The City

Tonight, thirteen strangers pranced through our apartment to discern if they could make it their home. I am glad Brad and I both left. I didn’t want to watch them mentally mapping out the next few years of their lives: curling up in our living room, frying onions over our stove, and sorting socks on our gray pile carpet. It is still ours.

This type of resistance floods my pores when change is perched cat-like on the horizon. I am a wistful soul. I find comfort in the familiar. But, our “Seed” is 22 weeks now and we have succumbed to the migratory pull of suburban parenting. It is fitting in a way – my parents brought me home from the hospital to a sunny yellow nursery on Bonnie Brae. Brad and I will be doing the same for the Seed. Three blocks down. It will likely be the house where she takes her first tentative steps, learns how to say Dadda and blows out a solitary birthday candle with frosting on her nose. But, right now it holds no memories for us.

I bought a card the other day that I tacked up on my bulletin board: “Sometimes ‘right back where you started from’ is right where you belong.” I think it may help me leave the life we have started here at 1211 W. Newport. It makes me think of that board game Amy and I used to play as kids. Life. The one where you plugged along in your mini-plastic station wagon at the mercy of the addictive rainbow spinning wheel, dodging financial ruin and social hiccups along the way. It was a twisty, curvy crapshoot if you hit prosperity or poverty – but everyone ended up a mere inch from the starting space anyway. Some just had more pegs in their cars.

I will miss this apartment. I will miss the buzz of the city – the parade of people clapping down Southport in their flip-flops, the over-priced corner coffee-houses, Ray’s Italian Ice shop that sells homemade soup in the winter, the open air patios, and even the local florist who charges $8 per hydrangea stem. I’ll miss the distant roar of the Wrigley crowd five blocks away and the playful score of the organ carried in on the breeze. I may even miss having to pause the TV every time the Brown Line thunders through our backyard at rush hour.

This was the apartment a cab dropped me off in front of one cold snowy mid-December night in 2008 after I had brushed my teeth and tongue at least five times. I stood outside and mused if I would be coming here a lot. And then Brad greeted me at the door with a preposterously thick, itchy wool sweater as part of my Christmas dare and I knew. Yes. I would be back many times.

These are the very walls that enveloped us as a new couple, the floors that creaked in protest when I “feminized” the interior. This is the living room nook that is transformed daily into the Hyatt St. Louis. The back door that attracts an obscene amount of spiders after dusk in the summer. The storage closet that graciously conceals the chaotic menagerie of two adult nostalgists. The whirlpool tub that lavishes the ultimate bubble bath. The hall threshold with the stubborn nail that has ripped multiple right footed cotton socks. The counter where one late wine-soaked night...we sorted the mail.

Our children will never know this place. It will be the street we drive them down one day on the way home from a customary Cubs’ loss and say, “Hey, see that stone building with the big tree out front? Your mom and I used to live there when we were first married. Yup, right up there. That front window is where I ‘d see your mom every morning sitting at her computer with her ponytail and pjs after I’d come home from working the night shift.” They’ll look up for a second – but won’t believe it. Mom and Dad – urbanites? Not a chance. Everyone in the city is so...hip.

Naturally, we are excited about what awaits us on Bonnie Brae. A subsequent chapter. A new home to claim for our expanding family of pink and blue pegs. A fresh coat of paint. There are good layers under there from the people before us who have moved on to their own next adventure. You can hear the echoes in the walls. Children’s squeals, backyard bbqs, and bedtime stories. I know this to be true. We are adding to an already solid foundation. I suppose that is what we leave to the new tenants on Newport – whoever you may be. We leave you some truly exceptional layers. Take care of them.