Life in Chicago

A Different Kind of Family

We found out yesterday that one of my sisters-in-law is pregnant with her second baby. Hers will make grandchild number 6 for Greg's parents, all in the last 3 years. Ever since I've known the Booses, there have always been two girls pregnant at one time. One of my sisters-in-law gave birth last August and one in December. I'm due in June and the newest one will be here in August.

It's strange to think about how different the family environment my child will grow up in will be from my own. My own extended family has always been incredibly scattered, not just geographically but in terms of age as well. I've never had any cousins close in age, most of them about ten years older than me -- which meant that I never really got to know them until I was in my twenties. I also didn't have siblings and the half-siblings I do have are all at least 30 years older than me. But I guess this is what happens when your mother is 40 and your father is 57 when they give birth to you.

So to imagine that my child will not only probably have siblings, but also a whole slew of cousins that are incredibly close in age, is really interesting. I can only imagine that those factors will make for such a different kind of person.

My background served only to reinforce my independence and solitude. The classic image of my childhood is one of me sitting hunched over a book in a chair at a table in a fancy restaurant while my parents eat dinner. I was perpetually found myself in a world of adults and I made sure that I always had a book to lose myself in for that exact reason. I was definitely lonely and, for a long time, I simply lived in a whole other world in my head; long stretches of my childhood spent playing strange solitary games and making up stories.

I'm glad that it won't be the same for my child. I definitely hope to have more than one, but it's nice to know that even if I don't, the one I have will always have all these cousins and aunts and uncles.

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On another note, I'd love some recommendations on parenting/baby books. I know this request will make some of you grumble and say that I don't need any books, that it will come naturally, and I agree with you to a certain degree. But all the same, I'd love to read a book or two about the first years and about sleep methods, etc. Any recommendations would be appreciated!

These Moments

Greg's uncle took this photo of us standing on the beach last weekend. Greg and his cousin Mandy had just finished playing frisbee and his uncle Ron and I had just come back from a long walk down the beach.

In the last year or so I've found that there's nothing simpler or more comforting than standing somewhere and leaning into my husband, while he leans back. And that's what we were doing. Just standing there, looking out at the ocean, both of us thinking our separate thoughts.

But it's one of those photos in which time stands still for just a moment. When Ron asked for the camera he knew exactly what he was capturing, and it's easy even for me to see: two people at the start of their lives together, poised at the very top of the first hill of the roller coaster, in that blissful moment just before it all descends into the beautiful chaos below.

Respite

Greg and I went to San Francisco last week for a few days. His uncle Ron gave us round-trip tickets to visit him there as a wedding gift last year and this little trip couldn't have come at a better time. I had truly reached my breaking point with Chicago and with winter and it was really rejuvenating to get away.

Greg's uncle Ron lives in a little town called Mill Valley, just outside of the city and he gave us his car and his house for the weekend, treated us to lovely dinners and was his usual charming self to be around. We toured the city, walked through Muir Woods, played frisbee on Stinson Beach (I watched), ate dinner in Chinatown, took long walks and short naps, and it was just perfect.

The weather was delicious while we were there, sunny and just warm enough to not wear a jacket most of the time. I even wore sandals during the day. Such a nice change from Chicago's current 11 degrees.

I've  been to San Francisco probably 7 or 8 times in the last ten years but each time it's a different experience and this time it was about resetting my internal focus and getting some perspective on my life here in Chicago. There's nothing like being 2000 miles from home to get a little perspective.

The minute we were off the plane I got that old, heart-in-my-throat feeling about California. When I was back in Los Angeles last fall I thought that perhaps it was just going back to a place I'd once lived and seeing old faces and old places, but I got the same feeling again in San Francisco, making me realize that I just don't think I'm done with California. But for now, I'm back in Chicago feeling refreshed and energized and ready to get through the rest of this dreadful winter. 

In other news, I've officially turned into a pregnant lady. I look undeniably preggers at this point. I'm getting a lot of belly stares from strangers and a lot of "Congratulations! When are you due?" I keep meaning to say that I'm not pregnant to the next person who says that, just for a moment, to see how they handle it, but I usually get too caught up in all the attention and just end up blushing and telling them my due date.

