These People

These are my Labor Day people, as mentioned in the previous post.

Sister, brother, brother.

The calendar event that helped get us home for Labor Day weekend this year was my Grandma and Grandpa's 55th wedding anniversary.

Oh there were neon orange tee shirts, yes there were. 

Labor Day

My nephew Kaden

I will love Labor Day until my dying day.

For two years now, it's just so happened that my brothers, husband and I have been able to drive home for not much more than a 24-hour rendezvous under our backyard's pergola for the day where we get a rest from our labors.

I've developed this expectation that we all meet up at home on Labor Day now.

It's right up there with Christmas.

My momma insisted that "the Chicago people" sit out in the sun, because she firmly believes that we get too white in Chi-Town.

But it was hot (summer of 2012, when can we say goodbye?), so we spent the day out in the sun and in the pool.

Smoked brats under the pergola, burgers and strawberry shortcake cake (husband's new favorite cake found in this cookbook) for supper, and baby niece and nephew palooza.
I die.

There's a history, a behavioral pattern if you will.

I retreated home every Labor Day in college, I fell in love with husband-to-be on a Labor Day weekend at home, I got married in my backyard on Labor Day weekend six years ago, and to this day I'm still a Labor Day under that pergola with those people kinda girl.
Labor Day is like, my thing I think.

Where and how do you like to spend Labor Day?

Community

source

On my walk home from work tonight, I swiped through a couple screens of Facebook on my phone while waiting at stoplights.

Just as I was thinking about how Facebook turns into Babybook near the end of your 20's, I spotted this little gem (your baby is a gem too).

Community is an upward climb in the city, but I'd be silly to think this an urban challenge only.

 Yes, in the city half the battle is getting a parking spot.

Then there's the buzzer to get in the door, the desk attendant who wants all but your social security number, elevator rides with strangers, and all to visit our apartment with no dining room or even kitchen table.

Our friends have eaten on (read: not off) our living room floor and couches for years.

While husband and I can wax eloquent about just how we would string the lights over our hypothetical outdoor patio and the hours we would spend sitting out under those lights and stars with our suburb friends and neighbors, I really hope we never live in the suburbs.

Like cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye hope.

Community is for here and for now, no matter where we live.

My favorites from the list...

Turn off your TV     Leave your house     Know your neighbors  

Use your library     Have potlucks     

Read stories aloud     Dance in the street     Start a tradition

Organize a block party     Open your shades

Share your skills     Take back the night

Know that no one is silent though many are not heard.

How do you build community, or hope to, in your here and now?

3rd Coast

Yesterday it poured rain all day and night.

Thank heavens, literally and figuratively.

It was also Sunday, and that made the rain a closer friend than that of other days.

Husband and I ducked through the rain to a place that feels like home to slow nights and dark weather.

I pulled on leggings and rain boots and leaned in to him under umbrellas and the glow of residential street lights, the effect blurred by water droplets.

And I was ready for fall, just like that.

(I'm an easy sell).

August/September in Chicago is like middle school.

It's impossible to know if you should want to look backward or forward.

Childhood or adulthood?  Summer or fall?

Some people would choose childhood, and some people would choose adulthood, but no one chooses middle school.

The in between feels all wrong, wreaks havoc on your emotions, and you never know what to wear.

But back to 3rd Coast.

We watched the rain from the sub-sidewalk level cafe and stayed long after coffee cups were drained and the check was paid, surrounded by empty tables.

Back at our apartment for an early night in, we used only candles to see the candlelight mingle with the city lights on the reflection in our windows.

I would choose fall.

And I would choose 3rd Coast in any kind of precipitation.

Reaching Up

Photo by The Youngrens

 Yesterday as I pulled up to the first stop light on my way to work, I watched 18-year-olds pull luggage across the street to a smallish square plot of brick,

 brick surrounded by buildings that reach up to join the rest of Chicago in the sky.

As I sat in my car waiting for the light to turn, my rearview mirror all of the sudden became prominent and I saw my own feet hit that brick plaza for the first time nine years ago.

I moved to Chicago nine years ago for college to study at Moody Bible Institute.

I have to smile at that girl and the day she brought her bags to Chicago.

I try to find her mind that day.

I have to smile at the places outside of her consciousness that surrounded her on every side.

He was there that day.

 These streets, these dailies, these iconic landmarks-turned life landmarks were staring back at her, unrecognized.

The same sidewalks that would stand beneath me for the next decade as I learned to stand on my own, they were there.

I look at this photo with the buildings reaching up behind, with him, and I smile at that girl, for that girl, with that girl.

And then the light turned green.

Good for a Week

Hello, friends!

 Hope you got in on the book reviews last week and found a little something to fill your Amazon cart before you sharpen too many pencils, get back to packing lunches each night before bed (I never do that), or buy fall flats (I hope to do that).

Husband and I spent the weekend on a lake in Michigan (not to be confused with our daily Lake Michigan).

It's college move-in time again, and so per the calendar swing, we've been spending lots of time with some pretty stellar RA's and student leaders.

At the retreat it was a beautiful thing to sit down to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks without a thought of how those things would come to be.

I'm trying to be a good person and think of how to make breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks come to be this week without giving in to my bad city habits of dining out or flaking out.

It's hard to be a good person, but this is my good faith effort.

We'll be good for a week.

Pioneer Woman's My Brother's Chicken Tacos

Couscous Stuffed Peppers

Bruschetta Chicken

Black Bean Confetti Salad

Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas

The credibility of these reviews is slowly declining through the week.  We've now sunk to the level of book review based on secondhand first impression.  Good thing it's Friday or we'd be reviewing books we haven't even heard of.

Husband packed this book along with The Book of the Dun Cow for Mexico, and this biography turned out to be his second read.  He's about a third of the way through the 600+ pages and he loves it like I loved Mexican Coca-Cola.  (Who is the deeper soul?  I know, I feel so deeply about Coke.  Always have.)

Husband's first impressions are none too shabby in credibility, but since he's still reading I refer you to the Wall Street Journal's review in the meantime.

I shared earlier in the week one of my favorite ways to find new books.  Husband's seems to be from his favorite blog,  DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed;  I've noticed a direct link between his Amazon cart that blog.  Bonhoeffer was also on our pastor's summer reading list.

To order Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, click here.