not enough chicago

A few weeks ago, I flew home for a fleeting 28 hours. It was all I could spare without using a vacation day, and believe me when I say: it was not enough Chicago.

No, it wasn’t enough Chicago at all. But it was just enough time to make me remember why I missed the place.

28 hours was enough time to make a post-flight stopover in Park Ridge for diner grub at the Pickwick Restaurant. It was enough time to hug Lily and Archie, who I’d picked out as kittens so many years ago. It was enough time to traipse through Chicago’s neighborhoods with my dad, and enough time to visualize myself living in the Wicker Park apartment building surrounded by wildflowers. I had enough time to harass my little brother as we tooled around in the car together, and enough time to vent to my mother about life as an adult. 28 hours was enough to allow me one peaceful visit to the lakefront and bask in the almost Caribbean blue of the water. And it was enough time to sit on the porch under an eerie, post-storm sky, eating Paul Prudhomme’s grilled chicken and drinking in my last few hours there.

Sometimes, when life’s cacophony reaches a fever pitch, all you can hear is the call from home. May I be so fortunate as to return there soon.