Having been born and raised on the East Coast I often find myself being asked how I ended up settling in suburban Chicago. Why here? After finding old friends and classmates on Facebook it seems most of them either moved south or to the opposite coast. There aren't too many people from my "neck of the woods" that opted to settle in the midwest.
In Septamber 1995 when I was a freshman at Albion College, a friend of mine had a spare ticket to see Chicago (the band) live in South Bend, IN. The plan was to drive to Chicago for lunch @ Demon Dogs then head to South Bend for the concert after lunch. While I'd flown through Chicago a couple of times in the past (en route to California), I'd never actually been TO Chicago. When I first laid eyes on the Chicago skyline I was hooked. You could say it was "love at first sight." For the first time in my life I felt like I was "home."
In October 1996, I returned to the city with my then girlfriend, my sophomore year roommate, and an Internet friend in college in Milwaukee that had initially been interested in me but had ended up hooking up with my roommate. Once again the city felt like home to me. It felt like I belonged.
For my final semester of college I had an opportunity to study at the Urban Life Center in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood (where our current president-elect resided until quite recently). For just over 3 months, Chicago was my home. When the program ended I really hated to leave. But leave I did...
I couldn't shake it though. After moving back in with my parents back east for a short spell (about 8 months) I found myself living in Sandusky, OH (the only other place I've ever lived, besides Chicago, that has felt like home to me). I moved to Elyria, just a short drive from Cleveland for awhile after that and then in April 2002, an Internet friend of mine whom I'd never met in person set in motion a chain of events that led to my return to the Chicago area, my marriage, and in the not too distant future... fatherhood.
And that in a nutshell is how I got from point A to Chicago.
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Now playing: Supertramp - Take The Long Way Home
via FoxyTunes
Saturday, January 03, 2009
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3 comments:
I clicked on your link to the chain of events story. That made me cry it was so nicely written. You two are going to be GREAT parents.
Glad you enjoyed it, Snooze! :-)
You are right---there are not that many norther NY State folks around here... When I tell people where I am from, nobody can really picture it. Ah, well...
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