the ring [3/5]

Tags

Chicago, engagement, family, frugality, grandma, heirloom, history, love, marriage, money, proposal, relationship, summer, symbols, tradition, value, wedding ring

the waiting [1/5]          the clues [2/5]

While on the phone, approaching the border of Michigan and Indiana the other day, I learned the possible difference between cheap and frugal.

It was suggested to me that frugality is interested in a good deal, in the best value for the product purchased. Frugality likes to own nice things, things that don’t break because they’re mass-produced or put together with soft plastic pieces, things made with durable fabric, things that will last and look beautiful. Things that will flatter. Things that have worth but are also on sale. Cheapness has interest only in the price tag. When the price tag is as low as possible, cheap wants in. If there is a chance ice might melt in the Arctic and the price could drop a few quarters, cheap would prefer to wait.

I would like to be frugal, I said. But I fear I fall into the trap of being cheap. I could dance around the semantics of the issue, but the truth is, I’m cheap.  And I’d prefer not to be.  This lesson in definitions flipped a switch for me. I have to tweak my price tag obsession some days.

On the tail end of this DNA malfunction inside of me is the idea of value. In our early conversations, I didn’t value wedding rings at all. Wasn’t interested; wouldn’t even window shop if it were up to me. But there are two of us in this conversation, and I was open to talking about it, exploring my aversion to what I perceived as an empty tradition. Open, yes; but remaining uninterested, true.

I researched a number of hours. Found unique designs, sought after the origin of the ring, the meaning behind the ring finger and the circular shape, browsed photos of thousands of precious metals, even wooden rings to get ideas. Visited discussion boards as an unassuming guest, extracting the opinions of strangers.

As I chewed on the idea of value months ago, I mentioned as an example, passing down fine jewelry from someone like my grandmother. My grandma and I were very close; she died about five years ago from breast cancer that she’d been battling my entire lifetime. I hadn’t seen grandma’s ring since I sat on her daybed, making mountains of her wrinkled skin, twisting her ring around her emaciated finger. The thought left my head after being said and I moved on to wooden rings, which were becoming my favorite. I was actually taking to the idea of rings. Everything I was learning was lodging in my heart, finding a way to actualize the tradition.

My husband-to-be must have known since the moment I mentioned it that he would seek Grandma’s ring. I’m ashamed, for such an intuitive person, at my ignorance. He’d called Mom, she’s contacted my aunt, they’d gone over to Grandpa’s to find the ring in an old jewelry box, where it had been sitting for years. Now I, naive and never wanting to wear a ring at all, am wearing my Grandmother’s wedding ring during my engagement. A ring she wore for over 50 years of marriage to my now-sick grandpa.

In that, there is value. In this ring there is history and storytelling. There are two little rubies and a single-cut diamond framing the main stone. There is an illusion setting, popular decades ago to make a smaller diamond look bigger than it actually is. The diamond was important to Grandma. Without Grandpa even knowing, she had her ring reset years into their marriage with the diamond from her mother’s wedding ring because that diamond was bigger! That story, told to me in a joint format by my mother and aunt, makes me laugh. That’s my Gram. She would.

All of this life is on my finger. It tells the world how Brad asked me to be his wife. And how in history there is value. Life is so much more than frugality. And symbols aren’t empty if you fill them.

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the clues [2/5]

Tags

Berghoff, Buckingham Fountain, Chicago, clues, downtown, engagement, friends, future, Grant Park, Lake Michigan, love, marriage, new york, proposal, relationship, scavenger hunt, surprise, the Loop, travel

the waiting [1/5]

Steve dropped me off at the zoo and handed me a letter from Brad. I recognized his penmanship on the envelope. And the way he spells my name, with two e’s. The zoo was one of our places in the years we shared in Chicago. Steve sent me to the bench, and though he didn’t know where that was, I did. The bench is on Fullerton, west of Cannon, next to a bike path. Unassuming, actually crumbling, splintering at each end. It’s where I waited for Brad to meet me the day we split up, well over two years ago. It’s where Brad sat long after I walked away, unwillingly, thinking it best. I sat on the bench this time, waiting, as my letter instructed me to do, for the next clue.

