Under the Birch Tree

by Nancy Chadwick

  Trying to do too much in too little time with someone dominated my hours. I went from learning to be alone to having a shadow. I wanted to make friends to fill a void I was constantly trying to repel. And now that I had a loyal companion, a new best friend—okay, a boyfriend—I shook my head in disbelief, because I didn’t want what I had asked for. I was no longer stopping and taking time to reel in me and my life, but rather time was taking me. The spare time was required to establish where I wanted to be. I needed the solitude and security I found with being home.

  It wasn’t a bad thing that happened; it was a good thing. I was able to communicate my frustration about my lack of personal time and space. I needed to be in control, perhaps a selfish take on my accustomed solitary ways that were proving difficult to combine with his need for constant togetherness. We were learning about each other and what we needed, and I realized I would not have had the experiences I’d had without him. My anxiety settled when I saw that Mike was not an addition to my life, something I needed to manage and find room for, but was a part of it. I had finally looked into the face of a man who was all I wanted: kind and loyal, calm and supportive. He was living life, and I wanted to do the same—with him.

  Even though we were busy with our combined lives, we always took time to take walks. As we strolled through the neighborhood of Pacific Heights, we acknowledged the “for rent” signs and told ourselves we were “just looking” until we found a place where we weren’t “just looking” anymore. When we did elect to move in together, I welcomed the ease and comfort that choice brought.

  Our new apartment was large with sun shining in all the right rooms. The apartment embraced our combined furnishings as we made it ours, carrying large rolled-up area rugs on our shoulders, with Mike in front and me following, to our parked car at Union Square. Soon, the new mixed with my old furnishings from Chicago, scattered throughout and interspersed with memories of his old home and former married life. But we had the new rugs underneath, touching our feet, connecting us to solid ground, splashing back at us every time we walked into a room.

  My new settled living came in my early thirties and offered a respite for me to recognize my life lessons, where each lesson was built upon learning from the previous one. The next one would not present itself until I had learned from its predecessor.

  Learning life lessons, however, was different from understanding them. As a young girl, I learned that staying in the house on Carlisle was not forever; as a teen, that my dad would always remain disconnected from me; and as an adult, that faith would enable me to get a job and that nothing bad would happen to me. Understanding the meaning of each particular lesson needed to take time. The understanding owed itself to the years required for evolution, to be massaged, to be absorbed into the stream of life and wisdom.

  My Carlisle home had provided a foundation and a classroom to teach me about home as the only place I knew, where I grew up, where I was from—the secure, the safety, the familiar, where neighbors knew your name and where you settled at night in a room that debuted each growing year, surrounded by all that was you. Over the years, I learned to be comfortable in my own skin, and with a home place that was not Carlisle.

  My faith remained constant through the years, engaging wisdom and grace, unfolding from many bad wrinkles I experienced through life. I learned to trust. God never did let anything bad happen to me, and because I trusted him, I was never really alone.

  And when I had learned and understood all my lessons, I met Mike.

  part 6

  returning home

  like no other tree

  Moldings and cornices detailed the whitewashed exterior, and a grand interior of deep red carpet and black wrought iron stair railings circled up to each floor at our new apartment building in Pacific Heights. I adored living among the history of years gone by in this old building. The space was more than enough for two people, and our combined furniture didn’t fill the living spaces. Mike and I had been living there for just over a year and half when an unusual call came from his mother in North Dakota.

  “Hi there, what’s up?” Mike asked.

  “Oh, not too much. I saw Dr. Frank today.”

  “You did?

  “I fell. I’m okay. But everyone said I had to go to the doctor.”

  “Well, I’m glad they did. You really okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Emma said.

  Mike and I let the incident pass but not without keeping it at the front of our thoughts. And after a few weeks, she fell again and went into the hospital.

  “It’s hard to know what’s going on with my mom from here,” Mike said.

  “It is. Should we move to Chicago? It’s closer and maybe easier to get to your mom from there,” I asked.

  We didn’t discuss it further but kept our minds open to the possibility.

  I had been working several months with management on creating new positions in our department when the bank started a pilot program in Chicago. The man in charge thanked me for helping him to develop the program and reported with a happy face that Chicago was doing well but needed more help. Really? Mmmm.

  “There’s an opening in the Chicago office for a manager,” I explained to Mike. “I think I’d like to take it.” We would have to move again.

  The timing worked out, and maybe this wasn’t just a coincidence. My question had been answered. We were off to Chicago.

  It was not a difficult decision for us. I would move first to a temporary corporate apartment, and Mike would stay in San Francisco to look for a job. We spent the next eighteen months traveling to and from both cities for visits. I looked forward to going to San Francisco, to traveling back in time where the memories and the life I had there remained just as real as the life I was making in Chicago. I was torn between the two cities. San Francisco was a gift to me, one that I would always have, one I would cherish with respect and gratitude and a full heart. I did not fear its loss or any other loss because living in both cities was integral to my new sense of value and wellbeing. It was still a part of me and always would be my place.

