:: My Corner, My Home // D Gallaread

 

After two years my corner, my home, looks mostly the same ‘cept the bearded white man toting a messenger bag and stalling on his fixie. After two years my corner, my home, smells mostly the same: inundated with the sweet scent of Swisher cigars. After two years my corner, my home, sounds the same ‘cept the Bay Area rap doesn’t blast quite as loud. Instead people step (or bike) to the sound of money flowing into contractors’ hands and restaurant owners’ pockets, whilst transplants sip bottles of wine, the price of which would probably cover the uncovered PG&E bill of a nameless resident two doors down. 

Gallaread Corner.jpg

Twenty years ago my corner, my home, birthed a boisterous generation of sisters and brothers. It raised young men and women. My corner, my home, was the breakroom to the bustling institution, stocked with 20 ounces and chick-o-sticks. It was Ebony’s beauty salon, where on payday women shopped for packs of hair in lieu of the hair-do that was to ensue by that one cousin’s friend. My corner, my home was the cafe, third space, social sanctuary, and best friend’s living room. It was, and I can think back on it in a nostalgic haze, hopping off the 54 bus from school to fresh-baked pies accompanied by pamphlets displaying symbols of the Muslim brotherhood. This corner, my corner, our corner was vibrant in more ways than one. It sang, it danced, it laughed, it breathed and regularly died with us.  

Gallaread Close.jpg

My corner on Third and Palou makes me feel at home. Even still, though I've been traversing windy city street corners for the past two and a half years in its place, it makes me feel at home. Even still, though the demographic has gotten both whiter and wealthier, it makes me feel at home. Even still, though the familiar faces have dwindled and the storefronts have changed and the liquor stores have shut down, it makes me feel at home. Even still, though this bubble has attempted to transform my hood into a coder’s paradise, it makes me feel at home. Even still, though the new claim placed on my home makes my heart cringe, eyes swell, and fists clench, it makes me feel at home. Even though in five years this corner will, by most definitions, no longer be my home, I tend to it, I reside on it, I care for it because even then, even still, it will make me feel at home. 

 

 
Gallaread Street.jpg

 

 

 

D Gallaread currently calls 94108 home. 

60202 was called home in the recent past. 

:: The Luckiest Man // S Holler

“The luckiest man in the world is home.”

For 32 Chicago years, I’ve spoken these words as I’ve entered the door, returning home from work.

The greeting began when I was a newlywed living in a Norwood Avenue two-flat. Partly whimsical, partly an expression of the genuine sense of wonder I felt at coming home to someone who had chosen to share life with me, these words of return became an unexpected tradition.

The greeting followed us to a one-bedroom apartment on North Shore Avenue, where our first birth child joined us, and then to a six-flat on Newgard Avenue, where a second child, born to a brown-skinned mother 9,000 miles away, made us a family of four. The whimsy of the words was now gone, replaced by the weariness of a demanding job and sleepless nights. But a sense of gratitude, rooted in a young family’s shared journey, replaced it.

After 10 years of marriage and rented front doors, the greeting found a home in the Highland Avenue house where we have  lived the last 22 years. Another birth child, and another child born to another brown-skinned mother 9,000 miles away, swelled our family to six. The words now found fulfillment in the prancing footsteps of children who gleefully assaulted me with knee-high hugs before I had a chance to take off my coat. As years passed, the hugs were exchanged for requests for help with homework, then for request for rides, and finally requests for car keys. Sometimes, when the fullness of life became too full, I spoke the words as a reminder to myself, to regain my balance.

Over time, as life’s cuts and scrapes accumulated, the weight, the gravity of the phrase, shifted from “luckiest” to “home.” I was no less lucky (which to me had never meant roll-of-the-dice good fortune, but a cradled-ness that could not be accounted for solely by my birthline, life choices, and work ethic). I was just more sobered by the brokenness of the world in which I lived, and more understanding of the haven I had at home.

Home was the place I returned; the border I crossed when returning from an alien land; Dylan’s shelter from the storm, even in the midst of responsibilities that rained down; not virtual but actual reality; my mirror, my muse, my stage, my perfect and spoiled Eden, my playground, my laboratory, my judge, my masterwork, and my tombstone’s epithet.  

At 56, I’ve now had a mother die at 67, and a brother die at 36. I’ve watched cancer shrink a co-worker to the size of a child before finally burying him. I’ve had one friend murdered, and several friends who have taken their lives, or perhaps had their lives taken by wounds that could not be healed. Thanks to life in cyberspace, I’ve witnessed, fatigued and distant, a globe’s worth of suffering.  

I expect I will say my lifelong words of return for many more years to come. But today, I often think of the day when I will say them one last time in a new city, one without tears or night, as I sit down under the shade of the branches of a tree whose leaves will heal the nations, and heal me.

 

 

S Holler continues to call 60660 home, where he remains the luckiest man in the world. He spends his days as a real estate lawyer in Chicago.