In which I forgive the city of Chicago and Robert Frost

I’m pretty hard on Chicago, I know that. And I know it’s not fair. There are days, at least hours, where I find myself loving the [Windy/Second] City [that Works/of Big Shoulders]. The North Side is genuinely cool, Bucktown and Wicker Park and such. And Belmont, which I learned is only called Belmont by U of C students who know it by the name of its El stop. It’s actually called Lakeview.

And Greektown is good, though I haven’t been there since my Greek friend started inviting me over to his house for real Greek food. The West Side has a sort of charm, though it feels empty to me, like a desert in the middle of civilization.

Downtown has its moments; there are days when you can barely walk the crowds are so big, and that’s what I’m looking for from a downtown. Of course, I’d prefer if the people were more determined to reach a destination, since now they just kind of wander around in big crowds instead of moving. But whatever, that’s cool. Keeps it different from New York. And I certainly haven’t given the South Side a fair shake.

My shameful confession: I haven’t been south of 63rd street except in a car, unless you count Beverly.

And I’ve always meant to go to the Checkerboard and such, but I still haven’t. I know there’s so much here, but it always felt off-limits. I’m going to try to fix that my last few months here.

The truth is I’m often unfairly judgmental. It helps me justify my judgments of myself. If I’m going to detest what I think and what I do, I might as well detest the place I’m in. But I’ve come a long way in learning to stop hating my personality, even if I judge it. So it’s only time I stop hating this city even though I judge it.

* * *

I had this great English teacher in high school. Everyone does, I guess. Mine was Mr. McGraw, whom I’m pretty sure doesn’t like me, though I don’t know why. But he taught me sophomore English (which we called Lower English, because we’re pretentious and we can’t call sophomores sophomores we call them Lowers which is short for Lower-Middler), and also a class on the epic poem.

Anyway, in his class one day Robert Frost came up and I made a sound and he asked me why, and I told him that I hated Robert Frost. He’s the kind of guy to pounce on a word, so when I said I “hated” him he interrogated me. I said I thought his poems were “stupid” which provided him more fodder for Socratic methodizing.

Really, I didn’t like Frost’s style of real simple language and simple images. I thought it was childish. And I brought up one of his poems that I can’t remember now but it’s about a newspaper blowing in the wind on a porch, or something, and the last line is “of a day I had rued.” And he kept asking why I didn’t like it and he pointed to “rued” and he asked whether a single word was enough to make a poem good. At the time I said no but now I realize that Mr. McGraw was right. “Rued” alone is a poem. It is enough.

The truth is, though I did not like Robert Frost’s poetry, the reason I “hated” him was because of my 4th grade teacher. Her name was Elly Seavy but she was clever so she signed everything “LECV” which sounds the same when you read the letters. I hated her because she made me a teachers’ pet, giving me special privileges and letting me work on advanced projects.

I now realize that my mother was no doubt involved, in her efforts to get the best for me, likely having talked to Mrs. Seavy and the school and god knows who else to make sure I was working “at my level”. But at the time all I knew was that none of the other kids liked me because of things like special treatment from LECV. So I hated her. And, when she mentioned that her favorite poet was Robert Frost, I started to hate him. (I didn’t buy Gillette products until a few years ago, because her husband worked for Gillette.)

I think my dislike/hatred of Chicago is similar to my hatred of Robert Frost. Chicago isn’t what I hate. Chicago is connected to what I hate. But I don’t know what that is, the thing I hate. Maybe it’s academics, maybe it’s this holding-pattern of a university. Maybe it’s the cold without the snow, or the snow without the mountains.

Whatever it is, I hereby forgive the City of Chicago, Richard M. Daley Mayor, for the crimes it never committed. And I hereby forgive Robert Frost for having appealed to a no doubt well-intentioned 4th-grade teacher, and I forgive that same teacher for treating me different, and my mother for having asked her to.

Now I can only hope they can forgive me.