Would a jogger drop a package with a tag screaming my name? Would a bus pull up with signs affixed to all the windows? I started to feel like someone was watching me. Like there were henchmen in the bushes who knew I was at the bench. Walkie talkies all over Chicago were crackling, Subject is at the bench. Please proceed with clue. Just as my curiosity piqued, my phone started vibrating out of control, asking all sorts of incriminating questions.

Do you remember… when you used to send Brad messages during work from that one computer? —where you first met Brad? —where is the best place in Chicago to get schnitzel? All clues were pointing to the Berghoff, the restaurant where Brad and I met one another. Industry shifts amidst which we fell in love. A few more messages from my dear friends buzzed in, Go there now, pal! There was a twenty for cab fare in the envelope. Brad must have known I would try, frugally, to take a bus.

I stood outside the Berghoff for a while. I didn’t exactly leave this place of employment all candy and roses, a going away party with streamers and balloons falling from the rafters. A blind man climbed out of a cab right in front of the Berghoff marquee. Maybe he has my clue, I thought.

Finally, I ducked inside, slid comfortably into the corner where I learned a large percentage of what I now know about Bradley. Behind that lunch counter computer I cleverly, coyly, sent blinking, unordered tables in paragraphs to my bartender years ago when we shared everything in this city. There was a note slid under the monitor with my name on the front in familiar penmanship. I was out the door with the clue and a bit of Spanish dialogue.

I walked down Adams, turned at Michigan to head into Grant Park, where our stage was on the corner. We used to play a graffiti game in the city. Wrote couplets, little lyric lines that we penned on sticky labels and stuck to newspaper boxes, light posts, parking meters, following riddle-directions to one another’s words. We have fun. The last graffiti was on this stage. A simple summer outdoor amphitheatre. I found the graffiti in the winter, something like “Every song I sing ees for you.” Two e’s, like the way he writes my name. It was so perfect, my musician. But things weren’t working right then, so it felt so bittersweet. This empty stage, winter snow, standing alone, the words his heart meant, all the time we’d spent.

I wasn’t sure how many clues there would be. Brad was somewhere in this city. One of the clues would hold him in its palm. Maybe it would be this stage. It was supposed to be, I find, but this weekend there was Bluesfest in Grant Park. Brad sent a message, a picture of Buckingham Fountain, down the street. Change of plans, go here instead.

I walked up slowly to the fountain. I thought he was near, wasn’t sure whether to look for him or for another clue. When he slid in next to me on the rail, he startled me so that I gasped. The seconds moved in fast-forward, crawling over one another to happen next. They’d been waiting for this for years, too.

Linda, will you be my wife? from down on one knee.

All brides-to-be everywhere, don’t be ashamed on behalf of me. I don’t actually remember what I said. Yes, of course, only yours. I’ve wanted to be your wife for years. I’m confident that right now, today, this Fall, it’s right and healthy and perfect. I want to spend “the next forty years” with you. I could have said any of that. My heart was spilling over with all of it.

Whatever I said made people clap.  A man took a picture. In the end, it would only be a few short months until we would be the Dennisons.

the waiting [1/5]

Tags

breakfast, Chicago, clues, downtown, engagement, friends, future, love, marriage, new york, proposal, relationship, scavenger hunt, surprise, travel

We have a friend, Christina. We call her Migsy. And, in a sense, from my end, the plot begins with her. It begins back when I had not yet met her in February, when her name stuck in my head as Brad told stories from work. I contacted her, on blind faith, and commissioned her to help me when I surprised Brad with a visit. I liked her immediately. She’s charismatic and charming. Has a reality about her that I was sure would suffocate in a place like Manhattan. Migsy breathes genuine life into an overstimulated city. I can get down with that.

So when she said she was coming to visit me as soon as I moved back to Chicago, my excitement was overflowing. Sticky root beer float all over my knuckles when the ice cream drops in and the glass lip takes to napping. Brimming over.

The morning of Migsy’s arrival, I waited at The West Egg, a breakfast spot in River North near the lakefront. Downtown Chicago. It’s right around the corner from where a friend of mine used to live, where she once saw Kevin Costner eating a tomato. Or something. My eyebrows were raised, my head on a swivel, waiting for Migsy to saunter around the corner, her head high, cheekbones glistening, smiling.

