“It’s been a while,” I said to Len as I struggled to get up on the bar stool. “You know, short legs but with good suspension,” I said.
“Oh, the old Chad is here.” I remembered he called me this nickname during our light-hearted conversations. He giggled, and so did I. Our shared laughter reunited a friendship that had been on pause but now was continuing.
“How’s things?” I asked.
“Good. Just great. But between her job and my travel, we really don’t see each other much. Anyway, I’ve taken a new job, and I’m moving to Florida.”
“Really? A good job? This will be good for you?”
“Yep. I’ll still be traveling—not like the Burnett days, though.”
“That’s great. Well … by the way … I don’t think I ever really told you something that has been important to me for a long, long time.” I began my confession. “How much I have valued our friendship. And these words from me are overdue and necessary. I was really a mess for a while there. I had no one, so alone, but you were always there for me. You were a great listener. All those long hours of talking on the phone, lunches, everything, all of it. I’ve never been more grateful … you really meant a lot to me then, even … though … I couldn’t … reciprocate your feelings, I just couldn’t. I loved just the way we were.”
“Hey, no, no. Don’t think that,” he said, waving his hand and shaking his head. He leaned in closer, staring at me head-on, and whispered, “Besides, you know I was in love with you.”
What? Oh, God. My cheeks ignited deep pink. I blinked hard. Was I so blind then? Those words were shocking for me to hear. No one had fallen, has fallen, or will fall in love with me. I was uncomfortable. I shifted on my stool, smiled, chuckled, all in response to my awkwardness. His declaration sent me back to those years when our conversation turned personal about us.
“I … I guess … I didn’t feel …”
“I know, you didn’t feel that way about me, and that’s okay. It’s all okay. I’m fine about it. We’ve moved on.”
I was sad, guilty, or maybe crazy for not walking away from pursuing a career and self-sufficiency to a life with someone who loved me, where I didn’t have to work if I didn’t want to, to a house in the suburbs with stepchildren to embrace, to living a life … I couldn’t live. If I tried to explain to him why I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be, then what? Would it matter now? He was a best friend, loyal, honest, and a pillar of strength to my emotions. I could never express how much his friendship had meant to me at a time when I was so desperate for meaning and connection.
“I will miss you, this, having some wine, lunch, our phone chats.” That’s all I could say when I should have been saying more. I wanted to explain myself, to free myself from guilt about why or how I could have walked away from the perfect life I had once yearned for. But when I saw we had found our places together and then separately, it was all okay. I was convinced God had put him there for me, a guardian to communicate solace and optimism at a time when I was depleted of both.
I celebrated in my heart that we had overcome our worries. Moving on, with closure, was the best, most liberating, grown-up feeling I had experienced.
I was at home in mind and heart, with place and person. Disconnections connected.
The end of my journal writing came in January 1992, for reasons I still can’t identify. When I read the last entry now, I want to read more:
I’ve been here only a year, and I seem to keep holding on to my days in advertising. I still consider myself from advertising. The creative place was a spark that kept me ignited and made hard work fun. I then went to a place where I felt the exact opposite of where I came from. I’m not a banker; I am not like them. How excited I was to be in advertising. Couldn’t I have my advertising with the stability of a bank organization? Maybe I could do it, I think.
What happened to the rest of my life after that? Where was it? There were no more of my written words and thoughts recorded when they were happening. Then I realized that I didn’t need to be close friends with my writing and hold hands to make a connection with something that would give me meaning. I didn’t need written words to help me understand or calm me in my fits of anger, sadness, or loneliness, because I didn’t have them anymore. I didn’t need to write the conversation with my invisible friend to help me get somewhere in life.
And once I believed I was on a good path, I was able to remember days in my early twenties, not with sadness or as hardships, but as necessary markers of personal development where I was able to see how much I had succeeded. Back then I would catch the bus at Addison and the Inner Drive in the morning to head to work, naming each exit as I passed it: Addison, Belmont, Fullerton, North Avenue, Division, Oak Street. Citing each exit in reverse, I counted mile markers as if in a foot race to the get to the finish line—home. During summer weekends, I’d stroll through the park at Waveland with a radio cradled in a beach towel packed in a toted straw bag and find the right spot to sunbathe on large flat boulders stacked along the shore while listening to the announcer call every pitch of the Cubs game. Voices from a radio gave me a conversation to follow; connections to a box blocked out the monologue in my head.
The seasons in Chicago are like yin and yang, or the Cubs and Sox, the Bears and Packers, the mayor and city unions. Wait a few minutes, and the weather could change in an instant. There’s nothing like the seasons in Chicago, where forceful winter winds demand attention and gray skies clash with blue-gray water, an exhausting violence. Some inhabitants surrender to the intolerance, moving elsewhere, shaking their heads in resignation to the tension. Not me, though. The winter doldrums break with the arrival of summer when sapphire skies complement the pale green lake. Its waves create a rhythm that blends with the pulsing of my heart, an energizing calm that helps me to discover poise in the imbalances in my life, to find not only my place but also my home.
