Sweet Home Chicago (Revisited)
Chicago and Lake Michigan, image via Pixabay
“Well I'm sixteen hundred miles from the people I know
I've been doing all I can, but opportunity sure comes slow.
But it's all right 'cause it’s midnight
And I got two more bottles of wine.”
~Two More Bottles of Wine by Emmy Lou Harris
Shortly after the new year, my husband and I decided to make Illinois our legal home again. When we went to the DMV, they even gave us our old IL driver’s license numbers. With a just a photo, they were able to find us in the system. Surreal.
There are financial reasons for this choice—one estimate our investment guy gave us was a $200,000 savings in taxes over the course of the rest of our lives (I can feel the IL residents gasp at this statement, but trust me, you really haven’t seen taxes until you’ve lived in CA). Yet there’s a deeper reason for us returning to the state…it’s the place I’ve always called home.
I was born and raised outside of the city of Chicago and spent 35 years in this place. It’s where I learned to walk, tumble, read and write, became an adult, went to college, fell in love, got married, and gave birth. In 2007, when we were offered the chance to try out California, my husband and I were sooooo excited. Both of us desired to live somewhere different and Santa Cruz, CA was definitely different than the Chicago suburbs. I moved to Santa Cruz sight unseen, trusting my husband in his decision to relocate us and our two little boys thousands of miles from our families. It was the adventure of a lifetime.
I’ll never regret the decision. We fell in love instantly with the place. Between the fabulous people, the music, the nature, and the wine, it was like being on vacation. Even though we could barely pay the bills the first years and I’d never fully unpacked from the move because I was so busy working as a movement education teacher and raising the kids, it felt like we were on holiday. If I’m honest, it felt like that for thirteen years, up until the day our home and neighborhood burned, and even after that. I mean, living in a beach house in Capitola for a year while your home is being rebuilt after a wildfire is certainly a vacation.
California is the place where I raised my children and I know they consider it their home, but do I? Did I ever? On the land in Bonny Doon, I learned to write novels, to communicate with nature, and fall in love with the trees. I tended the land through biodynamics and raised goats and chickens, things I never would have done here in Chicago. I also learned to boogie board, dance the Argentine tango, and went to the beach every Thursday after school with the kids for years.
In Santa Cruz, I made some of my best friends and damn, the music at the house parties is insane. I miss it so much when I’m not there. I’ll be honest, no one I know in my Chicago area crew can play like that, but then again, how would I know? We left Illinois during our early adulthood when such things as house parties were starting to become a thing. Still, I found meeting people easy in Santa Cruz, especially at the Santa Cruz Waldorf school and Bonny Doon in general. It’s a friendly place, period.
Yet, I never stopped missing home. I’m not a California girl, even though I fancy the idea. I wish I was a free-flowing hippie, but I’m a fashion-focused city girl, through and through. Back in 2007, I was the weird one here for my natural childrearing and desire for organic food, kale, kombucha, and farmer’s markets. On that front, Santa Cruz was an amazing change for us. However, as California goes, so does the rest of the nation (for better or worse) and I’m so pleased to find farmer’s markets in every neighborhood of Chicago each week from late April – October. There’s a Whole Foods and/or Trader Joe’s on every corner, kombucha and kale on many menus, and the Waldorf school we helped to found for our children in Wauconda, Illinois of all places is thriving. It’s even expanding. It appears there have been many changes since I moved across the nation.
The biggest reason for returning though is family. We now celebrate the holidays here and jeepers, this past December was busy. The boys came in from the east coast (easy, direct flights) and we celebrated Christmas with my parents, the new year with my husband’s family, and in addition, we had dinner with my husband’s aunt and uncle, dinner with my cousin, and stopped by my aunt and uncle’s home along the Mississippi. We called it the “Geezer Tour” because my boys hadn’t seen some of these elders in years.
If it weren’t for my friends Regan and Jim, also non-native Californians, we’d have spent most of holidays alone out west. As I sat around the table on New Year’s Eve playing board games with my nephew, his fiancé, and my own sons, my heart burned with joy and satisfaction. I LOVE being with my family as much as I love the land and friends in Bonny Doon. Which is why the real blessing of the fires is that I’m no longer torn between the two, for now home and holiday are both possible.
A friend of mine named Sarah came to visit me a few weeks ago and we took a hike along the lakefront. She also lost a home in the fires in Santa Cruz and now lives in New York City. She’s an avid walker, so I knew I could drag her for miles down the lakefront and show her around the neighborhood where I’d spent my early twenties, as well as where Walt and I fell in love. I took her to the place we had our reception, where we think he proposed (the day is foggy in our mind, but somewhere along the lakefront near Fullerton), the zoo where we had our pictures taken, the house we lived in after we got married. When we finished up the day, she remarked, “Thank you for showing me your home. I never realized how many connections you have to this place.”
My home.
Yes, Sarah, you’re right. This is my home. Always has been, always will be.