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A complete guide to Chicago in several parts – Part 2


Posted in: Family, Travel

Millenium Park – Wednesday August 8

The next day the Princess got everyone up at 5.30 which, frankly, could have been a lot worse. It did mean that when we got to the supermarket dowstairs (the bizarrely named Jewel Osco) at 8.30 she was ready for a nap and we had to leave her screaming for cake in the frozen food section while we went about the remainder of our business.

Once we’d stocked up with a couple of gallons of milk, we took ourselves to millenium park which in what can only be called an embarrassing overrun was opened in 2004 (explain that mayor Daley). There was free kiddie entertainment. A woman in a jumper (!) with a guitar sang popular favourites which our pale, sweaty, jet lagged kiddies lapped up. A new favourite is a number called lemondrops and gumdrops which, like Hershey bars, is unknown in our part of the world. It involves singing while sticking out your tongue. Oh fabulous. Then we went to the Crown Fountain where the children ran about getting absolutely sopping. How they loved it. I think it may have been the highlight of the Princess’s life to date.

For lunch, we went to the Park Bar Grill where I had my first taste of the American service industry. We were escorted with our dripping children to a table pre-equipped with two high-chairs, six glasses of ice water (did I mention my long suffering sister was there too, somebody had to chase the children around the fountain) three packets of colouring pencils and placemats to colour in. It occurred to me that everyone in Chicago had been really pleasant to us which helped us to survive the exhaustion. Honestly, the poor Americans when they arrive in Europe with their families, my heart goes out to them. Funnily enough though, many of the service industry people were not from the US but somehow the values seemed to be omnipresent. Our doorman was from Bihac and I was tempted to tell him about the time I spent in Banja Luka but somehow, all things considered, I decided best not. The lady running the kiddie train on Navy Pier was from Nepal. One of our taxi drivers was from Cameroon another was from Nigeria and told us that he had a brother who was a nurse in Ghent.  In fact, the only place to find locals was in the shops. I digress. So there we were trying to work out what a PBJ sandwich was in the restaurant and a polite French waitress (ha, ha) came up and explained that it was peanut butter and jelly. I wish she had also reminded us that chips are crisps and we would probably not have gone for quite so many side orders of chips. The Princess had her second meltdown of the day when she dropped her hot dog and would not accept half of Daniel’s instead. “I only want a whole hot dog” she wailed “get me another hot dog”. If only we had had a strategy to deal with jet lag.

Domestic disaster

That evening after a trip to the lego shop to equip the children with small sharp objects with which to strike each other, we went to my sister’s apartment which is lovely but small when you add five of us to it, particularly when three of us are hell bent on destruction. I think my sister was slightly shell shocked by the level of damage three small children could inflict though she bore it stoically only wincing slightly as they spurned the dinner she had prepared in favour of determined efforts to ingest the small glass balls strewn attractively round her fireplace. To be fair, their attempt to dismantle the apartment was somewhat assisted by a kind colleague of my sister’s who had given her a number of things for the children to play with including a cart (enormous yoke for pushing kids around in, never seen the like before, think covered wagon from cowboy films of your youth) which, to everyone’s alarm, they pushed around with great gusto and refused to yield up to the authorities.

By this point, the children had moved to West Coast time and were all refusing to go to bed though it was nearly nine.