  Even though I fell into a new routine, I didn’t really know where I was or even why I was there. Mike wasn’t with me and that was okay, though odd. I even had a sense of relief, breathing a little deeper because I was enjoying being on my own again. I was back in the city I loved, but both the city and I had changed. While walking, I noticed my city wrapping around me like an old overcoat, but the years had caused the wearing to fade and to become ill-fitting.

  I walked the forty-five minutes to work, north on Clark, and recalled memories of blustery cold winds and snow flurries wrapping around me in an unwelcome embrace. But there was always a comfy feel when I walked into my temporary apartment at the end of the workday, even though I fixed dinner alone and sat on a big couch ready to watch the news on television. Sometimes I would disengage from television land and look around in a daze, wondering how this had happened and where I was. Where was Mike and why wasn’t I missing him? I realized I needed this time alone back in my city, to pause in reflection, to retrieve an identity, and to find my footing. I was back in a world that was only mine, a world I had once run away from. And now I returned, knowing it would take me back unconditionally. Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, Mike continued with the monotony of daily living while job hunting.

  When it was Mike’s turn to visit me in Chicago, we spent our weekend apartment hunting.

  “We’re not doing too well here with this apartment business,” Mike said, staring out the window of my apartment.

  “How about that building across the street?”

  “Which one?” I got up from the couch and looked out the window.

  “That one.”

  “I thought that was a condo.”

  “Well, do you think they’re open?”

  We walked across the street to the apartment and stood in the open office doorway just inside the lobby. We waited until acknowledged by a lady seated at a desk, who was s
taring down into a paper cyclone, oblivious to our presence. Mike didn’t hesitate to disturb her.

  “Hi there. Any one-bedroom apartments for rent?”

  “I’ve got a one-bedroom available on a corner,” the rental lady said unenthusiastically.

  “Well, would you mind if we took a look?” Mike said.

  We knew we’d take it upon walking a few feet into the apartment. The corner views ahead caught our attention. The floor plan was open, bright, and welcoming.

  “Let’s just do it. It’s fine, it’s across the street, it’ll be temporary until you can get here and we can get settled,” I whispered to Mike as we walked out of the apartment and waited for the elevator.

  Moving day was a day of torment, because not only was I doing it myself, but also the winter winds kicked up in record speed through an already-windy corridor. The windchill factor, which was running ten to twenty degrees below zero, added to my misery. I was caught in gusts of wind, cursing everyone and everything that came before me and this move as I shuttled from the temporary apartment to the new one. What an accumulation of stuff in just one month! I was beginning to regret moving back, to getting involved with someone who couldn’t be with me to help. I was mad, chapped in the face, and losing my grip on my suitcases. I needed to take a break.

  I sat on the floor of my packed apartment to rest between moving runs. I surveyed the empty rooms and I realized I was moving—again—and I was left to handle the work alone. Resentment and anger festered. The phone rang, interrupting my rush of emotion.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, how are you?” Mike asked.

  “Tired, cold, and shaky.”

  “What? You coming down with something?”

  “Coming down with something? Don’t you know what today is … er, was?”

  “Sunday? And I’m not sure. What did I miss?”

  I shouted over the phone, “Miss? You don’t know what this weekend was for me? How could you forget? Or how could you not even remember? I just moved! And what are you up to?”

  “Watching some football.”

  “Uh-huh, well, I don’t have much more to say. I still have to make a few more trips. I was taking a break because the winds are bad, so much so that a warning has been issued and then there’s some snow whipping around too. Get back to your football.”

  I questioned if he was serious about me. He didn’t show me that the day was important enough to him to remember it and feel regret or sympathy for me. Sometimes I doubted he really wanted to move to Chicago because his life, as he knew it, was in California.

  That phone call spoke louder words than I ever did in conversation. I stared into empty space and was bombarded by feelings beyond tired, cold, and hungry. I wondered if this was the start of a big change where once again, I would be left alone. The advent of aloneness and the absence of home crept through to my bones, meeting the drafty cold wind traveling across a bare apartment floor. I had no choice but to move on, at least to across the street.

  I sank on the bed and took a deep breath. The move was finished. I was in a new place again, alone, and starting over. I didn’t know how permanent or temporary this was going to be. I didn’t care. I was living one day at a time. That was all I could handle and all I wanted to handle. I became restless and tired and anticipated the next life change to happen.

  Mike decided he would move to Chicago without a job. But before I could mentally prepare, another change slid under my apartment door. A notice told me it was time to move again. The building was going condo. I moved three blocks east, still at Huron, but on Wabash.

  I flew out to San Francisco to meet Mike on Valentine’s Day 1995, pack the car, and drive back to Chicago. The thought of driving across the country suggested sedentary hours, the monotony of the car engine’s hum, radio banter, and granola nibbling. Yes, the hours were spent as I’d anticipated, but the drive across the country was a better experience than I had expected. Through each charted state, the experience of the open road gave me time to live in the present, to disengage from a place I had made my own and look ahead. I acknowledged the sun’s warmth and brightness as a guiding strength to follow to our destination.