I put our name in, sent her a text message. She was coming, she said. The sweet hostess sat me at a two top, awaiting Migsy. I sent her another message and sipped a cup of coffee with sugar in the raw. Waited just a bit. My heart was filled with excitement and although I had suspected this weekend as a plot of sorts before, while I waited at The West Egg on the eleventh of June, I really thought Migsy was going to walk through that door.

Across the restaurant, instead, was Steve, Brad’s roommate while he lived in Chicago, and dear friend, proofed by incriminating pictures which may or may not include Looney Tunes sweatshirts and suspenders meant for men over sixty. What are friends for? Momentarily, I thought it coincidence, us all having chosen the same restaurant for breakfast on this particular Saturday, as I waited, still, for Migsy’s arrival.

But then, after I stood to give Steve a hug, he sat down at my table with me. In Migsy’s seat, which was odd. Something wasn’t normal.

Steve said Migsy wasn’t coming. And that I should come with him. He didn’t know that, for once, I had already decided what to order. With Brad, it usually takes me dozens of minutes. With my friend Charissa, nothing short of an hour. Instead, I left with Steve. But not after an accusatory, if prideful declaration.

Brad’s here, isn’t he? From New York City. He must have flown when I thought he was at work. Steve’s eyes avoided contact with mine. He laughed. Never answered. My thoughts were in fast forward. This is it! I could hardly wait to see him.

Always Home

Tags

Chicago, driving, friendship, Gina, grandma, high school, home, life, memory, Michigan, Mom, Nonna, parents, past, streets, suburbs, travel

I don’t live here now. I don’t suppose I’ll raise my family here. Though it would be nice to watch my girls, with baskets on their bikes, ride down to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for cookies and milk, wearing summer skin just like I did when I was a kid. Even still, driving down these roads still feels like coming home.

Taking the back roads, the way our Moms always used to go, past the library and the convenient store. Past the corners where we stole, smoked, swore. Past Nonna’s apartment, where she’s lived for years, had trouble recently to just get up the stairs. Not even my Nonna, but yours. You, my high school best friend. No where but here, our memories, every one, still fresh, dear to me, clear in my rear view mirror.

Everything

Tags

Arkansas, Chicago, community, driving, gentleman, love, once, oxford, past, relationship, Southern

I didn’t love you.
I tried and couldn’t feel it right.
We drove together back and forth.
I felt your warmth from my seat, on my side.
Always disbelieving your passenger seat stares
when there was a road ahead, ignored.
We floated, still, between the white lines.

Your I know how’s and Let’s do this.
So sure, confident, traces of leadership.
Your nervousness in our silences.
I was comfortable in your care.
Had gotten used to standing outside the car,
waiting on your Southern hand around my side.
Used to your fingertips on my shoulder blade,
guiding me around corners, up the stairs,
when I knew where to go but not how it would end.

The day we shopped for suits, you held my hand
between the shops, on bricks like cobblestones.
My fingers lied and said they were fine.
The suit you wore, the Oxford shirt,
the tie that was my second choice.
I pulled at the shoulders, like the tailor had done
finding myself attracted to your reflection.
We hemmed the pants, I asked the lady please,
and we had them back today.
After you bought me dinner, wouldn’t let me pay.

We went home to our friends, and shared like each week.
Maybe they thought we were falling in love.
Maybe we did, in fleeting summer months.
Maybe you were.
I wanted to be.
Because you were being everything I should need.

Home Alone House

Tags

671 Lincoln, Buzz, Chicago, Christmas, harry, holiday, hollywood, home alone, kevin mccalister, Lincoln Ave, little nero's, maccauley culkin, marv, movie set, winnetka

I went with a couple girlfriends to see the Home Alone House the other night. It’s a short drive North of the city, in Winnetka, an uber-affluent neighborhood in Chicagoland.

I knew before we left that regular folks like you and me probably lived inside the semi-famous home.  Any other way wouldn’t have made any sense.  But I didn’t really believe we’d be stopping on the street to take photographs of someone else’s home, discussing the nature of public property and legal rights, concocting plans to drive around the block and circle back inconspicuously until all of this was upon us.

