Criminal Amnesia
A strong case of it.
You will never love a place like you do when you’re about to leave it. This is one of the great unfortunate universal truths, right up there with the fact that you never want someone more than in the first forty-eight hours after they’ve dumped you. Our brains are sociopathic in this way.
I’m doing this with Chicago right now, and I am not proud of it.
I have a case of criminal amnesia. I can’t seem to remember that a year ago I was the one suggesting we’d probably move somewhere else, acting as if it would never be a big deal, and I’d be totally okay with it because I’d done it before. And just like last time, it would be a grand adventure. I’ve forgotten that I used to walk the streets of my neighborhood imagining my life here forever, and think, is this it? Now that San Francisco is real and two months away, that woman is gone. She has been replaced by someone who cries at the sight of her own block. How beautiful it all is. How much I love the weird candy shop just two blocks away with the best dark chocolate ice cream bars hidden in the back freezer, and the pet shop owner who grilled hot dogs and gave them out for free on Monday — and while it was gross to think that somewhere in the pet shop he has a grill and prepared food on it, and that it was absolutely not up to code, it was the kind of thing that makes you wax poetic to the point where I’m still thinking about it this morning. Ugh.
Yesterday I was pushing my sons in their wagon through our neighborhood in seventy-five degree weather, which, if you know Chicago, you understand is essentially a mean trick designed to make you forget even the coldest of winter days. We passed a few of our favorite stop-and-chat neighbors, all of them lamenting that they’d seen the for-sale sign in our front yard. To which I responded, I know, I know.
The leaves had never been so green, the light never so golden. And then, just when you thought Chicago was done showing off, we walked past a corner bar we’d passed a million times — always closed, always dark — with its door propped open. The owner waved us in like he’d been expecting us, after my boys shouted that they smelled popcorn. He handed them popcorn, and just as I went to reach into my bag to get some cash, he waved my hand away and slid a PBR across the bar to me, and even though it was warm and tasted just like a PBR, I wanted to cry.
A wave of sadness washed over me so strong it almost knocked me over. How am I leaving a place I love this deeply. I have no answer, really, only that I know this is exactly the kind of love that only comes the hard way.
Looks like we’re on set of the Bear, which is shot in my neighborhood.
Yep, this happens to me all the time we move. It’s parts of grieving but you also need to follow that voice that for so many times said you needed to move. And as I always say, Chicago is not going anywhere you can always move back. You’ll have fun in California, and the weather won’t be that harsh!
From someone who has moved many times, this is so true. You have written so perfectly that feeling of leaving a place you love (even when all the wrong things seem right ) because you have come to call it home. But as I always say... everything you do is practice for the next thing. So off you go. Until the next thing :).