A Walker in the Suburbs

Chicago, goes the song, is a “toddlin’ town.” And when I was there last weekend, those words kept buzzing through my brain. I can remember Frank Sinatra singing them. I can remember my dad singing them.

Dad loved Chicago, would come up twice a year to the Merchandise Mart, where he’d peddle new rattan furniture lines. He stayed in the Palmer House, and in between clients would slip out to browse in bargain basement record bins. He came back to Lexington with a whiff of the faraway, bringing tales of this windy city on a lake so big you couldn’t see the other side.

“Bet your bottom dollar, you’ll lose your blues in Chicago … the town that Billy Sunday could not shut down. … On State Street, that great street, I’ve just got to say, they do things they don’t do on Broadway. …  I had the time, the time of my life. I saw a man who danced with his wife, in Chicago, Chicago my home town.”

Those lyrics are from memory mind you. Brought to the fore by a whirlwind weekend in a place I used to call home.

I didn’t think much about the Chicago River when I lived here decades ago. I paid attention to it on St. Patrick’s Day, when it was dyed kelly green, but otherwise it was more of an embarrassment than anything else.

This began to change around the time I left. There was a clean-up-the-river campaign. There were new buildings by premier architects. And there was the river walk, built to rival San Antonio’s — which it certainly does.

There were so many facts in yesterday’s architectural river tour that I can only remember a fraction of them. We saw the tallest building designed by a woman and learned of a building that could not support its marble facade and was refaced with granite.

We saw the Merchandise Mart, Navy Pier and Sears (now Willis) Tower.  We marveled at the reflective glass that gave us a picture of the buildings behind us.

Most of all, we (or at least I) caught our breath at the beauty of it all, at the majesty of the great city spread out before us, all glittering water and glass.

A walk through the streets of Hinsdale, a leafy suburb west of Chicago, found me with a camera in hand snapping photos of gardens and porches — and bunting. It’s such a festive and old-fashioned way to celebrate the Fourth.

It’s not something I see as much of around home, perhaps because it doesn’t lend itself to center-hall colonials or perhaps because proximity to the seat of government has worn our patriotism thin!

Whatever the case, I’ve enjoyed the festoons and the graceful draping of the red, white and blue. And though bunting is in shorter supply today in the city, there are still legions of flags flying, and there will, I’m sure, be ample seasonal excitement here in Chicago. It is, after all, the day for it.

But I have a hunch that when the dust settles it’s the bunting I’ll remember most — the small, personal celebrations of hearth and home.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in Chicago. I won’t say how long! But I’ll be there in a few hours, trying to jump some old place memory cells from when I lived here many years ago.

The city has changed a lot since then. Places that one didn’t go into are quite hip now.

And luckily Chicago is forgiving. If you can figure out where the lake is, you can figure out which way to go.

So here goes. An urban adventure.

(small photo from Wikipedia)

Minutiae is the enemy of creativity. Combine minutiae with work deadlines, house and yard chores, event planning and the to-dos of daily living, and you have a perfect storm of — well, I was looking for the antonym of “creativity” and what Thesaurus.com has come up with is … reality!

So yes, a perfect storm of reality, or let’s just say reality on steroids.

But today’s plan is to walk to National Airport (20 minutes on foot), board a big bird and fly to Chicago for a family wedding.

Working now in the shadow of this airport I often think about the people in those big birds as they zoom off to their destinations. They, too, are prisoners of minutiae, prisoners of reality. But as I stare from my office building at the airborne jets, I imagine all passengers are sipping drinks with little umbrellas bound for fun-filled Caribbean vacations.

It’s an innocent fantasy. A creative fantasy. The opposite of reality. But whatever it is, today I’ll be part of it.

Time for a mental vacation. I’m heading back to Africa for a few minutes, to Parc Pendjari in northwest Benin, bordering Burkina Faso.

It was a last-minute addition to our itinerary, something we undertook because we found a family of five to tag along with. They had hired a guide and driver — the only way to see the park — and let us join their group.

We saw elephants and baboons and a young cheetah. We stayed at a lodge that seemed lifted from a novel: a circular, open-air lobby with small cottages clustered around it. Our twin beds were draped with mosquito nets, and there was a shower with running water.

After lunch and siesta we clambered back on top of the van and rode through the countryside as the sun sank lower in the sky. A sea of grass waved around us; the whole world seemed made of it.

It was a moment out of time, one I return to often, a moment of tamed adventure. The wild around us, the promise of rest to come.

This time last year I was in Benin, West Africa — zooming around on zemidjans, glimpsing a baby cheetah in the wild, strolling past roasting pigs’ heads. Another world, a world I’m glad I saw, especially now that part of that world has come to live with us.

And, because I’ve seen this world, it lives within me. Its sights and sounds are a bulwark against the sanitized air of the everyday.

So today when I’m crammed into a Metro car or dealing with yet another work crisis, I’ll think of the  vast grassy emptiness of Park Pendjari, stretching all the way to Burkina Faso. I’ll conjure up the palm trees lining the beach road from Ouidah to Cotonou. I’ll recall the thrill and terror of the long dark zem ride to the bus stop in Nattitingou.

I wasn’t always comfortable over there. I said my share of Hail Mary’s. But the trip is a rich, deep well of experience. I’m so thankful to have it.