A Week in Chicago

On Saturday, August 1st, after a great time at the Hickson's, we headed south from Lake Villa into Chicagoland. Our first stop was on the north side in Bucktown to see our old friend, Kim Hopkins. She was baptized into the Hyde Park Ward about the time Ed and I arrived in 2001, and Ed was assigned as her first home teacher. Over the years she babysat our kids, we spent Thanksgivings together, and we became fast friends. It was great to see her, but the kids were not at their best, and they only lasted about 45 minutes. I promised her we'd see her again before we left, which we did the following Thursday for lunch. These pictures are from that second visit.

Dirty, dirty faces. Chocolate frosties from Wendy's

We headed into Hyde Park through midday traffic and lots of construction and arrived in time to pick up the kids' first deep dish, Chicago-style pizza from Giordano's for lunch. We stopped at the Shurtliff's to eat it, and the kids were amazed at the amount of cheese on their pizza. Frankly, I had forgotten the heart-attack-package this pizza is. But my-oh-my, it tasted so good we bought another one a couple days later. 

The Shurtliff's live in "the Co-op," a condo complex popular among permanent Hyde Park LDS families who are lucky enough to be able to buy in there. It is favored because of its garden, playground, sandbox and basketball court in the center of the square. If you have small kids, it's the easiest place for a mom to live, with a park right out the back door and secure, locked gates. Ed and I lived there for a year at the Haraguchi's when we returned home from Denmark and we loved it. And our kids loved visiting there now, especially playing in the sandbox. We visited the Shurtliff's more than once during our week in Chicago, sometimes just to use them for their playground and sandbox.

I'm glad they know we love them despite their sandbox.

We headed to our apartment to unpack and get ready for bed, a three-bedroom apartment on 53rd and Drexel (3 blocks from Pres. Obama's house) generously rented to us by a member of the Hyde Park Ward who has never met us but nevertheless trusted us to take care of their place. It had air conditioning, three bathrooms, two levels, and plenty of sleeping space for everyone. It was a great place to stay, especially since the owners have two boys and lots of toys that kept my kids busy when we weren't out and around town.

I got the kids ready for bed, then went out for dinner with Liesl Shurtliff, Julie Hammond, and America Cannon. It was great to spend time with them, but I wasn't that much fun. I didn't realize how tired I was until that evening when I had hardly anything to say. I also realized that the trip was taking an emotional toll on me, and having to be alert and aware 24 hours a day, including a lot of driving, was wearing me out. It was also an emotional experience to be back in Chicago. I have only been back one other time since we moved, but never with my kids, and over the years I've often thought about how much I would like to go back, and about how good it was there. I've also been very proud of my time there, and proud of how I tried to conquer the difficulties that urban living can create for a family with lots of young kids. But on this visit, after traveling for a week with the kids, I realized that I probably was no longer up to the stresses of living in Hyde Park, and realizing that I no longer wanted to live there, that I preferred my easy life in Utah, was like plucking away a part of my personality that I was prideful about. When I lived in Hyde Park, it was easy to look down on other women who wanted to move back to Utah and their garages and supermarkets and gas stations and yards and good schools, because I was doing the hard thing by choosing to stay in Chicago. And now, I'm the one who wants the garages and supermarkets and gas stations and yards and good schools. That was humbling, and it made me feel somewhat inadequate to the friends I still have in Hyde Park. I'm sure they don't think of me that way, however, and I'm glad for that. Sometimes its amazing how well pride hides itself in our character, and how suddenly that pride can be revealed and painfully pricked.

But aside from character revelations, it was a great week, starting with church in the Hyde Park Ward on Sunday morning. It was great to see old friends, and to show Mary and Isaac where they went to Primary. I recognized so many people, and I felt loved by all those who recognized me and welcomed me home. Relief Society felt like I had never left. The rest of the week we went to museums, rode the train downtown, and went to the beach twice. I tried to get the kids excited about staying a couple more days, but by Thursday everyone was ready to go on to Connecticut. And to tell the truth, I was, too. I was tired of being a single mother with no other adults in the house, and even tired of visiting Chicago without Ed, because he's the whole reason I learned to love it in the first place. 

This was my last visiting teaching companion in Chicago, Elizabeth Bundu, with her two daughters, Kadija and Rashida. She was a war refugee from Sierra Leone, who lived in Liberia in one room with ten people for ten years before she got a visa to come to the United States. During the time we were companions, her husband left her, which made her happy since he was abusive.  I asked her why she never left him, and she gave me a serious look, saying: "It is marriage. You don't end what God has started." In the last couple years, she has remarried a pastor of another church, but she has remained active in the ward. This was her last Sunday, as her husband is moving her to Des Moines, Iowa. She's one of the people I most wanted to see, and I'm grateful for the tender mercy of seeing her again. 

