Over the Rainbow

I lived in Chicago's Boystown neighborhood in the summer of 1986. I had just gotten married, and we lived on a quiet street lined with typically Chicago three flats and greystones that, more often than not, looked far grander from the street than they were inside.

Our apartment was in the middle of the block, a short walk away from Broadway to the east, Halsted to the west. By day, the neighborhood was alive with a twenty-somethings, gay and straight, its cute restaurants and bustling shops a mecca for people like us, just getting started, still enjoying the laziness of weekends that revolved solely around our own schedules. Night games had not yet come to Wrigley Field, and we could hear the roar from the stadium just north of us on warm afternoons. Fans moved through our streets on the way to and from the game. Chicago is a sports town, and even the gay enclave of Boystown played along.

Evenings in our east Lakeview neighborhood catered more to the gay community than to "breeders" like us. When the weather was nice, we could hear through our open windows the revelers in the midst of their bar crawls. We tended to go elsewhere for our entertainment when the sun went down.

In the summer of 1986, when the Chicago Gay Pride Parade rolled down the block a stone's throw from our apartment, there were an estimated 40,000 in attendance. The parade gave an impression of flamboyance, or maybe that's just the way I saw it. In my mind's eye, I recall mascaraed men in muscle tees, cross dressers dancing in the street, over the top floats weighed down by exuberant survivors of a community that was in the midst of being decimated by the AIDS scourge. It was a day to celebrate our differences, to at least pretend to put aside our fears.

Today, almost thirty years later, my daughter and her friends will be joining a crowd in east Lakeview no doubt numbering in the millions to celebrate not just the annual parade but pride. Gay pride, straight pride, just plain old pride. Participants and spectators alike will gather in the June sunshine, enveloped by a glorious rainbow, to celebrate a great moment in history. This week, the gay and lesbian community in every state can officially enjoy the right to marry. Some of us wonder why it took so long, why it was even an issue, and, well, why anyone would want to get married. But it did take so long, and it is still, in the minds of many, an issue, and marriage can actually be a good thing, so there is much to celebrate.

I am guessing that what my daughter and her friends will witness will be very different from the stereotypes and caricatures that wedged themselves into my head all those years ago. Sure, there will be flamboyance. I like to think every community has its share of all kinds of people, defined not by their sexual orientation or the color of their skin but by the diversity that makes us all so uniquely human. Far right (or wrong) thinkers be damned, this year's parade is about love and family and respect and hope and equality and, if all is right with the world, a healthy dose of flamboyance to boot.

Today is about everything under the sun, and everything over the rainbow.

Sweetening the Pot

A new friend told me the other day her top reason for loving her dad is he loves Boston Terriers. My new friend is only seven, but she seems very wise.

My father was a bit too fastidious to be a dog fan, but I know he would have loved each of my dogs with all his heart. Love me, love my dog. My mother -- the one who plucks microscopic bits of lint off carpet and scours her toilet after each flush -- let my boxer puppy lick her face a few weeks ago. My love for her (my mother, not the puppy) reached new heights. If my mother were a tall, dark, handsome man with boatloads of money I would marry her.

Back to my new young friend, the one who knows quality in a man when she sees it. She also knows where she is going to college and she already has her wedding dress picked out. I don't have the heart to tell her that it is a woman's prerogative to change her mind, and that her plan is merely a work in progress. She seems as comforted by her sense of certainty as other kids are with their belief in the tooth fairy. To interfere with that would simply be cruel.

When my first child lost her first tooth, my parents happened to be in town visiting. Competition with the real tooth fairy became fierce; in an odd game of fantasy poker being played beneath my child's pillow, the pot exploded to twenty-seven dollars. Sure, it interfered way too soon with my daughter's belief system, but twenty-seven bucks seemed like a fair trade for a loss of innocence.

I suppose unconditional love makes us all do strange things. Stranger, even, than outbidding the tooth fairy. We lose irretrievable hours of sleep to crying babies, we trade in careers for thousands of miles logged behind the wheel of a minivan, our lives revolve around unruly and demanding beings who, as they grow, often have a hard time seeing past our stupidity and our peskiness. They forget, at least for a while, that we would do anything for them, like love Boston Terriers, or even let a dog whose mouth has been to all sorts of unspeakable places lick our face.

And my new young friend would probably love her dad even if he preferred chihuahuas, or cats  (although I admit that's a bit of a stretch). She will change her mind about college and she will pick a different wedding dress, or maybe no wedding dress at all. But she won't change her mind about her dad. Children are wired that way, to love us in spite of our shortcomings. As my children have grown, I have marveled at their ability to love, if not unconditionally, at least with a capacity to put the needs of others before their own. Sometimes too much so, but I cannot help but feel proud that they somehow learned to err on the side of grace, forgiveness, and generosity. I pity the tooth fairy who tries to stiff one of their children with nothing more than a few shiny coins.

We are the lucky ones, my young friend and I. We have people in our lives who love Boston Terriers and who would let our puppies lick their faces. People who will stop at nothing for us -- even if it means shaming the tooth fairy.

Blackhawks Town

All over Chicagoland, otherwise rational people are deluding themselves into thinking they might somehow be instrumental in bringing the Stanley Cup home. Without so much as lacing up a skate.