How strange would it be to live in the Home Alone house?  All year, I’m sure, but especially around Christmastime, folks take their cars down to neutral and creep by at impossibly slow speeds to point out the side entrance where Harry and Marv tried to enter or the window on the left which is Buzz’s bedroom on the second floor.  There are floorplans of the house online, pictures of the home’s interior, factoids strewn about on countless sites.  It can’t be safe or comfortable.  Plus, the market value of the place is something just shy of 2 million dollars.  Fyew!

Nonetheless, we had a fun little drive-by, packed with excitement and photos.  We passed a fistful of churches and thought each and every one was the church where Kevin hides in the nativity with no proof that any of them were the church where Kevin hides in the nativity.  I think someone was watching us watch them when we drove by the house the first time, but I guess we’ll never know.  You think they’d be used to it by now. 

Next time, we’ll ring the doorbell and “deliver” a Little Nero’s pizza.

Sandwiches in Slow Motion

Tags

Chicago, dinner, fast food, food, interaction, life, moments, Orland Park, sandwich shop, Sub City, take-out

He wrapped my sandwich up in a brown paper bag like the world had screeched to an almost-halt and we were stuck in slow motion in this local sandwich shop, just the two of us.

He tucked in the edges like a Christmas present and rolled the open end of the paper bag slowly upon itself. Once, twice, twice and a half. It should have only taken a quick moment. So swift should have been his movements that he was handing the bag to me and closing the top all in one fluid turn of the wrist. I should have already been out the door with my torpedo, no cheese, extra sub sauce and my meatball sub with provolone. But he took his time, paused, hesitated, didn’t look at the bag, but up at me while he stayed in this final moment of his sandwich sale.

Have a very good night, miss, he said in his heavy Romanian accent, never taking his blue eyes from mine.

Thank you, I meant it. Merry Christmas, though surely we’ll meet again before Christmas day comes.

Musical Leadership

Tags

band, Carl Sandburg, Chicago, choir, Christmas, concert, elementary school, high school, holiday, leadership, middle school, music, musician, orchestra, Orland Park, Sleigh Ride, songs

I used to play the cello. Used to love it. When I decided to practice, I used to be pretty good. First-place-at-solo-contests kind of good. But in being good, I was also too good for the cello. Too cool, too concerned about my big school and my big reputation. I dropped the cello, like a fool, even though I had other honorable motives like how I was smitten with the bass player in the orchestra who had orange hair when we played our Christmas concert. He was a senior and got to crack the whip during Sleigh Ride. Still, even with my smitten-self, I quit playing the cello for things I imagined to be bigger and better.

Before the foolishness, while I still pulled that horsehair bow across the out-of-tune strings, I had this orchestra director, Mr. Dorner, who I didn’t appreciate the way I should have when I had him around. He was a calm, funny man with a wonderful sense of structure in the classroom and a deep love for music. These things were all white noise to me in grade and middle school.  Silly girl.

Mr. Finn, the band teacher here at school, my school now, my job, is a little bit like Mr. Dorner. He’s calm and composed. The things he says surprise you with their humor.

I hope these kids, amidst their giggles during choir concerts, and their flat notes in band, can appreciate the leadership of Mr. Finn. I forgot to appreciate the same in Mr. Dorner.

Paradoxical Unchristianity

Tags

Belief, Chicago, Christian, conservative, education, friends, international, life, MBI, MGS, Moody Bible Institute, Moody Theological Seminary, politically correct, religion, seminary, teaching, unchristian

There were some pictures up from the winter banquet at what they’re now calling Moody Theological Seminary. I only knew a few folks, friends who were there when I was there. Most of them were international brothers and sisters of mine. Many of them were wearing clothes from their countries: beautiful scarves, dresses, coats. Moody is where I made most of my international friends. Yes, I remember now.

I wonder, as I think of some of the banquets I (then, reluctantly) attended, how it was that I actually attended that school. Moody’s not a place for people like me, to put it simply. It’s an inside-the-box sort of place for regular kinds of Christians if I could be so drastically un-PC about it. Frankly, I’m out of the box and irregular for my type, my brand, my belief systemgroupcrewteamunit.

While I was there, I wasn’t like my peers. While I was there, I was different.