  Four days later, we pulled up to the front of our new building. The small, convertible apartment, which was a fancy city name for not quite a one-bedroom, was waiting for Mike’s arrival. We had views of several building tops, including the overwhelming Merchandise Mart, looking like a giant bookend to the setting sun’s rays. But my alone time would soon end. I wanted someone to be a part of my life, to live a life I had envied in others, yet I acknowledged uncertainty hiding in the shadows of my emotions. I had cleared space in the closet and in the bathroom, hoping it was enough. I wanted him to feel that this was his place too. But my fears and “what ifs” diminished as soon as he walked through the door.

  Mike walked me to work every day, stopping on the return trip to sit, have coffee, and read the paper. I grew restless with his daily routine, afraid that his motivation to get a job had vanished. But I believed he would find a job due to his methodical and precise job-hunting strategy, working some hours but then giving himself play time to venture around his new city, learning the transit system, the financial district, and where the Cubs played. He ran errands and took care of the apartment. He took care of everything I needed and anything we needed. After a few months and a few interviews, he got a job with a large Chicago bank in a similar capacity as his old position, and I was relieved.

  Our urban life was moving along well, and we took advantage of our location. Eating out was a treat, and exploring the city occupied our weekends. We walked south to Grant Park, strolled along the beaches from Oak Street to North Avenue, and visited Lincoln Park Zoo and all the museums in between. We took our time and enjoyed every minute of ourselves and the city’s offerings.

  In retrospect, I had walked the perimeter of my house on Carlisle, marking my first steps and declaring it home; repeated the pattern in San Francisco, expanding my footing by miles; and finally returned to where I had started, in Chicago. Instinct told me the only way to connect and to feel at home was to walk the earth and thread myself through the forest among the trees where the birth of my first connection was a birch tree.

  I was a new resident in my old city. I had been away for three years, enough time for good places in my mind and in my heart to find me. The city did not look as I remembered it, with bone-chilling winters and lonely summer nights in which I felt trapped and not belonging. Upon my return, my continued love for the city was confirmed, only this time, I was free and belonged in a new place.

  On Christmas Eve two years later, it was hot and muggy in the apartment from boiling water in pots on the stove top and a heated oven. I was preparing ahead as much Christmas dinner as I could. Mike was sitting on the futon couch watching television and intently trying to keep me up to date on the program. He yelled, “Quick, come here.”

  “What is it?”

  “Sit down a minute.”

  “What?” I said, annoyed.

  Mike showed me a tiny blue box. He opened its top. “Nancy, will you marry me?”

  I can’t say this was unexpected, as we had shopped for rings that previous fall and knew that our moms, Tim, and Tim’s girlfriend were all coming to our apartment for Christmas. He would have the ring, and we would have our family with us. Asking me to marry him while my mind was occupied with menu planning was fun and most unexpected. I wasn’t a twenty-something who required a storybook proposal of skywriting or formal bended knee. My proposal was intimate and comfortably informal. I had grown out of the need to find inner contentment, learned all those years ago because I was alone, and now I had moved on to welcoming a person who made me feel just as content.

  Planning our wedding was our mission after the holidays. Matters of who would marry us and how and where we would be married dictated a wedding date, as we realized the availability in the city would be difficult. Just when we were about to give up, we came up
on an old gray stone church across from the Hancock building on Michigan Avenue.

  “Hello there,” Mike said, waving to a woman standing in the church’s doorway. “Who can we talk to about getting married in your church?”

  “Are you a member?”

  “No, we’re not. We just recently moved to the city.”

  “I see, well, that would be me. Why don’t you come back later today, about three o’clock, and we can discuss what dates I’ve got open. I gotta go. I’ve got a wedding.”

  I was thirty-five when I married Mike the following September, and I could not have been more ready. We celebrated our wedding in the small chapel, filled with fifty of our friends and relatives. Tim walked me down the short aisle because my dad did not live long enough to see me marry. A month after I moved to San Francisco, Ann called me early one morning to tell me our dad had died and I needed to get on a plane. I repeated, “He died?” It wasn’t his death that shocked me. It was realizing that our time was up. There would never be a possibility to connect as father and daughter. Tim’s stand-in for Dad was right when walking with Dad would have felt so wrong, my arm through his, intertwined, connected.

  I was able to see all who had joined our intimate ceremony. Michele looked beautiful in a long mint-green formal gown, standing by me as my maid of honor, always standing by me since sharing our ad-agency days when we’d calmed our nerves with a burger lunch. Once outside after the ceremony, Mike and I, Michele, and Mike’s cousin and best man, Tom, walked north on Michigan Avenue on our way to the Drake Hotel for a luncheon reception, stopping for the photographer’s pictures in the meridian among the flowerpots and other foliage.

  “Hey, is this a movie or something?” one passerby shouted. Horns honked. People stopped and stared.

  I remembered my twenties, the days of crossing those city’s corners and intersections in hope of finding a job or maybe calling my date a boyfriend. Now, when I stopped at a street corner, I was on my husband’s arm with the John Hancock building looming over me and the Fourth Presbyterian Church, where I’d just gotten married, in my peripheral vision. I had found a place to be. I had returned home.