Free at Last!

Temperatures reached the sixties today in Chicago and seemingly every housing unit in the city (ours included) emptied its people-content onto the streets. Think of the dazed, childlike aliens who file out of the space ship that appears at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or the munchkins who pop out from under the foliage after Dorothy drops a house on the Wicked Witch of the East, and you'll get a sense of what the first spring day in Chicago feels like--especially when it's a Saturday. When Mari, Emilio and I got down to the street, we realized that we didn't need our fleece and corduroy layers, so I happily trotted them back up stairs and we began our neighborhood walk feeling almost naked in long sleeve shirts and jeans. The sidewalks on Clark street were thick with pale babies and their transportation paraphenalia and I started asking everybody how old their children were. I'm sure the babies of Andersonville have been out in force in previous springs, but I haven't paid much attention until now. Because Mari is such a good mother, who realizes how much Emilio enjoys watching her eat, she bought a smoothie at the gym and chocolate-covered pretzels at Elizabeth's bon-bon shop (our favorite chocolate-pusher reported that she recently married a man with the unfortunate last name "Felato"). Eventually, we parted ways, I to my office, M&E to the house, but when I came home around nine o'clock, the temperatures were still in the sixties, so we decided to make a late night supermarket run. It has started raining by then, but we stayed dry under our family umbrella and Emilio seemed to be fascinated by the night and the sound of the rain. As you know, once I strap him into the Baby Bjorn he usually manages to fall asleep before I get to the nearest street corner. But tonight he remained alert all the way to the supermarket and he stayed awake the whole time we were shopping, possibly anticipating our return walk home through the rain. It had stopped raining by the time we'd finished shopping, though, and about halfway to the house he drifted off. He remained asleep as I lifted him out of the Baby Bjorn and placed him in the rocking chair that Jack and Julie gave him (see photo at left), but for a long while his arms remained in the same position they had been in while we were on our walk. No doubt he was dreaming of rain and chocolate pretzels.