At Community a few weeks ago, as application of Philippians 1, Ryan thanked God for my authenticity as a sister in Christ. Truer words are infrequently spoken. For his honesty, I also thanked God. My more benign friends would ignore this truth. They’d act like, I don’t know, it’s normal or typical for a Christian to be so inappropriately blunt as I. It’s not. You live your life honestly, Ry said. You bring a dose of reality, a sense of genuine living wherever you go. I admire the way you don’t put on; you live in a very real way. It was something like that and it was a compliment of the greatest variety. I’m thankful on a regular basis for that wiring in me. For this tweakage that makes me so unchristian.

I’m so far astray some days. I’m unlike all the folks I love. It’s puzzling, really. How did I fit in at such a conservative, straight-edge seminary? The teaching was astounding. It wasn’t stoic and closed. It was deeply challenging; it made my brain throb weekly with questions and struggle. It forced me out of the stupid books and into the real world with everything I pretended to believe. It made every minute of my life of working in the restaurant industry worth it, hands down. I sometimes think my Master’s degree was to enhance my work at the restaurant, and maybe that was it. It would be enough.

Can’t quite find the missing puzzle piece here; don’t know how I made it through that place. I was the ugly duckling. I was the odd man out. But that school is truly a place of fresh, honest, truth-teaching. It’s a place of efforts at community. Of trying and good hearts. Of questions and striving. Oh, Moody… We are so paradoxical, you and I.

Coffeeshop, No Shoes

Tags

amusement park, Chicago, coffeeshop, commitment, forgiveness, friendship, life, memory, past, silence, Six Flags Great America, Starbucks

I took my cowboy boots off and folded my socked feet underneath me on my armchair. I wish I didn’t get so distracted when I tried to work here at the local Starbucks. I wish I could find my headphones to drown out, with my own kind of white noise, the Jimmy Eat World or the Sara Barielles variety, the chatter and melancholy music in this place. I wish I could lasso my wandering mind when it screams for a lesson-planning break and goes traipsing around in my missed past. But, alas, my wishes are wished to a lesser god of the coffeeshop and go unfulfilled on this evening.

I remember making a choice, the background of which, too labyrinthine to relate here, gives little insight to the mess that follows anyway, that may have changed my company forever. I once had a friend, the memory of and impacting force of, I cannot seem to shake in my least focused moments. She was a good friend, committed. A fun friend, exciting. Funny. She had depth. She was serious about loving Jesus. There’s so much good wrapped up in being friends with this gal. But then there’s this decision. A whole history of us, and this one decision that I dwell on, I regret, I wonder…if it wrecked things.

A waitress and a student at the time, I was living in Chicago and my friend was coming to visit the big city with her family. As with plans of all kinds, the details were floating around like dust specks in the air. The light would shine through the window and they’d be clear for a split second, then a cloud would cover the sunbeam and, again, the times were unsure and nothing was nailed down.

I should’ve just waited. If she had been important to me, I’d have waited. If I were worth my two cents as a friend, I’d have waited. I should have waited, waited, waited.  You can imagine, I didn’t wait.

I planned a small trip on one of the days in question, figuring I’d be back in the evening and jettison right over to the hotel to see my friend. I thought I could do it all, accomplish everything, like life was a game to win.

Things slipped slightly out of my reach as the day grew closer, came, the sun rolled across the sky until night. The plans I’d made were outside the city, a ways North at an amusement park. I stayed too long, the traffic was heavy, never made it back on time. More than that, the man who was with me wasn’t a favorite of the friend who was being edged out. The tension of it all came to a point here. It all came to the climax peak on a plot chart, and from here the plot chart goes nowhere but down.

So, we went nowhere but down. I think she gave up on that day. Gave up on me, gave up on being friends.  I made a decision, and she responded with with one that was much bigger. One that left a huge silence in my life, a silence that I’ve been trying to fill, erase, ignore, or heal depending on the day for a couple years now.

Sitting in this coffeeshop next to my new old cowboy boots, my toes now cold from the customers carrying night air in on the heels, I can’t but wander and explore this silence. I can’t but figure and solve and wonder about erasing a silly amusement park date. I can’t but furrow my brow at this feeling of never being forgiven.