A complete guide to Chicago in several parts – Part 1


Posted in: Family, Travel

Getting there

The most trying part of the journey was almost certainly in Dublin airport where I struggled to contain the children while Mr. Waffle struggled with the American immigration forms. In my ongoing and (I know at some level) surely mistaken belief that the boys shouldn’t be cooped up just because they are small I released them from their buggy. They hurtled round the airport uttering excited shrieks of glee and I hurtled after them. The Princess sat shrieking that somebody had better read her the “Frog Princess” or there would be trouble. Every time I ran past her she became more insistent and people began to look at us nervously wondering who would actually get the thrill of sitting near us. When the Princess’s indignation reached glass shattering pitch, I decided to restrain the boys. While the Princess screamed “Frog Princess, Frog Princess” and glasses shattered all over the airport, I wrestled a howling Daniel into the buggy. He was somewhat manhandled in my anxiety to stop the Princess’s screaming and my concern that Michael would be gone from sight before Daniel was secure. Mr. Waffle ended up abandoning the forms and haring after Michael while poor Daniel got sick from the shock of being treated so peremptorily and the words “Frog Princess” were chanted in the background by the increasingly ratty Greek chorus and I collapsed in tears. “Right, I’ll read the ‘Frog Princess’, give it to me. Sniff. Are you happy now?” “Yes.”

With such a beginning, you might have thought that the 8 hour flight would be absolutely dreadful. In fact, the Princess was reasonably well behaved and the boys slept a bit though we did spend a couple of hours chasing them round the bulkhead. Also the fact that the battery was flat on our 160 euro mini DVD player purchased specifically for the trip was, let us say, unfortunate.

Arrival and Orientation

We arrived at lunch time which was evening for us, if you see what I mean. My saintly sister met us at the airport with the car seats which she had begged to ensure our children’s safety; unfortunately, their installation had defeated her and we got to sweat over them in the car park and experience the legendary Chicago humidity for ourselves. On the way in, I was struck by how run down the city looked. When you arrive into one of the richest countries in the world, you expect it to look affluent. But it didn’t. My sister said that Chicago is the most blue collar of the big American cities. Something for Mayor Richard M. Daley to look into. We’ll be coming back to him later.

The apartment was located in a convenient downtown location but designed more for corporate workers than families. This was evident from the fact that they didn’t offer baby cots, the rooms were done in tasteful shades of beige and it was really a very pleasant place to be. My sister had sourced child cots and bought food and milk, presents for the children and a mobile phone so our needs were met. There was also a supermarket downstairs which was open 18 hours a day selling milk in gallon bottles (a gallon is 3.78 litres, way, hay, hay). We spent the afternoon unpacking and extolling the virtues of air conditioning. We put the children to bed, made my sister cook us dinner and sat back and admired the impressive view of the Chicago skyline from our 29th floor fastness.

And on a completely separate note, netnanny will not allow me to access my comments from this computer as they are clearly awash with what I see other people call p**n on their blogs. Sigh.

Moving on


Posted in: Family

We have had a lovely time in Ireland.  Mostly because our families have given us many breaks by very kindly keeping our children away from us.  I think one of the saddest things about living abroad is that our children see least of the people who love them most (other than us, clearly) and it is great to see them getting to know their grandparents and aunts and uncles better.  My parents-in-law have borne the brunt of the child minding as we have spent most of our time in Dublin though my mother did Trojan work with the Princess in Cork, there is only one of her.  I think the parents-in-law are almost burnt out.  When I came back from Cork earlier in the week, my poor father-in-law who had spent the day with the boys met me in the hall and welcomed me with tears in his eyes before rushing out to the pub like a greyhound out of a trap. My mother-in-law has been tied to the house for ten days now reading stories, inventing new games and preventing fresh dangers.  She only ever gets out with at least one infant in tow.

It’s probably just as well that we’re off to Chicago in the morning.

Sepia


Posted in: Family

There was an article in the paper recently pointing out that 80% of people who live in Cork were born there.  Cork people don’t leave much and they don’t like “blow-ins” either.

The Princess and I went to my parents in Cork earlier in the week leaving Mr. Waffle and his parents in Dublin tending the boys.  The boom has been very kind to Cork.  Cork was always at its best in the Summer and the work done in the centre of the city has made it really attractive.  It felt bright and cheery and affluent.  I grew up in Cork in the 70s and 80s and then it was grim with factories closing down and boarded up shopfronts, the turnaround seems extraordinary.  In the past when people said that they were visiting Cork, I would say, disloyally, the county is beautiful but the city is not so interesting but that is no longer true and I am delighted and, bizarrely, proud.

