Chicago

Time passes quickly.  There is so much to do.  There are children to raise, jobs to go to, and errands to do.  My dad died in 1979 and my mom left us in 2008.  I have two sisters; one in Washington DC and one in New Jersey.  I often see Janyn, the youngest.  We have travelled together on several trips.  She met me in Saint Lucia and Ghana.  We recently went to New Orleans.  We visited Las Vegas.  I met her in New York and in Washington D.C.  But Sue has not been able to be with us until now.

The three of us planned this long weekend a couple of months ago….a long weekend in Illinois beginning in Chicago, stopping in Clinton and a short visit to Springfield.  The highlight of this trip was finding the street where mom grew up and the small town where dad grew up.

Janyn has a long history of the Pettyjohn family posted on Ancestry.  She has the 1933 Census that shows the homes of mom and dad.  As I get older, I realize how little I know of my parents.  I know them as parents, but not as people.  There are so many unanswered questions.

We meet at O’Hare.  Janyn and Sue drove and it would prove handy to have the car.  The day today is simple.  Find the place where my mom grew up, take a peak at Wrigley Field and eat Chicago Pizza for dinner and take a stroll in Lincoln Park.

It's unfortunate that we were in town when the Cubs were out of town.  Maybe next time.

Lincoln Park was nice, but we really lacked time to explore it fully.

As far as the pizza...well, sorry Chicago, New York wins.  Actually, I think John Stewart says it best!

But it wasn't just the pie.  It was also the place where we ate the pie.  It was part restaurant, part garage sale, part spiritual meditation.

Okay, enough about pizza.  It was a small part of our trip and, if nothing else, entertaining.  

We aren’t sure what kind of neighborhood we are entering, but as we get closer and although I definitely look different than the people on the street, I feel safe.  There are people sitting on the porches and others walking their children in strollers.  The street is lined with trees.  It is a fairly busy street.  The house where mom lived is an empty lot but there are homes on each side.  They are old brick homes each identical to the other.  Mom lived here during the depression.  She lived in the basement of this big house. Grandma worked at a meat packing company as a secretary.  Basements were less expensive.

An interesting side note is that my Grandma divorced and was surviving during the Depression, but was living “in sin” with a man named Dr. Orlich.  I know nothing more than the name, which I’m sure, is spelled incorrectly.

As I sit in the car looking at the homes, I see a man sitting on the porch and a young child playing in the small yard.  It’s not difficult to imagine my mother sitting on the front stoop – alone.  My grandmother would make her go outside to play.  She didn’t like being outside.  Sometimes she shivered as it snowed while she sat on that stoop. I have very few memories of my childhood, but I do remember this small snippet.  When I heard the story as a small child I wondered why grandma would ask her to play outside.  As a grown woman I completely understand.  Grandma had to do what she had to do to survive. 

Possibly this experience is partially responsible for making my mother who she was: damaged, a chameleon, image conscious and different from other mothers.  When I was in my early twenties, Grandma asked me to help her write a book about her life.  I wish I had taken that opportunity, but I was too young to appreciate the depth of understanding I would come to crave fifty years later.

It was interesting to reflect while standing on the sidewalk where my mother walked as a small child in this old Chicago neighborhood.