife, a woman, a writer. I think about places I want to see and things that I want to taste and feel. I think about having more babies and I think about you, you, you and your life and all the things I want to see you do and taste and feel.

And all those things make me certain that I just couldn't bear to go yet. And then I think, well, if I did have to go, I'm so very grateful for what I've done and felt and tasted here in my 31 years. You and your father and my mother and father have the height of it all. There's just nothing more important than the people we love.

But I digress. It's a drizzly Friday morning in October. You're 4 and a half months old. You weigh sixteen pounds (my aching back reminds me of this often). You love to suck on your big right toe and you've been squealing and laughing more than ever this past week. You don't have too much hair but you have the prettiest blue eyes and the softest rose-colored lips. You're nursing as I type this and one hand continually brushes against my shoulder, pulling at my sweater and grazing my face. Your eyelashes cast soft shadows on your cheeks and your warm little body is flush against mine.

There is no way I could love you more than I do in this moment. And it's something that will last forever.

I'm certain of it. 

Love,

Mom

Just Because

We had a really lovely weekend.

Yesterday was Greg's 31st birthday.  We started celebrating on Friday with a dinner with friends at Nightwood, officially my new favorite restaurant in Chicago. (Greg and I like to play this game where we ask each other what 3 restaurants we would return to if we moved away from Chicago and Lula is always my number one. Well, Nightwood is the latest feat by the Lula folks, so it was pretty incredible.)

On Saturday we drove out to the middle of Illinois and went hiking at Starved Rock Canyon. The drive was a little far and the canyon a little crowded but it was really nice to get outside and enjoy the fall leaves and crisp air. That night at home we ate tacos and watched Rosemary's Baby.

And yesterday was Greg's birthday. He shares his birthday with my father. My father would have been 89 yesterday (!). October 11 also happens to be my parent's wedding anniversary. They would have been married 34 years. My mother always said that she gave herself to my father as a birthday present and my father always said that she was the best gift he ever received. 

The three of us spent Sunday at home. I was in the kitchen for hours, working on a birthday cake and a lasagna to take to Greg's sister's house for dinner. Greg and Veronica spent most of the day following a football game on the computer and making each other laugh. And in the evening we had dinner with Greg's sister and her husband and their two kids.

It was a really nice weekend. The kind of weekend you dream about when life is giving you harder ones. It was the kind of weekend you wonder if you'll ever have again when you're dealing with a loved one who has an illness or when you've just gotten laid off from a job and you wonder if life will ever be normal again. It was the kind of weekend I used to dream about when my mother was throwing up from chemo or when I was brushing my father's dentures before giving him his nightly dose of morphine. Just one of those classic-life-is-good weekends.

And while I'm glad that my past experiences ensure that I appreciate these weekends more than I might otherwise, I also wish they didn't leave me with such a morbid edge to all things good. The more that I love Veronica, the more that I fear losing her. I remember going through this when I fell in love with Greg too. Before we were engaged and married I worried constantly that for some reason or another I wouldn't live to see those things happen. I used to beg some unseen force to please, please just let me live long enough to marry this man whom I love so dearly. And now I find myself begging again, please, please let me see my beautiful daughter grow up.

I don't know if this is normal. I don't know if my other mom friends experience this or if it's just a result of the loss I've experienced in my life. The moment I find myself loving something, I can't help but think of what it would feel like to lose it. I want to get past this. I want to be able to simply enjoy a perfect weekend, not because I know its opposite, but simply because.

Life in Chicago

Yesterday morning I got up extra early and ran the Bucktown 5K with some friends. Greg and Veronica were waiting for me at the finish line.

My friends and I all started out together but quickly lost each other in the crowd of runners and I ran the race by myself, breathing in the cold morning air in huffs, watching the other runners all around me and looking for Greg on the sidelines.

It was a short run, but still long enough to get my heart pumping, to fill me up with little bursts of unexpected emotion. The sky was shot through with silver rain clouds and the sun came in and out of them, filtering through the fall leaves on the trees in the little neighborhood streets we ran down.

I like running these large public races. I always feel deftly connected, however briefly, to all the other runners around me. What a funny thing it is that we humans like to do, this running. It's so innate in us, to push, to run, to gather together and move like this.

These are the kinds of things I thought about while I ran.

And all the while I was looking, looking for Greg and Veronica. My people. The two people I am most dearly connected to in this world. The sky opened up again in the last leg of the run and I thought about my life here in Chicago, about what a surprising thing it is. I was reminded again, of how swiftly life changes, of how often I find myself looking ahead to some future I can't help but anticipate but how all I ever really need to do is be present to what is. It will all change whether I want it to or not.

And then I was approaching the finish line, the runners around me growing dense and some of them running harder. Finally, I heard my name and turned to see Greg in his yellow zip-up, Veronica asleep in the Bjorn on his chest. My people. My favorite people. The people that give movement to my life.