I haven’t lived in Cork since 1992 (when I finished my training as a solicitor which featured a great deal of work in receivership and liquidation, I spent much of my time at the door of creditors’ meetings trying feebly to exclude journalists, really, is it any wonder I gave up law?) and so my trips home to my parents are always pleasantly tinged with nostalgia but this time more than usual, perhaps because I didn’t have all the children there to distract me.  The weather was beautiful and we went to the beach in Youghal, something I haven’t done since I was a child.  The beach was lovely and the Princess enjoyed it but it was rough and what with the beer drinkers and the boys playing football who hit me in the face with the ball, I don’t think I’ll be rushing back.  Youghal, the town, is great though.  Tourists always go to West Cork which is beautiful but East Cork is charming and Youghal has lots of history, if you are so inclined.  Sir Walter Raleigh had lands there and, as my mother never tires of telling me, when I was three months old I went there in a papoose with the Cork Historical and Archaelogical Society which at the time seems to have been composed largely of elderly spinster sisters.  My mother is proud of the revolution she started; it was good for me too because by the time I was 7 or 8, there was a gang of children on all the outings and we were able to race around wedge shaped gallery graves while our parents, grandparents and elderly aunts sat on shooting sticks listening politely to some archaeologist expounding on the significance of the site.  There is a place called “the Red House” in Youghal and the Princess and I wandered past it and I saw that it was built by the Uniacke family – there are lots of Uniackes in Cork.  For the first time it occurred to me that Uniacke is not a particularly Irish sounding name, does O’Uniacke sound good to you?  My loving husband is always saying that Cork names are very odd, perhaps he’s right.  My own particular favourite is Clayton Love.

My aunt who lives next door to my parents hired at enormous expense (rather annoyingly, she refused to reveal how enormous despite stringent cross-questioning from her nosy niece) a professional declutterer.  When I heard this from my mother my first thought was that I couldn’t believe that there was enough business in Cork to keep a (presumably very expensive) professional declutterer going and my second was, what will happen to the family photos.  I need not have worried.  When I called in to my aunt that evening she had a little pouch of items for me.  A Cork Free Press newspaper from the week of the 1916 rising preserved by my grandfather.  A photograph of my grandmother and her sister in white dresses and ringlets from about 1904 and, for me, best of all a picture taken of my father’s family in 1930.  It’s a wonderful picture.  My grandparents moved to America shortly after my father was born (my grandfather had injudiciously chosen to fight for the losing side in the civil war and what with one thing and another, getting right out of Cork seemed to him to be a good idea – when the depression started, they came back).  They lived in California.  It seems to me that the photo is not at all like equivalent Irish photos and it is almost impossible to believe that there is less than 30 years between the formally posed solemn picture of my grandmother and her sister in their white lace dresses and ringlets and this lovely picture.  My father, who was five, is smiling winsomely at the camera looking very all American and can do and he has a hand resting on my grandmother’s knee.  She is smiling at the baby (my aunt) sitting on the edge of the chair who is staring, somewhat solemnly, at the camera.  My grandfather is standing beside her smiling over her head at the baby.  The composition works very well and they all look very modern though tasteful, I hasten to add.  My grandfather was younger than I am now when he died and he was, of course, totally unknown to me and I find myself staring at the photo trying vainly to work out what he was thinking.

