Festival of lights

Fireworks over the Chicago River

In the unspoken competition between Dad and Mom, this lady here is 0 for 10. 

Chris and I had a "discussion" last week, and somewhere at some point during our venting and our righting of wrongs, I remember myself critiquing him for never putting any effort into planning anything for us to do as a family.

"I get depressed when we sit around on a Saturday." I said.

"I hate it when the TV is on and it's beautiful outside and the kids are doing nothing." I said.

"I want to do something!" I said.

He could have, but did not, bring up the fact that most of the things I plan end up costing us $100. They turn into major whining fests. They inspire conflict, resentment, and exhaustion.

My birthday weekend I insisted we go to Morton Arboretum to see the fall colors... with the other 4 million bazillion folks in the greater Chicago area.  I won't tell you how much we paid for crappy hot dogs, how long we waited in lines, or how little we saw of the actual trees, but I will concede that it was probably our last visit during fall festival weekend. 

The weekend before that I planned a lovely little hike to our neighborhood park's fall festival and pumpkin patch, where we dropped an embarrassing amount of money on "tickets" which gained us entrance to an even more embarrassing number of "activities." And then we got stuck outside in the middle of a rare Chicago tornado warning.

Not doing so well, you think. Learn from your lessons, Katie, you say.

Which makes me not want to tell you about tonight, except that there is no way I can NOT tell you about tonight.

Some strange and mysterious force set me up to take another fall. Stubborn and ever hopeful, I decided wouldn't it be sweet if we all hopped on the train (it's CHEAP!), rode downtown (it's only 9 stops!) and watched the Festival of Lights on Michigan Avenue (it's FREE admission)!

And Chris, in true winning spirit, agreed. Yes! he said. Yes! I will go! I'm with you! Let's plan this. Let's DO something.

And it was lovely, until we made it to the front lines near Wacker and Michigan.

I breathed in, and then out. I promised I would not lose my cool, and then I did. Immediately.

The problem: it wasn't fair that Bela was on Chris's shoulders. It wasn't fair that Bela had a better view, that she was taller, that her eyes looked higher over the crowd. Mae had a point - she is shorter than Bela, and was sitting on the shorter parent's shoulders.  They fought. They cried. We buckled.

In a ridiculous attempt to appease our children and ensure that they both sat at the same vantage point in the crowd, eyes locked at the same exact height, I - the smaller half of our parental unit - ended up with Bela (50lbs) on my shoulders while Gillian (22lbs) rode strapped to my chest.  Bela was bouncing to get a better view of the top 2 inches of the parade floats when all of the sudden a small group of people pushed their way through our part of the crowd.

They pushed in,  people pushed back. I could feel Bela's attention transition from Santa and Mickey and Christmas trees to the "f*** you, you white trash b****" coming from behind us.
"I'm gonna spit in your face, b****" drifted over, but shortly after, they pushed their way through, tempers settled, nervous laughter and stunned guffaws floated in the air. We turned around to take stock of the damage.

I was feeling a little shaken because I had almost been knocked over, buried under Bela and forced to suffocate Gill, but really I was feeling bad for the lady who had been the target of the group's obscenities. So I was shocked when I noticed the look on her face, a look that only meant she was taking pity on US.

As it turns out, one of the women made good on her threat of spitting, but she didn't have the best aim. For there sat Mae, atop Chris's taller shoulders, with a big, wet, loogie swinging from her coat pocket.

When it was finally over, when the fireworks ended and we had our hot cocoa in hand, we made it back to the train at Clark and Lake. I looked at Bela who was faux gagging and retching in the train station, feigning illness. I looked at Mae who was complaining of cold and sore legs. I looked down at Gillian who had grown irate at being tied to me, and overwhelmed with exhaustion. And then I looked at my husband, who never once said "I told you so."

I smiled at him. And then we squeezed into an overstuffed, hot, smelly train car packed with strollers crying kids and gum popping, and began the long, long 9 stop ride home. 

The best part? After putting the kids to bed, after pouring a glass of wine, we sat on the couch, And Chris looked at me and said, "Next year, we gotta get closer to the front."







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