Two trips, 20 years later

Memories aren't just about the places you were or the experiences you experienced. They are also about the way you felt. I'm 20 years removed from the feelings I was struggling with during two trips, but today, the rawness of my anxiety then surprises me because it seems so recent.

Summer 2006. Ben was just born, and I had returned from family leave and wanted to take more but was pressured not to, even though company policy allowed me to use accrued sick time to do so ... and I had a lot banked up mostly because working for a daily newspaper, I resisted calling in sick unless I was dying. I also had plenty of vacation built up and was good about using it efficiently. I would need it because we were traveling to Chicago for Ben's christening, going to Minnesota for a friend's wedding in September, and then returning to Chicago later in September for another good friend's wedding.

Oh, I was also absolutely fried at work. Not just fried, but paranoid and really bitter. Earlier in the year, I was reprimanded for a mistake I didn't make, in a move that seemed was done as a "lesson" from my boss that had an unintended effect — I began to hate my job and career. My bitterness just got worse over the summer, and I was exhausted. Lori and I were following a plan in which she worked days, I worked nights, and we would not need full-time daycare. It was a good plan that I felt really benefited the boys, but it was exhausting. We decided, if I could go part-time and stay-at-home-dad it, our stress would be reduced without paying for childcare or diminishing our time with the kids.

So when we got to Chicago in late July, I was fully obsessed with the plan, as well as being frazzled by work. My stress was at the point that my talking about it was wearing down Lori. My disdain for the work and the details of executing the step back was constantly on my mind. A lyric from Jackson Browne was especially resonating with me:

"Are you there, say a prayer for the pretender, who started off so young and strong, only to surrender."

I was just 35, but I felt like I was surrendering. And I wanted to so badly. I didn't have the wisdom then to realize being disillusioned with a boss, who made me not like the career I had wanted since I was 12 years old, didn't mean I needed to ditch the career.

But I couldn't get it out of my head that trip to Chicago. Just about every night, I walked my dad's partly wooded residential neighborhood, listening to that song on my iPod, and obsessing about workplace details. Despite being so happy to have another son, I was also lost.

Two months later, we were back in Chicago for a wedding. Michael, not quite age 3, and I flew out first, then Lori and Ben, all of four months old, arrived a few days later. The marvelous Chicago fall, which barely lasts to Halloween (if that) was starting to kick in. On our first night, my half-sister (I think she was 10 and playing for a club team) had early-evening soccer practice on the Taft High School field in Norwood Park, and Michael and I accompanied my dad rather than be stuck at the house. I walked with Michael to an unused part of the field with a soccer ball, and we kicked it around and he loved it. The sun was starting to descend in the western sky, fermenting a perfect Chicago September evening. I was a new-ish parent with a young child, and the whole scene was ... magical.

Kate had practice again the next evening, and Michael and I repeated the soccer playtime as the setting sun teased the fall evening. I was still stressed out about work and planning the scaling back, and I did get a couple walks in while my family watched Michael (the song that jumps out from this time was "Steady as She Goes" by The Raconteurs, which was newly on my iPod at the time). But unlike the July trip, what stood out was something wonderful — a couple of hours with a kid who inspired me so, in a city I grew up in and was feeling so nostalgic for that trip. 

Both trips were 20 years ago. I'm back in the Midwest this week, and a few nights ago, I walked the route through Edgebrook from my Dad's house that I did back then. 

I absorbed the mood walking near the wooded area next to the train tracks that intersect Edgebrook. 

I passed the small house that I think was for sale in 2005, right up against those tracks, that made me ponder what it would be like to move back to Chicago, close to our family and friends. 

I listened to "The Pretender" and recalled how overwhelmed I felt with life at 35.

I let my mind flash to those near evenings at Taft, not having a clue the years would zip by and the 2-year-old would turn 22 before I could realize how fast parenthood truly was. 

Two decades later, I'm stunned how much wisdom I picked up along the way. I couldn't figure out then that a bad boss didn't mean ditching the career (I didn't ditch the career, just pulled back until I switched into content marketing when the newspaper industry went south). I'm not regretting any choices and am happy we stayed in Utah and I did the stay-at-home dad gig, but 55-year-old me would have told that worrywart that the solution was to move to another city.

I would tell the 35-year-old that the boys will grow up even faster than imaginable — and I was pretty certain it would be quick — and to find the magic in each mundane moment. I would tell him that some of the worst-case scenarios aren't so bad. I was laid off last year, and though some I did dwell too much on some things, the stress was nowhere near what I was feeling 20 years ago. You tackle one challenge, then the next, then the next. It's the best you can do, and if can do that, you won't get lost.

What is unfathomable is how 20 years have passed since those two trips. And I wonder, what additional wisdom will I gain from now to age 75. It may not be as far away as it sounds ...