Missing my lake

 

Photo by USAExplore

There is a woman—I’m sorry I can’t call her name—who lives on the 82^nd floor of a building near downtown Chicago and frequently posts dramatic pictures from that crow’s nest vantage point. Sometimes it’s Lake Michigan at sunset, sometimes dawn (she must get up early). She also must have at least a 180^o vista because sometimes she posts looking west over the vast expanse of the city.

I’m not sure you could ever get me up to her 82^nd floor apartment, and I know for sure I would not be comfortable living at that height, even sleeping there for one night. I’m not fond of heights, and I don’t always relax in elevators. But, in a detached way, I admire her photography of my hometown, and it thrills me to look at the tall buildings with the Chicago River threading its way among them and “the” lake beyond.

An aerial view of the north lakeshore this morning had a much more visceral effect on me. Lake Michigan is at its best blue, the way it looks on wonderful clear days, and Lake Shore Drive—or is it North Shore Drive at that point?—hugs the shoreline The green of Lincoln Park is broken by the blue of Belmont Harbor, dotted with small boats. In the distance one can see Navy Pier and the building of downtown, but they pale before the lakeshore.

Granted, it’s not “my” part of Chicago. It doesn’t show Promontory Point and the 55^th Street beach, the places of my childhood memory. But it still gave me a sharp pang of homesickness for a city of which I have grown fonder in recent years. Maybe it was that trip five years ago, taking my four children to see where I grew up. Maybe it is the Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries, which have led me to explore the Hyde Park neighborhood more, revisiting online the streets where I wandered as a teen, old landmarks I remember and new places I never heard of but now want to visit. (Saving Irene came out a year ago, and Irene in Danger will launch November 14.) Whatever it is, I miss Chicago, and I long to go there again.

After a short stay—four years—in small-town Missouri, I have lived in Texas for over fifty-five years. I am a Texan through and through. My career has been built around the history of the state and the experiences of its women; I am quite sure most people who buy my books live in Texas; I have a side interest in the food—had quesadillas and guacamole tonight and remembered the first time I was ever confronted with Mexican food, at Joe T. Garcia’s, and was befuddled. My children are all born Texans. My friends are in Texas, except for a few long-term friendships. Despite our governor, whom I despise, and the outrageous laws he’s passed on everything from abortion to voting to guns and border control, I have no desire to leave Texas. I love it.

But something always calls me back to Chicago. I think, were they still living, my parents would be astonished, and I’m quite sure my brother feels only slight ties if any to the city of our childhood. But I am drawn to it. I miss the lake, which is always how I told directions—the lake told me where east was, and I could figure everything else out from there. I miss the stately old houses of Hyde Park and Kenwood, the eclectic mix of people, the funky stores on 53^rd Street. I don’t miss winters or the hot, humid summers—but we always eventually got a cooling lake breeze. I  treasure memories of summers spent with “the gang” on the Point, lying in the sun, and evenings at Hyde Park United Church or the YMCA, lunch trips to Cunag’s ice cream parlor for milkshakes so thick a straw stood straight up in them, movies at the Piccadilly.

One of the moments that will stay in my memory forever is when Jamie, driving our rented Suburban five years ago, turned into Madison Park, where I grew up. And then their astonished reaction when they saw the house of my childhood—a red brick built like a brownstone with stone ornamentation, dating back to the early 1890s and the days of the Columbian Exposition.

Yes, Chicago has a hold on a big piece of my heart.