The House in Madison Park

Last night my memoir class got to talking about the houses they’d grown up in and how you think the house is huge when you’re a child but if you go back as an adult it’s shrunk a great deal. I grew up at 1340 Madison Park in the Kenwood-Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago’s South Side. Madison Park really was a park, three blocks long, with one way streets on each side. On our side, in our east end of the park, were mostly single family homes, though with one huge apartment called the Caverswall. I remember it to this day—very elegant inside. Across the park, the south side was lined with apartment buildings and residential hotels.
Our house was built, so I was always told, in 1893 for the Columbian Exposition. It was a duplex, though nobody knew that term back then. We shared a common wall with the house next door. Ours was red brick, with lovely stone work, a bay window, and a wooden front porch that my dad screened in every summer—it became our summer living/dining room. The house adjoining us was remodeled, totally flat in front, and painted stark white with concrete steps—a stark contrast. The house was narrow—16 feet wide if I remember correctly—with living, dining, and kitchen downstairs, three bedrooms and one bath upstairs, and a half third floor that went from student apartment to junk room to a cozy study for Dad. I guess I always knew it wasn’t big, but I didn’t think about it.
Dad bought the vacant lot next door, and it was a beautiful garden—his avocation. He spent weekends in disreputable clothes, on his knees in the dirt, but the results more than justified his efforts. We used to tell him it was embarrassing when students from the osteopathic college where he was president came by and found him dressed like that, but it didn’t bother my usually proper and quite British father.
In the 1960s, Mom and Dad sold the house and built a lovely home on an acre-and-a-half in Tryon, North Carolina, where they had honeymooned. Probably in 1972, we all went back to Chicago (I was then in Texas and John in Colorado) for a big weekend at the osteopathic college, and we drove to Madison Park and parked across the street. Standing there, I said, “Mom, it looks so tiny.” Her reply? “We didn’t know any better.” By then we had lovely, larger homes.
In the 1990s, a friend and I went back to Chicago for a nostalgic visit, and this time I knocked on the door. The wooden porch was gone, and I looked into the once-beautiful yard at a sea of mud, the garden ruined by dogs. Not one blade of grass.
When we explained who we were, the owner welcomed us and gave us a tour. The lovely marble fireplace had been replaced by a Swedish modern wooden mantel, and the flanking bookcases were gone. Upstairs, the banister had been scratched at by cats so much that it had one long raw dish down the middle. I was amazed at how small the rooms were.
The kitchen was still that kitchen that Mom had remodeled in the 1950s—truly her pride and joy. Now it was shabby. The owner, whose wife was out of town, asked if I wanted to see the basement and some alarm went off. I told him I’d seen enough of the basement when I lived there—it used to flood with stinky sewer water when there were storms and Mom scrubbed it with ammonia. Nancy said she was thinking, “Judy’s not going into the basement with that man, and I’m glad.” They tell us to listen to instinct, and I did.
I wish I hadn’t gone. I would love instead to carry my childhood memories of that house—and pretty much I still do. But Thomas Wolfe had it right. We can’t go home again.

A lazy Sunday

I meant to take Jacob to church today. Honest, I really did. But he has this new habit of climbing into my bed about 7:30 and crawling over me, sometimes literally sitting on my  head, to get to talk to Scooby, who immediately gets awake and excited and wants to go out. So, reluctantly,  I am up and about the day. This morning we moved slowly--well, I did. Jacob was full of vim and vigor. I read the paper, fed us breakfast--he asked for chocolate bars but I explained that was not breakfast food--and then finished the clean up from last night, putting away dishes, emptying the dishwasher, and so on. When Jordan called at ten to confirm that we were going to church, I told her I didn't have the energy. So I had Jacob until almost noon. His new trick, that he apparently saw on TV, is to bow in front of you, hold out one hand, and say in a soft, non-Jacob voice, "Yes, your majesty." Cracked me up every time he did it, and then he'd get the giggles. We had a good morning.
Actually did some work this afternoon and then had a long nap. Jay and Susan came for a drink and to eat leftover Texas caviar--Jay confessed that when I called he didn't know what it was and googled it to find out. Tonight I've sent them the recipe. But I heard all about their trip to Chicago and am indebted to them for exploring "my" part of the city--Hyde Park and Kenwood. They loved the city and made me a bit nostalgic for it--of course, the company Jay works for is headquartered on Pulaski on the West Side, so he's familiar with it, but Susan had never been. They thought, as I still do, that the lake was wonderful, and the University of Chicago magnificent, the Art Institute awesome (they have a friend who's a curator and gave them a behind-the-scenes tour). It was lovely to sit and listen to their description.
Since then I've been lazy--ate chili con queso for supper and decided it's the salt that gets you--whew! Velveeta must have a high sodium content or mybe I'm getting more sensitive to these things lately. Anyway a busy week looms,, so I'm just going to read and go to bed.
I'm reading a mystery in which the victim is poisoned--seems I've read several of those lately and they are of particular interest since my work-in-progress revolves around poisoning--in fact a restaurant poisoning, as in Delicious and Suspicious, by Riley Adams, the one I'm now reading. Don't know what the poison was in this case, but I have laid the groundwork for what it is in my book--just don't know if it's lethal enough. Writing and reading mysteries is a lot of fun, though my work this week will be on the nonfiction book I'm doing.

Rain and retirement

I am so tired of gloomy weather. We haven't seen the sun in forever, and every day it rains just a bit, enough to dampen the ground and my spirits. None of this is helped by the fact that I have to go to the dentist tomorrow (three small cavities) and then take my car to finally get the top-down mechanism repaired. Jacob will have dinner with me, so that brightens the day.
Today I think I made steps toward mastering retirement. Slept as long as the cat would let me--almost 7:45--but it was ten by the time I did my free writing, rode the stationery bike, showered, shampooed and dressed. What a luxury! Worked for a while--I'm editing that memoir of an old friend--and went to lunch to celebrate Melinda's b'day. Staff meeting and then home again. I cancelled the pot-luck happy hour for tonight--several people sick and too gloomy for a porch picture. Need to reschedule. But I've had a pleasant day, working, napping, and eating leftovers. At lunch I was coughing more than usual, and by mid-afternoon my chest felt tight. I thought a cold--or the dreaded flu--was coming on, but then I told myself that would be what my brother calls "a self-fulfilling prophecy." So I napped--and lingered in my cozy bed long after I woke up (which meant I missed Megan's call with her report on their trip to Italy). But the tightness was gone and I feel fine.Colin called with a report on Jordana Alter's wedding in New York and the fabulous time he and Lisa had.
I may have fallen into the self-fullfilling prophecy trap because at noon, when we ordered, the waiter was hunkered down by our table when he suddenly looked away with a vacant look on his face. Melinda said after that he was shaking and clammy, but he said, "Sorry, folks, I suddenly felt sick." Well of course after that we didn't want him near our food. Jim said he was hoping the poor guy would pass out so they'd give us another waiter. In fact, other people delivered our bread and lunches, and we didn't see much of that young man, although when he came with the bill, he assured us he was fine. Jim was still muttering about H1N1.
Nothing else new--I'm lost in someone else's childhood in Iowa, though it is funny that his grandfather graduated from Cornell College, where I went for my first two years, and it turns out we had some long-distant friends in common. The last few days I've corresponded with someone from Sisters in Crime who had posted that she grew up in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood--turns out she went to the same grammar school I did, knew exactly where I lived, etc. Lots of fun to share common memories.