The baby kicks all the time and I feel like I'm already getting to know it. I can tell when it's sleeping or just being quiet and even Greg's teenage cousin Mandy got to feel it kicking the other night, which totally blew her mind.

Well, it's Monday and I'm back off to work shortly, then home later to work on my million writing projects.  At least it doesn't look like it's 11 degrees out there.

Claire Boose of Illinois

Well, it's official. Yesterday I swapped out my California driver's license for a shiny, new Illinois version. And I officially went from being Claire Smith to Claire Boose.

It's kind of a strange feeling to have a new name. I've been putting this off for months now for that very reason. I'll admit that I've had some ambiguous feelings about changing my name. Before we were engaged or married I was thrilled by the idea of taking on the name Boose, but then when it actually happened I felt a little sad to give up my old name.

It's not that I'm really tied to the name Smith (for heaven's sake, there's 13 billion of us out there) or that I dislike Boose (it's really a pretty good name), but I guess it's just the whole identity thing. I do intend to keep Claire Bidwell Smith as my writing name since I've already established myself to a fair degree under it and since it might be a little -- is intense the word? -- for Greg and I both to be writing under the name Boose.

The other part of it was relinquishing that last bit of my California identity. No longer when I have to show my ID at Trader Joe's when paying for a bottle of wine or when cashing a check at the bank will someone exclaim, "California! How'd you end up here?" I am officially a resident of Illinois and I will dutifully shuffle through winter with the rest of you Chicagoans, no one ever having to know that I once hailed from the land of sunshine.

A New Week

It's a chilly 18 degrees out and the windows are mildly frosted up. There's a light dusting of last night's snow sparkling in the sun all across the rooftops. I keep reminding myself that every day gets a little closer to spring, but it doesn't really feel like it. Winter last year went on into April and I fully expect the same again this year.

It was a nice weekend though. On Friday night Greg took me out to dinner at Province -- a restaurant that opened last year and features a highly organic, local and sustainable menu...but in a fashionable way -- and we had a lovely dinner together. And then on Saturday night I took Greg on a date -- to a casual dinner at Uncommon Ground and then an improv show at the iO Theatre in Wrigleyville.

It was pretty fun to take Greg on a date -- it's usually the reverse. He's by far the most thoughtful man I've ever dated, always driving and opening car doors and paying for everything. And so on Saturday I did all those things instead. We kept laughing about how good I have it and he kept saying things like, "Oh, I see. All you have to do is stand around and look cute and wait for me to unlock doors and take out my wallet." Yup, I nodded, isn't it fun? (In retrospect, this whole thing may have been a bad idea as I'll probably have to take him on more dates, now that he knows how great it is!)

Yesterday I went to my favorite prenatal yoga class that I go to every Sunday now. I absolutely adore this class. There are always about 45 pregnant women in the room and all the bellies vary so much in size and shape -- it's mesmerizing to look around at them all. There's a girl who goes every week who I've become friendly with and we chat before class and put our mats together in the back corner. She's pregnant with her second baby and told me lots of fun stories yesterday about the birth of her first.

I'm finally at the stage where I look obviously pregnant and it's pretty fun. Going out to dinner over the weekend, Greg and I both noticed people looking at my belly and on Saturday when I went to get my haircut by a new hairdresser she immediately remarked, "Oh, you're pregnant!" I'm getting a little clumsy with my big belly now too -- bumping into things and feeling a little off balance, but even that's kind of fun. I'm feeling very connected to the baby too. I can feel it moving around all throughout the day and am having a hard time keeping my hands off my belly.

Yesterday afternoon we interviewed a doula and we both loved her and I'm pretty sure we're going to hire her to assist us in the birth. I have a follow up appointment today with the doctor who did my surgery and if she says that all is well then I think I'm going to back to using the midwife group and shoot for giving birth in the alternative birthing center. I had kind of put that idea on hold while I was going through the surgery but now that I'm recovered (and totally feeling great) I'm becoming much more reinvested in the idea of a completely natural birth.

I feel like I have a good week ahead of me. Mondays don't always leave me feeling so inspired but life is feeling a bit more manageable than usual today.

Grief

Yesterday I made a bereavement follow-up to my old patient The Reverend's two caregivers. These two women had spent close to two years providing 24-hour care to him and I had gotten to know them well over the course of the year in which I visited him weekly.

