My love note to Chicago

Chicago is the city where I fall in love. Whether with the skyline on a night drive down Lake Shore, an avant garde Michelin star meal, or actually for real, Chicago, you are enchanting.

When I remember my favorite Chicago memories, I am constantly wishing I had savored each of them longer. There’s something about Chicago that makes limited time seem to stretch and friendships that began a few hours before feel like forever. The air of transience that one finds in a city is always underlying, but this just adds to Chicago’s allure.

This city has been a second home since elementary school, my family making the three hour drive from Fort Wayne almost once a month. I remember celebrating the White Sox’s 2005 World Series win as an Indiana sixth grader moonlighting as a Chicago native, and summers weren’t complete without splashing through the giant spitting faces of Millennium Park. I even celebrated my 21st birthday here and then spent my first summer as a legal drinker discovering which bars were IU ones and which ones served $1 mini burgers (Kirkwood’s in Lincoln Park).

As a recently inducted pseudo-adult, I now have the words to describe what a summer in Chicago feels like: it’s the epitome of falling in love. It’s a walk down Michigan Avenue right after the sun sets standing on the bridge watching the nighttime river. It’s watching the waves during a Navy Pier fireworks show. It’s standing under a glowy street lamp in Lakeview. It’s a private conversation in the middle of a Lolla headliner’s lights show. It’s tiger lilies that line the walk to a front door. It’s nervous excitement bubbling away until it bursts forth with both strength and caution. It’s indescribable vivacity paired with security and a promise that the moments will last.

And if the magic is long gone by fall, at least there is solace in remembering.

If the summer is love and the fall is memories and moving on, a Chicago winter is icy heartbreak. It’s bitterness that steels veins and causes frostbite if left exposed in five minutes or less. It’s ice skating in extreme temperatures on the new Maggie Daley ribbon. It’s shallow hope breaking apart and it’s cold avoidance. It’s burying yourself in an electric blanket and watching your breath freeze on a window. It’s watching soft snow fall from the sky and realizing there is beauty in pain.

Chicago truly has been the backdrop for where I’ve fallen in love. There are Google map pinpoints all over the city where I can remember insignificant first meetings that turned into significant life meanings. Perhaps this is why I have mixed feelings about moving to the city in August. My apprehension has nothing to do with doubts about my (seriously awesome) future job, roommates, or feeling lost in a big city. Instead, I am apprehensive about the treasure trove of Chicago memories I’ve already created. I am a big fan of locational attachment and there are streets and buildings that will never not cause ghosts of recent strangers to resurface.

Speaking of which, visiting Chicago streets where old boyfriends live is… interesting. I flip flop between wanting to hide my head under a paper bag – avoidance to its highest degree – and secretly hoping we’ll both serendipitously stop into Starbucks at the same time. I want him to appear so I can experience summer or fall or winter, anything to prove our togetherness exists outside my long term memory. Chicago has almost three million inhabitants so once he moves away from this street, our chance encounters will become slim to none. So it goes.

Chicago, I love you. I’ve found years of joy and heartbreak in you, and also really great brunch. I seriously can’t wait to buy my tickets for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra or raid forgotten bookstores in Wicker Park. Moving into my all-paid-by-me grown up apartment in August is going to be surreal. In the words of Chicago native, Kanye West, “Chi city, I’m coming home again.”

Love always,

Carmen