Faith Through the Journey

Last week I was in Chicago with my husband where we had traveled for a conference related to his job. Many times when we travel, the city or resort is new to me and I explore the area with fresh eyes. However, heading to the Chicago/Southern Wisconsin area was like going home. Being in an area in which I grew up brought back a flood of memories. As I looked out our hotel room window (and quite a view it was!), I saw the shore of Lake Michigan, the museums to which I had traveled for field trips during my junior high and high school years, the John Hancock Building, the Wrigley Building and the “Magnificent Mile” (Michigan Avenue), the best and most exclusive shopping district in the city. All of these brought memories of family times, times spent with my now-husband visiting the city, times we traveled there with our own children, and now we were there with new friends and experiencing new places with them. There were MANY surreal moments!

We were able to go to southern Wisconsin where we had both lived and where my husband’s sisters still live, and again, there were so many memories. After my family moved out of the area, one of my husband’s sisters moved a half mile from the house where we lived, so of course we pass it every time we go to visit them! Just seeing the house, I remembered my parents and brothers and the life we lived there: moving into the house, putting in the yard ( we ALL put down sod!), getting our family dog as a puppy, the time I tried mowing the lawn and cut down all of the baby evergreen trees my dad was trying to coax along, having backyard barbecues when the wind shifted off of Lake Michigan and the temperature dropped 20 degrees, learning to drive in blinding snowstorms.

While my husband and I lived in the same city at the same time, we led lives that touched only at points when our two churches gathered together for youth camps or other activities. The fact that we both remember things in the city that happened during our lifetime there is ironic, because we weren’t dating and didn’t see each other. In fact, we worked three stores apart and didn’t see each other at all! We followed the same sports teams, attending games once in awhile, and even now we compare notes about those years and the teams’ players and records.

Because of the fact that my husband’s family still lives in that area, our children are now very familiar with,and love traveling to,Chicago and Wisconsin. My parents left that area well over 30 years ago, so neither of my brothers or their families have connection to the area, and their children do not have the same ties to the area where their dads grew up. Our children will say in a heartbeat that their favorite city to visit is Chicago, and it’s been interesting to see them embrace a place that is so far from where we live in Texas. Of course, things like Gino’s East pizza and shopping at Water Tower Place are a very powerful draw as well, as is Danish Kringle from our hometown of Racine, Wisconsin! We’ve also “indoctrinated” them in the ways of the Chicago Cubs, and have taken them to Wrigley Field on more than one occasion. How well I remember my dad taking us to at least one Cubs game a year (when Milwaukee had no major league team), and it’s special that we’ve shared that experience with our children (my husband, too, is a lifelong Cubs fan!).  Hapless though they may be, they’re “our” Cubs, and we look forward to sharing that experience with our new grandson someday as well. Four generations of Cubs fans…and we live in Texas!!

The strange mix of memories and new experiences that comprised our week in the upper midwest almost made my head–and heart–hurt at times with their intensity. And yet, I would not have missed one minute of the time there. Rich memories of years past with family, and now special new memories of times with friends, form this amazing patchwork of touchpoints in a place that has been, and still is, “Home”.