The three of us met at his house yesterday, for lack of a better common meeting place, before moving on to a nearby restaurant for lunch. I hadn't been to that house since early November, the last day before he died. It's a pretty, old house on a tree-lined street in the typical Illinois suburbs, and I've missed going there. I've thought many times of simply taking a drive by it but, for some reason, I haven't.

Yesterday, as we waited for one of the caregivers, the other one and I went inside the house. She still has a key as she is helping maintain the house for the Reverend's extended family who lives out of state. It was like stepping back in time. Nothing in the house has changed. The Reverend's chair and radio still sit quietly in the gloom by the window. The pictures of his family still sit in their frames all around. The newspaper pile and the church bulletins still on the little table beside the chair.

I began to cry immediately, and unexpectedly. I've missed him, the Reverend. And I've missed those warm afternoons spent sitting in a chair pulled up to his, by the window, watching spring and summer then fall pass by in the trees outside.

It's funny how grief can live inside you like that. You can walk through your days, doing all the things you do, and then in one precise moment, spurred on by a memory or a dream or a smell or a room, this lake inside you opens up and you're reminded of your very own depths.

Evolution

A lot of the time I feel like I'm still trying to figure out my life here, in Chicago. I think it will make much more sense a few years from now, that I'll be more easily able to look back on this era of transition from my late twenties into my early thirties. But I think that maybe the clarity of it will only come from a place of more acceptance and solidity.

For now, I still feel like I'm in some strange middle ground. The frivolity and restlessness and spontaneity of the last decade of my life seems to have come to an end. I look back on my life in New York and LA, on my pursuits at the time and my endeavors, and it all feels so far away from where I sit now. But the thing is that I don't really feel like I have a grip on where I am now. Not yet at least. So I think I must still be in some wispy, ether world of transition from one era to another.

Some days I miss who I am and especially when I read old posts about my life from two years like this one -- but missing who I am seems irrelevant when I know for certain that I am just as much who I am as I have ever been.

I don't know if any of this will make sense to anyone but me. And if doesn't, don't mistake my tone for sadness. I'm not sad. Just thoughtful. It's raining out and the house is dark. The sidewalks down on the street below glisten and the sound of raindrops on the air-conditioning unit outside mark the passing of the present moment.

Stuff

Wow, it's not even 8 o'clock and the temperature is already in the 50s...I can hardly believe it. I'm sure my friends in California think that still sounds cold but to me it feels like summer. All the yucky snow that had built up in great, dirty piles around the city and the neighborhoods is almost all gone. I know that we are sure to have more winter, more snow and ice and freezing temperatures, but I'm still so grateful for this reprieve. I that, along with the rest of Chicago, I was truly reaching my breaking point.

It was nice over the weekend as well. On Saturday Greg and I opened the door to the deck for the first time in months and stood outside in the warm sunshine, looking out at the river and then we took a long walk through Lincoln Square (along with everyone else in the neighborhood who was out as well). On Saturday night we went up to Winnetka to have dinner at Greg's sister's house where we also got to visit with Greg's brother and his wife and new baby. A whole evening of Booses, including 3 kids. I brought a key-lime cheesecake that I made and it turned out to be really yummy, which was relieving.

And then on Sunday my sister-in-law from Cleveland took me to Babies R Us to register. To say it was exhausting would be an understatement. Armed with my Baby Bargains book and an extensive list from my other sister-in-law, we walked pretty much every aisle, scrutinizing strollers and bottles and Bundle Me's (?). Basically I just scanned what I was told to, having no idea what most of this stuff is or why I'm going to need it. (Moms out there: feel free to check out our registry and tell us if there's anything we're missing! It's under Boose.)

I'm really grateful to have it done though. There's just no way that Greg and I could have accomplished such a mission on our own. I just don't think that any of this stuff means anything until you actually need it. I was pretty apalled by all the bright plastics and garrish colors and kept trying to image all this stuff filling up our pretty house...but then my sister-in-law reminded me that I won't mind a brightly colored plastic thingamajig so much when it distracts my baby from crying. 