I was leaving my twenties and taking ten years of experiences with me.
part 5
turning thirty
from windy city to city by the bay
My decision to leave Chicago came without lengthy contemplation. My weary footsteps had once marked every city corner, intersection, and advertising and employment agency during my interviews and job searches. I loved Chicago, yet I couldn’t find a place I wanted to be in my city. I had a good job and supportive coworkers, but not a thing was keeping me there; I couldn’t think of any good reason to stay. I learned the bank’s headquarters were in San Francisco and considered there might be broader opportunities there for me in advertising and marketing. If I couldn’t secure a job directly with an advertising department at the bank, I would be okay with any job that would get me to the home office.
After eighteen months working in the Chicago office, my plans to transfer to the bank’s headquarters were set, and my boss gave me his blessing.
“But all the way to San Francisco? What are you gonna do at the home office?” Denise, my coworker and good friend asked.
“Similar to what I’m doing here, but I’d like to look into a job using my ad-agency skills and experience.” And there I was, back to advertising, yearning for something, anything, to do with it. Previous bad experiences didn’t keep me away from where I wanted to belong.
My transfer news hit the office like lightning. I got phone calls and visits from those I worked with and even from those I didn’t.
“I’m heading out to San Francisco to work in the head office in a couple of weeks. It’s a lateral move, but I hope to work my way into corporate marketing and advertising,” I said to Martha in her office.
“Oh, congratulations. They’ve got a big sales force out there, and it sounds like they’ll really need you,” she said.
“I’ve never been there, to San Francisco. Do you think I’ll like it?” I was trying to solicit a warm conversation, old friend to old friend, but our brief exchange remained businesslike.
“Definitely,” she said. “You’ll really enjoy it ou
t there.” She didn’t elaborate.
I returned to my desk with thoughts focused on long ago, to the days on Carlisle I had spent playing with my pretend sister friend. I admired her confidence in outwitting some of her peers and recognized her hard work and determination to prove herself a success and find her place to be. And there I was, still working toward finding that spot. The discrepancy between us perhaps explained the distance I felt.
“Hi, I hear you’re going to the head office in San Francisco,” said Jerry, head of the Chicago office. With my head bowed, I hadn’t noticed this tall man standing in front of my cubicle.
“I am indeed; I’m leaving at the end of the month.”
“No one here has really done that,” he said softly, leaning over. My eyes grew wide as my cheeks bloomed red. I thought I had committed a bank violation. “And I’m very glad it’s you. You’ve done great things for this office, for the morale here, and I am grateful and appreciative, and you’ve only been here a year and a half. Just don’t forget about us, will you?”
I had represented Chicago as vice president and then president in consecutive years of the Bank Club at the national bank conferences. I had come a long way from floundering in ad-agency pools to swimming freely where most everyone in the school knew my name. I took to the popularity and reveled in the validation that came at the most opportune time.
Eighteen months was my parking spot. There were similar times when I had parked for a while, remaining in Milwaukee for the summer after college graduation, and the subsequent months living with my mother before I got the Burnett job. I thought how time was on my side whenever I needed it, whether to break from a place and a family I had grown into or succumbing to a male distraction. Parking for bits of idle time made a good recipe for guilt, though; I should have been doing something, but I wasn’t. I staved off the “should haves” and replaced them with reflections on where I had come from, where I was currently, and where I envisioned myself. These visions enabled me to string my connections along from college to post college and through to what I would need in the future. I had driven aisles in the lot of advertising agencies to find the best spot, and when I couldn’t find the closest, best one, I pulled into one farther from my destination and rested there.
Now that I was leaving Chicago, I had received phone calls expressing goodbyes and good lucks from coworkers with whom I’d never shared words beyond the weather.
In addition to coworkers, I called a male friend to let him know I was leaving Chicago. I had longed for a steady relationship with Doug, but his calls for dates were sporadic, which diminished any hopes of having him as a steady boyfriend. He had better, more consistent friendships with his golfing, concert-going, and bar-hopping buddies. However, he did ask me out to D’Agostino’s on Sheffield for an Italian dinner and then to a lookout spot at Montrose Harbor. We sat on the cool grass and shared the view of the Chicago skyline to our south on a warm July night.
I thought if it weren’t for him, I would never have had this opportunity to experience my city from a panoramic view. My vision was all-encompassing, seeing all my years in one sweeping vista. I was going to miss what the view represented: the place where I started, my only point of reference, a home. The night skyline painted a wallpapered landscape that I would always be from. Chicago was a city I loved but couldn’t live in anymore. I would be in search of a place once again, a place to belong, where new connections were alive and fresh, just as I’d experienced them while perched at Montrose. Taking time to pause in reflection was paying homage to home in reverence and leaving with grace and gratitude.
With a sigh of relief and a comfy feeling like when you walk through the door after being gone awhile, I felt the immediate sights and smells wrap me in familiarity. My vision of the city had softened from the hardened reality—unemployment, mean people, and loneliness—of previous years.