I moved to Chicago in the summer of 1985, so I did not have to wait long for my introduction to the city's love affair with its teams. The Bears' championship season was approaching, and though I had never been much of a football fan I was not immune to the charms of Sweetness and the Refrigerator, could even recite most of the players' names. The Superbowl win was dampened somewhat by the Challenger disaster two days later, but never before had I experienced the level of electricity that can light up Chicago when one of its team is having a good run. By the time the Bulls came along to dominate basketball in the nineties, I was accustomed to living in a town that regularly painted itself red and black. The team practiced in our lily white suburb, and kids otherwise unaware of racial diversity would assume every tall black man in the world was a Bull. It was a heady time.

The Blackhawks scored early in Game 5 the other night, just as my friend and I were snapping a selfie. We worked hard to replicate the pose each time the puck went our way. Another friend was in the midst of putting on a jersey when the first goal was scored, and spent a good part of the evening taking it off and putting it on. At other gatherings, people were recreating lucky seating configurations while eating recently anointed victory food. The uninvited souls, those being held accountable for earlier losses -- after all, what else could it have been -- remained safely out of sight, their empty chairs a solemn reminder of their negative vibes.

Frankly, I'm still wondering why ice hockey is being played in the middle of June, but I'm all about sharing in the glory, especially if all I have to do is put on the same filthy shirt and eat the same greasy food. It just seems like an awful lot of pressure, and, by the way, has it occurred to anyone that no matter how vigilant we are in our own little corners of the fan base we have no control over whether someone else drops the ball?

Even if the Hawks lose (perish the thought), it's been cool -- feeling as if I am a part of something. A part of somebody's game day guest list, a part of the conversation in a local watering hole, a part of a sprawling metropolitan area where devotion to sports teams takes on an almost religious fervor and allows a diverse city, at least for a moment, to speak with one voice. Sure, I'll always have the '69 Mets (dare I bring that up?) but New York was always a bit too wrapped up in itself to stop dead in its tracks for sports.

I have not yet decided where I will watch the Hawks game tonight. There does not seem to be any pattern attached to my attendance at various houses. There have been more wins than losses, but somehow I don't think I can take credit or blame for any of them. Still, wherever I end up, I will abide by my hosts' superstitions, and no doubt acquire a few of my own. I will probably borrow the jersey I wore for the last win, and I will change whatever it is I am doing at the moment if Tampa happens to score. I will stuff myself with food deemed lucky by virtue of timing (please let it be artichoke cheese dip and not raw carrots) and I will play musical chairs with the best of them.

And, like everybody else, I will secretly take pride in my own small contributions if the Hawks win or, if necessary, watch somewhere else and wear something else for Game 7.

Heads Up!

An elderly gentleman has taken it upon himself to watch over me at the local library.

It's funny how some people catch your attention, maybe because they remind you of somebody you once knew, maybe somebody important. I admit that when he first approached me, I was neither surprised nor offended. I had noticed him, sitting at the table across from mine, to my left. There were plenty of other regulars, I think, but none of the others had made an impression.

Only his question startled me, that first time. "For profit or not for profit?" My defenses immediately went on high alert. Another person wondering what the heck I was doing, and if it was worth it for someone to pay me. The things I wonder about on a daily basis.

"For profit," I answered. "Theoretically," I added. I wear my confusion on my sleeve.

He bent down and picked up a penny from the floor near my chair. He offered it to me. I flinched. I could see it was tails up. I only pick up pennies if they are heads up, and then I make a note to myself to hold onto it for good luck, although I generally forget about it entirely pretty quickly. Truth be told, I've never really paid attention to whether my luck changes, even for a moment. I explained my policy to the gentleman. He seemed a bit surprised, but he put the penny in his pocket and wished me luck. I worried about him, with a tails up penny in his pocket.

I didn't see him again for a week. This time he startled me when he suddenly spoke in my ear. "I've been waiting for you," he said. Not in a menacing way, just very matter of fact. I recognized the voice. "I was at McDonald's the other day, getting a coffee," he continued. Had he said he was getting a Big Mac, I might have been concerned, but he was getting a coffee. Not so creepy.

He opened up his hand to show me what looked to be a penny, although it was so dark and weathered I could not really tell. "And I saw this filthy old penny on the floor, and I remembered what you said, and I bent down and saw it was heads up, so I took it for you."

I didn't know what to say. He apologized for its condition. I told him it was probably an antique, and I thanked him for it.

When I left a short while later to run a quick errand, I placed the old penny in my jacket pocket, and kept checking for it. Rain was coming down in sheets, and I was hoping my penny would help me find another sheltered parking space when I returned to the library. After a third spin through, it worked. Well, I found a sheltered parking space, and I like to think the penny had something to do with it.

The elderly gentleman and I have chatted again since then. Not just about pennies, but about what we do and where we have been and what we would like to do and where we would like to go. He mentioned he had found another penny the other day -- tails up -- and had kept it for himself. He admitted business was not going well for him at the moment. I gave him a knowing look.

The filthy dark penny sits on my dresser now. I knocked it to the floor once, and it landed tails up, but I flipped it over and put it back. Once heads up, always heads up. My luck, I decided, had been grandfathered in.

The penny is more than an ordinary penny. And the elderly gentleman, well, I like to think he is more than an ordinary elderly gentleman. His face does not really remind me of anyone in particular, but his kindness is vaguely familiar.