On Tuesday we went to Garretstown where I spent much of my youth risking hypothermia and the Princess and I went swimming for the second day in a row.  On Wednesday before going back to relieve the troops in Dublin we went to an exhibition of Seamus Murphy sculptures in the Crawford.  I was very taken with it but the Princess was much more impressed with the plaster casts of ancient Greek sculptures which I suppose shows a truer appreciation of great art.  They broadcast an old documentary which I found fascinating.  It was from 1969 which was the year I was born and there was lots of footage in Cork.  Alas, 35 minutes and 16 seconds was considerably beyond the Princess’s tolerance for learning about sculpture and seeing views of Cork.   What was interesting to me was how very little had changed, everything in the film was still there and maybe Cudmore’s* is now Vodafone but the building is the same, even the people seemed more or less the same (all that intolerance of blow-ins).  Really, only the cars were different.  I am indebted to my mother for the Cork detail that the sculptor’s son and a young woman had a baby together and, as they were not married, it was an enormous scandal.  It was the 60s and, trust me here, I doubt it was very swinging in Cork.  Anyhow, the sculptor’s son wanted to move in with the young woman’s parents and the baby but her parents (though the mother was French, there’s a blow-in and a half) drew the line at this.   That’s Cork, everyone knows everyone else’s business and it’s dreadful and wonderful in equal measure.

A couple of days later in Dublin I overheard the following deeply annoying conversation between two Dubliners

Him: Of course, country communities can tend to be exclusive rather than inclusive.  If you’re 20 miles down the road, you’re a foreigner.

Her: Although Cork is the worst, you’re always a blow-in there.

(Just because it’s true doesn’t mean that they have to be smug about it)

Him: How’s John getting on in the new job?

Her: Oh, he finds it very dull and slow, it’s not at all the pace he’s used to, public sector, of course, what do you expect?

A kick in the teeth for the public sector for good measure.  Snort.

* If you’re from Cork, this link is fascinating: http://www.corkpastandpresent.ie/places/patrick_directory.shtml

Six years


Posted in: Family, Mr. Waffle, Travel

And we celebrated our wedding anniversary by flying to Dublin with our children.  As I type, Mr. Waffle is wrestling the children into bed.  Boy, did I marry the right man.

Action/Reaction


Posted in: Family, Siblings

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” So said Mark Twain. My father is a charitable, kind-hearted, Irish, reactionary, pro-European Daily Telegraph reader. I am a wishy-washy, left leaning, hand wringing Observer reader. I have always tended to snort at my father’s views but the older I get the more I find myself in charity with them. The anti-smoking people are a curse (tick, though I like the smoke free pubs it’s the sanctimoniousness of it gets to me – you can’t smoke in the workplace so no, if you work outside cleaning the streets and have smoked all your life, you can’t have a cigarette on the job, really, we’re only thinking about you). French intellectuals are responsible for many of the worst atrocities of the 20th century (tick, Pol Pot). I was once friendly with a very strait laced lawyer who had grown up around the Haight-Ashbury and whose mother was an aging lesbian hippy. I can’t help wondering whether Dina is now into beads.

I’m getting to my point, bear with me.  My sister is leaving her job. Today is, in fact, her last day after nine and a half years of faithful service.  Yes, that’s right precisely a week and a half before we pitch up on her doorstep to get a feel for where she lives.  She’s going to move back to Ireland in the autumn; she’s decided that she’s been away long enough. I was astounded when she told me; this is a girl who was able to pay the deposit on her first flat with the profits on her wisely  invested first communion money. “With no job lined up?” “With no job lined up” she confirmed. Having grown up in Ireland in the 1980s and left before the boom got going in the 1990s, I cannot really view this prospect with anything other than horror despite the fact that it means that she will be much closer to us and I will see much more of her which will, of course, be wonderful. I was one of the first people she told. I rang her back a week later to see what everyone else thought. “They were all really pleased, they feel it’s a great move”.  “Even Mummy and Daddy?” “Especially Mummy and Daddy!” I think I have become more conservative than my parents.

You’ll be pleased to hear, though, that she’ll still be in Chicago when we arrive and, obviously, there’ll be no escape to the office for her.  She’ll be begging them to take her back.

Off to Ireland tomorrow before flying on to Chicago next week (we like to travel so much that we always make complex arrangements like this), wish us luck.