When I was little, I lived in Antwerp and London and Houston and Frankfurt. At 18 I high-tailed it from West Houston to various locales inside the Loop. Shortly before my 24th birthday, I picked up and moved to Manhattan. Dennis and I have lived in Chicago for 6 years.
A great deal of my life has been spent living in apartments, riding subways and scurrying amongst the shadows cast by skyscrapers on sunny days but to say I’m a city gal would be a gross understatement. My heart belongs to suburbia.
Maybe it’s because as a little kid – unable to get her grubby mitts on simple pleasures like Pop Tarts and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – I romanticized the big-box American experience. Visiting my grandparents in New Hampshire was nothing short of sublime (The mall! Burger King! KMart!) and when we finally moved back stateside in 1984, I was absolutely over the moon. Suddenly not only did we have a yard, we had a cul-de-sac that openly embraced things like an annual Christmas party, playing baseball in the spring and pooling money to buy an excess of fireworks on the fourth of July.
Anyway, as I stand happily at the brink of middle age, spending my hard-earned bonus on having our condo painted and a storage unit I can’t pretend to be upset as we prepare to put our wee slice of Chicago on the market. We’re heading for the hills. BFE here we come. I obsess about decorating a formal living room I don't yet have. I'm researching how to till soil. I fantasize about the day where I can buy paper towels at Costco and actually have a place to store the 12 rolls I'm not using. I don't particularly care that it's probably the worst real estate market in American history; I'm ready to go.
I laid in bed last night (after a particularly traumatic episode of “Little Miss Perfect” on We. Sidenote: why the recent surge in child beauty pageant shows?) contemplating the change. Friends of ours will surely bemoan our decision – how could you leave the city? The restaurants? The rat-tat-tat jazz-driven rhythm of scurrying across boulevards in the hopes of dashing into charming shops in a mid-summer rain?
Fact of the matter is, to quote R.E.O. Speedwagon, it’s time for me (us) to fly. The city is like the bad boyfriend who promises he’s going to change and never does. Eventually you come to your senses and realize that you deserve better than an overgrown frat boy neighbor who likes watching “24” at a volume better suited for an amphitheater, a parking garage that costs more per month than your actual car payment and paying 10.25% sales tax because the county can’t get its act together.
Fare the well, urban living. We’ve had a good run, but I’m ready to move on. It’s not you, it’s me. I know you’ll find someone out there – someone who can give you something I never could. I wish you nothing but happiness. Know that the time we spent together will always mean something to me, but I can’t pretend to love you anymore.
Are you moving to a suburb of Chicago? or some other city/state?
Posted by: Richard Yoo | March 12, 2009 at 09:24 AM