Dear Mom,

I’m flying my kids to Chicago this week. It’s been a while since I’ve spent time in the city. Since I’ve come home. 

Chicago still feels like home to me. My birthplace. Your birthplace. Both of my kids as well. It will always hold a special place in my heart. Even with the terrible weather, which is why I moved away, twice, I always considered it my most favorite city. 

When I think about Chicago, I am consumed with emotions. Similar to when I think of certain songs. Like all of the Grateful Dead. When I think of that music, it brings me back to a time in my life when I was truly happy. I began listening to that band when I was 10 years old. It was an innocent, joyful time. No responsibilities yet. No baggage yet. No real knowledge yet of the darkness this world contains. The city gives me a similar reaction. 

When I close my eyes and think about Chicago, I don’t see the crime rates that everyone talks about. I don’t see the embarrassment that is the Bears. I don’t even see the worst of the winter.

Instead, I see our holidays spent in small hotels in the city. Our ‘staycations’. Our escape from the burbs. One trip we visited the Capone Museum where Dad was upset when you allowed me to get handcuffs as my souvenir (which later caused quite the adventure when my friend accidentally handcuffed herself to my trundle bed and the fire department had to come release her). Or the time we went to the art institute, and I purchased a sketchbook with Frida Kahlo on the cover and I sat in the bed of the Blackstone hotel sketching while watching Interview with the Vampire, which was highly inappropriate considering my age though it started my intense love affair with Brad Pitt (and thank you for allowing me to cover my bedroom wall with posters of him). 

I see all the restaurants we’d frequent. The years of Il Vicinato. Of going into the kitchen to say hello to Jimmy and Evo. Of getting special items off the secret menu. My favorite, Pasta Roger, was always ordered. How about the time we all went to Gene and Georgetti, and I wore a fur coat because, I guess, that’s what one does at Gene and Georgetti. 

I see the many years of attending the Air and Water Show. The years that Dad worked for HALO, and we practically lived at the United Center. Those years, when I was still an innocent impressionable kid, I was spending my time watching the Bulls win championships while raiding the dessert carts in the skybox. 

And then I see the trips to Rock ‘N Roll McDonalds. The Field Museum. My birthday party in 4^th grade when Dad rented out an entire train car and we road from Deerfield to Union Station while David’s friend DJ’d the hottest hits of 1995. 

I see all of this. All of my best memories are in the city. My first favorite city. My first home.

But time has gone by. I’ve changed. I’ve adapted. Chicago and I have grown apart. 

The famous food. The quintessential Chicago junk. The hot dogs. The deep-dish pizza. The Italian Beef. The ribs. The donuts. The Old Style and Goose Island. Some might argue those are the best parts of Chicago, I certainly grew up on these items. Sadly, I won’t consume any of it during my visit. California has made me healthy. Plant-based. Sober. I hike now. I swim outdoors. I bike all year. I’ve gotten used to the cushy lifestyle that is the West Coast.

There are so many things about my old friend that I don’t mesh with anymore. So many reasons that my current city, my forever city, my Los Angeles has stolen my heart. Taken me from the old and changed my views. But there is something about Chicago. Something that keeps calling to me. Something I’ll never be able to part from. Chicago is in my DNA.

Maybe it’s the old brick buildings. The river. The lake. Maybe it’s the MICHELIN-starred restaurants. The pubs on every corner that all have high top highchairs. Could it be the architecture? The skyscrapers. The clean sidewalks. Maybe it’s the people. The attitude. The hospitality. Or it could be family. All the immediate and all the extended. The generations. The history. Our history as well as Chicago’s history.

I think it’s all these things. Little pieces of everything all adding up to make Chicago my home away from home. Or my first home. Or our home.

But there is one thing. One more reason why Chicago will always be home to me. Why the city will always call to me. Why I don’t want to fly there and spend the entire time in the suburbs. 

It’s you, Mom. You’re there. And it’s not only the literal you. The ashes scattered into Lake Michigan illegally by my husband a month before our wedding on an icy Thanksgiving morning. It’s not the old pictures of you that people still have in their homes. The condo in the West Loop that I can still feel you in. 