However, my past experiences would remain for a while longer. I couldn’t escape the baggage I would be toting on my future travels. It was something that would stay with me; all of my attachments, good and bad, keeping me connected to my old place until I could secure new moorings.
As I focused on the sky’s outline of gray-and-brown structures in haphazard shapes and sizes, I thought back to intersections and building entrances where I had once stood in lobbies waiting to be called for interviews. Searching connections to places and people during the unemployment days was never far as I traipsed Michigan Avenue from one job interview to another, empty as the day presented itself—cold winters and raw windy days under the grayest of skies. I had shivered at the bus stop at Waveland under a gray wool coat that was not warm enough and black high-heeled pumps that provided no comfort to my numb feet frozen from the cold. Neither coat nor footwear was right for the weather, but they were appropriate for my two o’clock job interview.
I remember that last day of work when I looked at the lake to my right and saw it void of waves as signs of life. To my left, parks rolled out the welcome mats at their doors while frail trees dotted empty fields, as if their stamina were in jeopardy because of the openness that surrounded them. There were no birch trees. I couldn’t see them, or maybe they just weren’t there. Fear of the unknown, of what lay ahead, evoked tears for memories of the past and what was yet to come.
During my remaining days in the city, I toured its neighborhoods. I walked to Wrigley Field and bought a Cubs T-shirt and Bears sweatshirt. I walked downtown, to Old Town, through Lincoln Park, Wrigleyville, and then Lake View, and saw the city in a new light, which confirmed it would always be there for me should I decide to return. We said our goodbyes.
In letting go of my city, I anticipated returning one day. I believed the city doors would remain open to me. I never ceased to see a cityscape coming alive in my twenties, when dots of light blinked and shadows shifted against tall buildings with blocks of darkness interspersed by occasional sun dappling the bisecting streets. Lake Michigan’s water lapped the rocks on the shoreline, never reaching close enough for me to touch, as if to pull me back into a night’s trance of the city mood.
But now I was setting my sights on a new place, and I was on my way there as I continued my journey with faith that God wasn’t going to let anything bad happen to me.
I moved to San Francisco in August, a month after I turned thirty. I left my twenties for a city known for its beauty, a place I had never been before. I bought my one-way ticket and didn’t feel the need to look over my shoulder. The conversation with my mother was not extraordinary as she responded coolly, “Oh?” So did my brother, when I told him I was moving to San Francisco, only his comment lacked a question mark. I was disappointed and saddened, because I had hoped that time and age would have brought us to be more mindful of one another and the choices we had made with our lives so far. I wanted to share my enthusiasm and excitement for my new opportunities with them, but they did not mirror my feelings. A call to my father, who was still living in South Carolina with his fifth and final wife, yielded a similar response, except he wished me luck and told me to have a good time. All of these responses confirmed that this move had to be a gift to me, a gift reminiscent of when I had moved to Milwaukee for college. The time had come for me to be selfish in living my life.
The morning of my departure, Martha gave me and Mom a ride to O’Hare airport. The trip felt oddly reminiscent of my ride to college—Mom’s lack of conversation and Martha’s fill-in statements, similar to what Dad would have said.
“So, what time do you get in?” Mom asked.
“Should be two o’clock in the afternoon, your time,” I said.
“You gonna call when you get there?” Years ago, this question would have sent me into automatic rebellion; I’d resisted having to report my arrivals as if I were still a kid.
“Sure, I’ll call.”
Mother acknowledged my acquiescence, nodding with a smile in approval. I noted my assured tone and realized I’d come a long way from childish agitation.
“There’s a two-hour time difference between us and the West Coast,” Martha said. I think she said this because Mom wasn’t sure of the time difference, and I suspect she didn’t want to ask. Martha was always good with details, facts, and filling in blank spaces of conversation. I smiled at her sharpness.
“So, you’ll be in the city, right?” she asked.
“Yes, the office is at the Embarcadero, and they’ve got me in a corporate condo. Can you believe it, me, in a condo after coming from five-hundred-square-foot apartments in Chicago?” We chuckled.
“How are you getting there from the airport?” Martha asked.
“My new boss will pick me up. I’m glad for that.”
Martha had covered the fact-finding mission as Mom followed our conversation without adding bits of her own.
We sat for a short time at the gate before my row was called. My goodbye was as if I were getting on a bus headed for a fun day with friends, a field trip, and would be back after dark. Considering Mom’s feelings, her silence during the car ride while Martha acted as her stand-in in for motherly conversation was an exercise in futility, deflating my strength like a punctured tire on the road. We hugged and said our goodbyes.
I settled into my airplane seat. Buckling up showed I was no longer looking back but braced for forward movement.
“Been this route before?” the man seated next to me asked.
“No … actually … first time. I’m on a one-way ticket moving to San Francisco.”
Hearing my words of declaration made me smile. “One-way” indicated the unusual, when round-trips were routine. I was on an adventure to the unknown.
“Where are you staying?” Tom asked. His sandy-blond hair, tan complexion, and bushy moustache gave him a friendly, attractive appearance.
Under the Birch Tree Page 19
