www.annemoore.net

 

 

 

 

 

Life: Outdoor Chicago

In Chicago, we savor every warm sunny day in September. Last gasps of summer happen all over the globe, of course, but in Chicago each day of warmth and sun is one we soak up and store within ourselves. We’re like Lionni’s Frederick, who uses those rays to soothe his fellow mice during the bleak, cold months of winter.

img_0139Chicago’s motto is “city in a garden” and in these last summer weekends we insist on the outdoors: eating meals or sharing cocktails in city gardens, sunning and reading on roof decks, swimming fast in open-air pools, biking or walking the lakefront.

Eight of us dined at Piccolo Sogno, 464 N. Halsted St., a newish restaurant in an old space that holds Chicago’s prettiest and most spacious garden, anchored by a huge Spanish sycamore. Strange how a place can be both achingly romantic, for a couple, and accommodating to a crowd.

Later we sat in a private garden, our friends’ good dog at my feet. Deborah pointed to a climbing vine with heart-shaped leaves. My young daughter and I had started that moon flower from seed in March, and I’d been giving the tiny sprouts as hostess gifts during the spring. There it was, grown as tall as their house. The next evening it bloomed, gleaming white against the dark.

I curled up in a comfy chair set to my garden’s one square of sunlight the next day, where I finished Henry Roth’s “Call it Sleep”. What a day; what a book. I’d chugged along for hundreds of pages, wondering how Roth’s simple tale would tie up. (It’s narrated by an overly-mothered boy whose father doubts his paternity). Wow. The climax is positively psychedelic; a cocktail of Whitman, Joyce, Ginsberg.

After another delicious dinner in a city garden — thanks Elaine and Dave! — I took our dog for his nightly walk. I passed an old home with a low-fenced yard open to the street. There, a group of friends sat at a red picnic table, lit by candles, enjoying dinner and a movie playing on an oversized screen. What a night; what a choice. “Stranger than Fiction”, a wonderfully told life and love story — set in Chicago.

Also in the blog

Our dog was misbehaving in Pythonga so every morning after breakfast I’d take him for a long walk up the road. There he’d run ahead of me, into the woods, then scamper back, checking in with me. It was raspberry and almost blackberry season, so I brought a small tub with me, filling its base. That

(...)

My friend J.M. reads nonfiction only. When she makes this brash statement, I mourn for all the fiction she misses. Sure, some fiction I’ve read in the past year has been flawed, but most fiction takes me for a ride, makes me laugh and smile and think about other lives. Nonfiction, I find, is more

(...)

More travel, this time to New York to enjoy family and friends and to bury my mom in Northern New Jersey, beside my father. I’d been dreading the burial — another round of public grieving — but the day was unexpectedly joyous. I stayed on in New York to see family and friends, see art,

(...)

4 thoughts on "Life: Outdoor Chicago"