It’s your effervescence. Your energy. Your life force. You, Mom. You are in the fabric of the city. You’re in the seats at Soldier Field. The vines of Wrigley. The skyboxes of the United Center. You’re backstage at Steppenwolf. In the orchestra pit at the Chicago Theater. You’re dancing at Millenium Park in the summer and listening at the Lyric in the winter. You’re at all the art festivals and food festivals and music festivals. You’re window shopping at Fields because it’ll never be called Macy’s. You’re on the skydeck at the Sears tower because it’ll never be called Willis. 

There is something about the city. Every little detail. Every building. Every street. It’s all you. It’s why, back in 2016 when I was pregnant with Scotland, I decided to move back home. I needed you and you weren’t here. You most definitely weren’t in Los Angeles. You were, somehow, still in Chicago.

Not long after the move, I found myself having such a difficult time living there. There wasn’t a single part of the city that didn’t remind me of you. That didn’t consume me with intense emotions at first sight. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be there. To immerse myself into a place that radiates you without you actually being there. It was too soon. It was too sad. Too much to handle. I had to leave.

So, I did. I moved back to Los Angeles. Away from Chicago. Away from my first love. Away from you.

Ultimately, I’m happy with my choice. Los Angeles is now home. In fact, I think it was home many years ago, when I first moved here after school. It’s now home for me and for my family. It’s our city. And I have my own connections to the streets here. The dirty, smelly, urine drenched streets. They’re mine. And I love every inch of LA. 

But you are not here. Not in any capacity. 

There are moments. Places around LA that do remind me of you. 

Factor’s Famous Deli where I took you, on an hour-long bus ride, so you could fill your intense craving for Matzah Ball soup.

The Silverlake Farmer’s Market where you threw shade at some random woman who was bragging about getting her hat at Machu Picchu.

The 2 bus where I snapped at you because you had the audacity to ask too many questions about the scenery out the window the entire time we traveled down Alvarado. 

But the difference between my memories of you in LA versus you in Chicago is that you only spent time in Los Angeles with me while you were sick. Every memory I have with you here is of your short, silver hair. Your cane. Your floppy hats. You couldn’t enjoy the quintessential Los Angeles food. It was all too spicy for your sensitive chemo taste buds. And my life at the time wasn’t exactly helpful to you. It wasn’t easy for you to visit me and stay in my studio apartment with no AC. To travel the hot city with no car. To discover the hidden gems of my new world that was so different from your own creature comforts. What saddens me most is that you’ll never get to experience my current LA. Hiking through Griffith. Hanging out by my pool. Getting ice cream from Salt and Straw on Larchmont. Taking the kids to the California Science Center. The Natural History Museum. The La Brea Tar Pits. Oh, the Academy Museum where you could spend days admiring the movie memorabilia. The beach. The zoo. The remnants of old Hollywood. You’ll never know my life here. And you’ll never know my future. 

No matter the city I live in, you will never know me going forward. My world is a mystery to you. My city is foreign to you. But I look at LA the same way you looked at Chicago. I am showing my kids how to fall in love with their beautiful home. Through discovering the hidden gems of Los Angeles, I can be reminded of how you did the same in Chicago while I was growing up. You provided me with the foundation to fall in love with a city. To understand that, through all the negative things that a big city can offer, there is always something around the corner to admire.

And even if you will never know my future or the future of our two cities, there will always be our past. Our time in your city. Our shared love for all things Chicago. I’ll take my kids there to see the new Riverwalk. The new restaurants of your West Loop neighborhood. They will know how much you adored every inch of your city. How proud you’d be of its growth. Of its progress. They will be amazed by its cleanliness and its amazing variety of desserts. Idris will be elated to see the countless donut shops. Scotland will be so excited to experience Dolmas down the street in the little that remains of Greektown.

I will show them Chicago through the eyes of Grandma Janis. Show them the view from the balcony. The space where you had your garden. Where you got her haircut and your nails done. All your favorite spots. And if your favorite restaurant and favorite café and favorite ice cream shop are no longer there? Well, neither are you. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less special.

I love you, Mom.

Love,

Rachel

P.S. I promise to wave as we pass Lake Michigan, even if that confuses the kids more than the already confusing statement of, ‘Grandma Janis is in the Lake’.