Big Shoulders

This week my feet were in Chicago, which is many things in my body. 

It is five generations of my ancestors living, building, working, making candy, delivering food, part of the factories, coming from faraway places and making this lakeshore theirs, or not making it, or just making it through the system. It is Margaret Fitzpatrick and Beatrice Hammer gifting my genes. 

Chicago is my Dad growing up in the 1940's, walking leafy streets to Catholic school on the northwest side as his Dad walked home from playing piano in city bars. Finally visiting 40 years later, I felt its energy and chaos, a rumble of life never stopping to mourn the deaths. A decade on, my own life was train rides and long walks through it as I finished a college degree. (I learned the vital life skill of relaxing all my muscles to keep myself warm in the face of February Siberian gales.)

the glow of Valentine's Day at the Palmer House with my husband

sunshine crisp and mellow by turns in an October Marathon weekend with my Dad and his wife

the July sauna that is Taste of Chicago

speedy drives of youth group vans through to and from the Indiana Dunes

the rise of anger for its pain, peace of deep community and the gratefulness of being a tiny part of its strengthening

a rainy (finally! first one!) Cubs game in 2016 with husband-to-be, mother, brother, and in-laws-once-removed

the tangle of our little strand in the web 

Its heat, heft, and icy power formed me, used me, and still shape a hum of life in me.

Chicago, by Carl Sandburg

Chicago, by Lola Ridge

Darius Parker, Chicago spoken word artist

Chicago and December, by W.S. di Piero