Life with my family in Chicago is very different from my life in Boston. My husband and I live a pretty quiet life. We’re not especially adventurous or outdoorsy. We don’t have a lot of family and friends nearby. Weekends aren’t terribly exciting. I wake up relatively early, take the dog out, and hang for a while in my pajamas. Maybe I go to the grocery store, maybe I do a little sewing, maybe I go back to sleep. My husband wakes up when I get him up, usually around noon. He’s the night owl, while I’m mostly a morning person. [We're hoping this will serve us well when the babies arrive.] The rest of the day is sometimes lazy, sometimes chores, maybe we’ll go out for dinner. On the rare occasion that there’s something out we both want to see, we’ll go to a movie. Sure, there are variations on this theme. We might have visitors from out of town, we might have people over for dinner, we might do something fun and unusual. But mostly, life is quiet.
It’s very different when I go home to Chicago, in particular when I’m at my mom’s house (which is, by the way, about half a mile from my dad’s house). Let me set the stage a bit. My mom is one of seven children. They were born and raised in this particular suburb, and my grandmother still lives in the little townhouse she had with all of these kids. My mom is a block and a half east of that townhouse, two of her sisters are two blocks southeast, another is half a block north. One of her two brothers is two and a half blocks northeast. That leaves one brother on the other side of (the same) town, and then the one sister who left Chicago. She, funny enough, lives about 45 minutes east of me in Massachusetts.
So, you have my mom sort of in the middle, with her mother and four of her six siblings within a 2-3 block radius. And they’re all close. And they almost all have dogs. And they’re almost all morning people. When my mom moved into this house three years ago, my stepdad almost considered not buying it because it was so close to everyone else. They compromised. He got a neon sign that said “Open” that he could stick in the window and turn on when he wanted.
Every morning, it seems, at least two or three people stop by. Maybe they want to borrow a tool from my mom, maybe they were out for a run, maybe they were walking the dog. But before 9:00AM, it’s not unusual to have several visitors. This continues throughout the day. After my shower on Sunday, suddenly three of them were taking their dogs to the dog beach together. At 5:30pm, the phone started ringing, and by 6:30 there were 15 people over for hamburgers and shower leftovers. It was Sunday, after all, and they almost always have Sunday dinners at someone’s house. And it’s usually just as casual. Phone calls start around noon, figure out who’s bringing salad or dessert, and people just start opening the door and pouring themselves a drink by 6:30. It’s so casual, but has become such a part of their routine that my cousins will complain if a Sunday goes by and they have to eat dinner by themselves at home.
It was fun to be there and be a part of it, as I was for the first 21 years of my life (though regular Sunday dinners are more recent), even if it was a somewhat stark contrast to my life in Boston. A large part of me really misses being that physically close to my big family. I’m jealous of my brother and his fiancee, who recently moved back to the area from Colorado. I’m sad that it will be such a production to visit with the twins, instead of just walking the stroller down the street or hopping in a car across town. I go through phases where I really want to move back. After all, we have no real attachment to Massachusetts, except that it’s where we live and work. It’s nice, but we could live and work somewhere else.
There are reasons not to move. My mom and her sisters can get bossy, and a bit of mob mentality takes over when they come to your house to work on a room or do landscaping. They have an idea of how it should get done, and sometimes aren’t so keen on outside opinions (like those of the actual homeowner). They still occasionally treat me like a 15-year-old who’s just playing house. It’s particularly hard for my husband. Not only did he not grow up with such a crowd, so all of the people and chaos is just too much for him, but the bossiness is something he can’t quite tolerate. We also aren’t the type to just up and relocate and figure out the details later. We’d never move if we (and by we, I mean my husband, who are we kidding) didn’t have a job to pay the mortgage. And if you’ve ever tried to look for a job across state lines, you’ll know it’s no easy feat. Here in Massachusetts, we have a house we’re in no rush to sell, and my husband has a brand new job that he actually enjoys. We aren’t moving any time in the forseeable future.
And I also know there are plenty of people out there who don’t live close to their families. They do just fine. Their kids still love their grandparents. They visit as often as they can, and they establish lives and surrogate families where they are. It’s certainly harder for us right now because many of our close friends have moved away from Boston as well, so we aren’t left with a big support system. But hopefully having kids will open up another world of possiblities with things like playgroups and school.
But when it comes right down to it, I harbor a vague but consistent hope/desire/vision that we’ll someday move to Chicago. My husband isn’t totally against the idea, though it will take some convincing (and a great job opportunity). I just can’t help but think it would be nice for my kids to grow up around the crowd that I did. And I’m still the homesick little girl that wasn’t ready for full-day kindergarten and cried to come home from camp. I always want my mommy.
Damn my hormones. That last line really got to me. I know just how you feel, though. Well, sort of. Actually, I live more in that environment now than I would were I still in Montana, where only my mom lives (and where only she, my then-step-father, and me lived while I grew up – all other family was/is in North Dakota). Still, I want my mommy, too, and it’s hard to imagine not seeing my kid grow up in the same laid-back environment I did. But here, we have M’s mother’s expansive family, where love and chaos reign and they’ve made me one of their own. Frankly, I’m still not used to it.