I'm going to be in Chicago!
I'm going to be in Chicago for the next week! I am on vacation!
My entire extended family is from Chicago. The last time I was there with my parents, they drove me to the homes they grew up in... an odd and melancholy experience. Every single person over the age of 50 in my family was born and grew up there. Now, all but one of the adults in my parents' generation have left the city.
As a child, I always assumed that when I grew up, I too would have to leave home. With everyone around me talking about Chicago and their experience of leaving it all the time, leaving seemed natural - like part of growing up. Childhood is for being from a place, and adulthood is for leaving it. Perhaps that is why I was so at ease moving from New England to Los Angeles.
The last time I was in Chicago was during a cross-country Amtrak trip with my husband in 2021. We took the Amtrak from Springfield, Mass to Los Angeles with a train change in Chicago so that we could carry the fragile resonator pipes for my marimba home without damaging them. (And also so that we could have an incredible life experience seeing the whole country on Amtrak, of course.) We had about a 4-hour layover in the city and didn't see too much. But the trip was incredible. Even if you are not trying to ship a marimba across the United States, I recommend doing it.
This will be my first time in the city with free time and the agency to do what I please. I am going to see a lot of museums, I hope... we have a big list of them. But I'm also excited to simply chill. And to ride public transit! Chicago is one of the few big American cities where I have not yet ridden local rail.
I considered making the pilgrimage back down to the neighborhood my parents grew up in once again, just to... perform a personal ritual, I suppose. I'm not even sure I would value it. But the trip is over an hour long without a car, so we probably won't be doing that. It's a kind of decision which is very easy to make when you do not plan to rent a car. (I highly recommend not renting cars when you travel. It's possible even in most large, car-centric American cities - you just choose different things to do.)
I have posts queued up for while I'm gone. See you on the other side!