This weekend Greg and I are going to go to Pottery Barn Kids together and register for all the sheets and bedding and pretty stuff, so maybe that will be more fun? Our biggest dilemma right now is trying to decide whether to buy a used crib or a new one. All the books say DO NOT buy a used crib but cribs are expensive and there are tons of nice ones on Craig's List, not to mention that it seems really wasteful for everyone in America to only buy new cribs. Is that really necessary?? Thoughts?

Other than the development of all this stuff, life seems to be sailing along. My tummy grows by the day and I can feel the baby kicking ALL the time now. Especially right after I eat and when I wake up in the morning. I love the kicking. It's still a strange sensation but also very sweet. The AWP Conference is this week but I think that Greg and I are both too busy and too financially conservative at the moment to go to it. We each have surprise plans for the other for Valentine's Day. Greg is taking me somewhere on Friday night and I'm taking him somewhere on Saturday night.

And other than that, our lives continue to flow swiftly towards June.

23 Weeks

Well, here I am at 23 weeks.

I really kind of hate taking these pictures, even though I know I'll be glad to have them down the road. They're just kind of embarrassing to do and I always get really irritated with Greg as he's taking them, poor guy. Sometimes I make him take a dozen and sometimes just one or two and I can't handle it anymore.

I just don't feel like myself anymore -- the body that I've known for the last 30 years feels like someone else's these days. And as much as I love being pregnant and want to embrace it all as much as possible, I'm still struggling with body-image issues.

But I know how much I'll love looking back at these photos and how much our kid will love them as well.

So yeah, here ya go. Me in all my pregnancy glory...

My Father

I've been missing my Dad lately.

I thought about him for a while this morning when I was still lying in bed, unable to make myself get up just yet. I think I've been missing him because I've been feeling so anxious this week. For the second night in a row last night I woke up drenched in sweat after having a nightmare. I haven't been sleeping well. I've been having a hard time falling asleep and once I do, it's been hard to stay asleep.

I think I've just had too much on my mind lately. I've really been working an extra lot and a day hasn't gone by in weeks during which there hasn't constantly been some sort of work I need to be finishing. On top of that, I can't stop thinking about the baby coming and all the things we need to do to get ready and how we're going to handle my maternity leave and expenses and a million other things. I know that it will all work out, that it will all fall into place somehow, but I just can't stop worrying about it all.

And all of this is what leads me to thinking about my father. He was the most calming person I've ever met. He just exuded this zen understanding of life that always made me feel like, for one moment, I could calm down and set aside my anxieties and just be present. I don't think he was always that way. In fact, I know that when he was raising my much-older half siblings he was a stern and serious father, that he was quick to get angry and frustrated with them.

But something changed as he grew older and by the time he had me, at age 57, he was on a much gentler path. And he was particularly relaxed in the last decade of his life. It was like nothing could ruffle him. Not economic hardship or cancer or death -- you could tell that he simply viewed all of those things as part of the great flow of life. You could tell that he had learned, truly learned to give way to that flow, to simply be a part of it, rather than resist it, as so many of us try to do.

In the years following my mother's death, I would sometimes wake in the middle of the night or have a hard time going to sleep in the first place, and I would make my way to his room where I would sit on the edge of his bed and cry. He was always so gentle and sleepy on those nights, sitting up in bed under the covers, letting me cry and cry. He would listen to whatever it was that was bothering me and he would just nod. "I know, kiddo," he would say. "I know."

And that was all I ever needed. Just for  him to listen and for him to tell me that he understood. That yes, life can be hard and scary and terrible sometimes. Yes it can. So go ahead and cry for a while. But when you're done, you just keep moving forward again. It will sort itself out. That was always the message he exuded on those nights, even if he didn't say those exact words.

I wish I could talk to him now. I wish I could tell him all about married life and pregnancy and what it feels like to have the baby kicking inside of me. He'd be so delighted. I think he'd be happier for me than ever before. I know he knew that I would go on to have and do all these things and I know he knew how wonderful they would be but I still wish he were here to really witness it all.

I'm grateful that just thinking about what it would be like to talk to him about it all, gives me a similar sort of peace. He would see straight through all the worry and anxiety of things to come and only see all the goodness of it all...and that helps me see it again too.

Oh, I loved him so much.