  

The kids found plenty to do in the afternoon while I took a much-needed nap. The owners would probably have a heart-attack if they saw all the various parts of their apartment that at one time or another became a car track.

This picture isn't all that interesting since it is mostly of people's backs, but every Sunday evening members of the ward meet on the lawn of the business school and listen to the bells of Rockefeller Chapel and share dinner. It's the kind of event that wards in Utah just don't do because so many people have family around them to share these moments with. It's the sort of thing I miss most about Hyde Park, where your ward becomes your family and you spend time loving and supporting and playing together, especially in the summer time when the weather is good and the academic expectations are dimished.

We walked through the gothic-style Rockefeller Chapel (where Ed once arranged to have our stake conference when we was serving as the Stake Executive Secretary--how fantastic to have church in a gothic cathedral!!). The kids, of course, had to take turns sitting in the altar seat. My kids don't have a lot of tolerance for sightseeing in churches, plus it was really hot in there, so we found the bathrooms then headed back to the picnic spot.

Someone brought a snake to the picnic and let all the other kids have a turn holding it. 

We spent about 4 hours on Monday and 3 hours on Wednesday at the beach, and the kids said it still wasn't enough. I was getting a little bored, but they can play in the sand all day long. 

Ty Shurtliff and Isaac digging to China, with Liesl in the background. (Liesl Shurtliff is the award-winning author of Rump and Jack--if you haven't read her excellent middle-grade novels, you absolutely should. Red will be out next spring.)

Topher Shurtliff, Joe, and Linda

We hadn't planned to go to the beach on Wednesday, but Joe was up all night with an earache, and when I called Liesl for a doctor recommendation she picked up all my other kids and took them to the beach so I didn't have to manage them at the doctor's office. Bless you, Liesl. You were so kind, you made me cry. And you made my kids happy.

One of the other families had paddle boards, so Isaac was in heaven. He thinks kayaking is the best pastime on earth. This was his first time on a paddle board and loved it.

This was about the only picture I took at the Museum of Science and Industry, one of the highlights of our week; we were too busy to take pictures. We were still going strong after three hours, but the museum closed and kicked us out.

We visited Ray Elementary, where Mary went to Kindergarten through second grade. She hardly remembered it, but she did recognize this patio where she would wait after school for parent pick-up. In this picture, she is showing me the scar she got on her knee when she fell one day on this cement. It's funny what we remember most about being young, isn't it?

I took the kids downtown only once, which reminded me why I didn't take my kids downtown very often when we lived in Hyde Park. It was a long day, a lot of walking, and with the heat and humidity, the kids were worn out by 1 pm. But they were well-behaved, especially around the trains. I told them the story of when we lived in Denmark and I was yelled at in Danish by a train conductor for letting Mary and Isaac run toward the train on the platform. I was 9 months pregnant and couldn't chase after them, and I think they scared the conductor half to death. So now, all the kids were overly-conscious of the yellow line and kept well away from the edge. Mission accomplished. 

Cloud Gate (affectionately known as the Bean) was installed during the time we lived in Chicago, and it's one of my favorite pieces of public art. Abby was pointing at a pigeon, but I love how it looks like she's touching the Bean. 

Inside the Bean.

Mary kept falling behind because she wouldn't stop reading her Kindle. I finally had to take it away. 

One of the main reasons for going downtown was to visit the Art Institute, one of the finest museums in the world. I wanted to give the kids some museum practice before we got to Europe. I got the great idea online to pick up postcards at the gift shop before going into a museum, then have the kids do a treasure hunt to find their postcard art. What I didn't realize is that when you have five kids, each child should only pick one card, not two or three, and at a museum this size you should definitely stop at the info desk to find out if any of them aren't on display and what rooms the others are in. But the kids lasted and hour and fifteen minutes--fifteen minutes longer than I had hoped, so I consider it a win.

Even though Ed wasn't with us, I wanted to show the kids the Oriental Institute and the place where he spent so much of his life. Here are the kids making embarrassing noises in the otherwise silent archives/library. 

And here they are whining in the lounge, the other part of the OI where Ed spent most of his life.

I asked them to line up for a photo in the OI museum. . .  (No, Mary's only pretending to touch the bull.)

On our last evening in Chicago, Liesl invited us over for dinner. The kids played in the sandbox one last time, and I enjoyed the company of great friends.

Shaun and Mary Fullmer were also there. They just returned from a family history mission in France and the Czech Republic, and it was fun to catch up with them. Ed and Shaun served together in the Stake Presidency, and Mary and I used to go walking around the Point together on Lake Michigan in the mornings.